Viewpoint

Tackling emissions through sustainable travel

Rob Whitehead, Director of Strategic Projects at Centre for London looks at how we can make sustainable travel within London, and to London the norm

Anyone unconvinced of the climate emergency must have been unsettled by recent flooding in Germany and wildfires in Greece and Algeria. Any remaining doubts that our emissions are causing global temperatures to rise, and more frequent extreme weather events were felled by the latest IPCC report.

Climate action has swiftly made its way to the top of many politicians’ agendas with global leaders getting more serious about setting targets. Our Prime Minister has committed the UK to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, while the Mayor of London has set a target for our capital to reach net zero by 2030.

We urgently need to scale up our activity if we’re going to meet either of these targets, particularly when it comes to transport, which contributes a quarter of London’s CO2 emissions. Back in 2019 around a third of trips in London were made by car, another third by public transport and a quarter by walking or cycling. The pandemic has seen a dramatic shift away from public to private transport, and, to a certain extent walking and cycling. It has rebounded somewhat, but in June, passenger numbers across the Transport for London (TfL) network were still at just under 60 per cent of normal levels.

TfL finances also fell off a cliff during the pandemic. The government refused London the generosity it found for rail companies, so TfL continues to face a long-term funding crisis. The network’s overexposure to a fall in fare revenue led the authority to make emergency deals with the government to keep it afloat. Earlier this summer TfL revealed it faces a £500 million funding gap for this financial year as negotiations with the government for a long-term, sustainable funding deal roll on. Without securing such a deal, there’s only so much TfL can do both to encourage people back onto public transport and to accelerate the decarbonisation of transport in London.

But tackling the emissions that our cars, vans, lorries, buses, and trains pump out each day will take more than this. That’s why the Transport Decarbonisation Plan published by the government earlier in the summer is so important. It sets out the direction of travel for the coming years but also the areas that government feels it can make the most gains.

One way to tackle carbon emissions is accelerating the move towards electric vehicles. So, the government’s new proposals to ban the sale of new diesel and petrol heavy goods vehicles, much like cars and vans, is the right thing to do. These policies are vital signals to the market, but when someone can buy and use a new petrol car or lorry in the capital for years to come, or a secondhand conventional car for years beyond that, these targets feel unambitious given the scale, and urgency, of the challenge.

Elsewhere other measures are being put in place to help people switch to greener travel options including the government’s focus on increasing electric charging point numbers, and parking policies that push hard against conventional car use. These interventions do help, but nothing in the plan looks likely to trigger the scale and speed of the transition that is needed. The government seems hesitant to use regulation, instead betting that consumer demand and technical innovation will get us to net zero. The number of electric vehicles on our roads has increased exponentially over the last few years, but they still only make up just three per cent of cars across the country. It’s also worth acknowledging that all cars – electric or not – create congestion as well as pollution through brake and tyre wear, while manufacturing and extracting raw materials are very carbon intensive processes – so, especially for London, the government must look for other solutions.

Nevertheless, London is ahead of the rest of the country on public transport in some respects. All passenger rail services operated by TfL are now electrically powered, so the focus there is now on making sure all electric power comes from renewable energy. TfL also plans for there to be 2,000 all-electric buses in operation across the capital by 2025, though that’s still less than a quarter of the city’s fleet. Where the city is falling behind is on affordability, accessibility, and connectivity. London’s public transport is more expensive than any other city in the world, and impractical for many journeys, contributing to the case for a long-term funding deal for TfL with decarbonisation at its heart. Alongside this, it also feels like there are three other missing pieces of the government’s transport decarbonisation jigsaw.

The first is dampening demand for car use through road user charging. The government’s plan mentions this briefly in relation to low emissions zones,

The government and TfL should go all out to encourage multi-mode travel by for example introducing e-scooter parking alongside cycle parking at train and bus stations and stops, as well as encouraging operators to increase the amount of space for these vehicles to be carried on board.

but nowhere does it consider how pay-per-mile schemes could both encourage people to drive less or switch to greener travel options and raise revenue for the Treasury.

The second is betting on smaller vehicles. The government has, to their credit, quickened the pace on e-scooters during the pandemic with trials of shared schemes, but they could go further and look to legalise these micromobility vehicles sooner rather than later. They should also look at stimulating innovation in the market gap between tiny vehicles like scooters and the 1.5 tonne behemoths we call cars (‘heavy micromobility’ as some call them). The government and TfL should go all out to encourage multimode travel by for example introducing e-scooter parking alongside cycle parking at train and bus stations and stops, as well as encouraging operators to increase the amount of space for these vehicles to be carried on board.

Thirdly, the government should claw itself out of the Brexit weeds and back highspeed international rail as a serious high volume, low carbon way of addressing the aviation and emissions conundrum, connecting us quickly to around a dozen northern European cities. Imagine boarding trains at St Pancras, or Stratford or Ashford and alighting in Lyon, Frankfurt or Geneva. This is possible, but it will take a burst of imagination and serious longsighted political leadership to make it real.

Together these initiatives could also help us get to a future where sustainable travel within London, and to London is the norm, meet the Mayor’s 2030 goal, and give us a range of enjoyable, green transport options that fit our needs, and our urge to see the world, without harming it.

Rob Whitehead is Director of Strategic Projects at Centre for London. He leads on the Centre’s London Futures work and on environment and transport. He rejoined the Centre in 2020, having helped to found it in 2011. Previously, Rob was Director of Knowledge at Future Cities Catapult and has also worked at the UN’s International Trade Centre and the London Development Agency.