CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

Reducing car travel

(102 posts)
  • Started 3 years ago by Morningsider
  • Latest reply from Morningsider

1234

  1. chdot
    Admin

    “ambition”

    “

    The Scottish Government’s ambition to reduce the number of car kilometres by 20% before 2030 will help close this inequality gap and reduce carbon emissions, as will some of the policies focused on sustainable travel in The National Transport Strategy (NTS)2 and second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2). Placemaking, including the commitment to fostering 20 Minute Neighbourhoods, is being promoted as integral to effective active travel strategies through the Place Based Framework. Also, Sustainable Transport is a priority in the Strategic Framework for the Future of Participatory Budgeting in Scotland.

    “

    https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/51666/active-nation-report-2022-screen.pdf

    Posted 3 years ago #

  2. Frenchy
    Member

    Previously a "commitment":

    In response to the global climate emergency, Scotland’s Climate Change Plan update in 2020 set out a world-leading commitment to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030.

    https://consult.gov.scot/transport-scotland/car-kilometre-reduction-route-map/

    Posted 3 years ago #

  3. Morningsider
    Member

    I think its pretty clear the commitment, world-leading or otherwise, has already been missed. In Scotland, distance travelled by car fell by 29% between 2019 and 2020.

    For several months during 2020 it was a criminal offence to leave your home without reasonable excuse. That is the level of intervention it took to achieve such a step change in car use. Anyone expect the Scottish Government to pursue policies that dramatic again?

    Current GB travel statistics show car trips back to almost 100% of pre-pandemic levels - slightly down during week days and above pre-pandemic levels at weekends. Likely to indicate no, or a relatively small, fall in distance travelled by car.

    This is simply emperors new clothes stuff.

    Posted 3 years ago #

  4. PS
    Member

    Without a lot more "conviction politicians"*, nothing is going to change here. Scottish Government policy is the 20% reduction in car kms, local authorities sign up to it and include it in their goals for their various transport plans are supposed to do, but those plans tend to be attempts to improve public transport with minimal impact on road use. No one does anything that might actually make driving more inconvenient.

    *Basically Greens. Maybe a few on the progressive/left side of things, but too many left-leaners seem to think that restricting driving will disproportionately impact "the hard working family" so have set their ideological faces against it.

    Posted 3 years ago #

  5. chdot
    Admin

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8wq7/slovenia-car-free-city-ljubljana

    Posted 3 years ago #

  6. chdot
    Admin

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/12/13/uks-transport-ministry-predicts-54-traffic-rise-over-next-35-years-building-more-roads-will-make-this-worse/

    Posted 2 years ago #

  7. chdot
    Admin

    https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/brussels-new-traffic-plan-has-reduced-cars-one-fifth-last-six-months

    Posted 2 years ago #

  8. chdot
    Admin

    SO

    Cost of living crisis

    More internet shopping and home deliveries and yet -

    “

    Most U.K. Journeys Are To Shops Not Work, Finds National Travel Survey

    “

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2023/08/30/most-uk-journeys-are-to-shops-not-work-finds-national-travel-survey/?sh=3ba1640734d6

    Time for charging for parking at retail car parks.

    Presume WFH has switched the balance - but no overall reduction in trips/mileage?

    Posted 1 year ago #

  9. chdot
    Admin

    Not new, congestion charging at no. 1

    “

    12 best ways to get cars out of cities – ranked by new research

    “

    https://theconversation.com/12-best-ways-to-get-cars-out-of-cities-ranked-by-new-research-180642

    Posted 1 year ago #

  10. chdot
    Admin

    “

    FIVE STEPS TO DELIVER 20% TRAFFIC REDUCTION NOW

    “

    https://transform.scot/2024/09/23/five-steps-to-deliver-20-traffic-reduction-now/

    Posted 8 months ago #

  11. chdot
    Admin

    “

    Reducing private car use, particularly in urban areas, positively impacts children and young people’s ability to choose active modes. Not only does reducing traffic make walking and cycling safer and more attractive to children and their parents, it also ‘nudges’ parents to travel actively or allow their children to travel actively instead of taking them by car. Such traffic reduction policies include reducing parking or raising the price of parking (e.g. through reducing on-street parking or introducing workplace parking levies); congestion charging; reducing road space (e.g. narrowing roads, introduction of cycle lanes and pedestrianisation, bus gates, modal filters such as in low traffic neighbourhoods.

    “

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X-fq6YVDjk70Piz8bCAMPFgnQyMSmyb8Zrz-Y80wz5M/mobilebasic

    Posted 6 months ago #

  12. chdot
    Admin

    “

    The Scottish government has set a target to cut car usage by 20% by 2030 but the latest data shows that is a long way from being achieved.

    The campaign group Transform Scotland forecasts cars will travel more than 40bn km a year by 2030, up from 34bn km last year, with a record 3.1m vehicles of all types registered in Scotland in 2022.

    “

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/17/driverless-bus-service-in-scotland-to-be-withdrawn-due-to-lack-of-interest

    Posted 5 months ago #

  13. chdot
    Admin

    “

    The need for change

    Our National Transport Strategy (NTS2) outlines the need to reduce travel by unsustainable modes and sets out the sustainable travel hierarchy, where walking, wheeling and cycling are the preferred modes for shorter journeys. The UKCCC’s latest Sixth Carbon Budget report also acknowledges need for car use reduction, and the important benefits, both for the climate as well as for the health and wellbeing of Scotland’s citizens.

    “

    https://www.transport.gov.scot/our-approach/environment/20-reduction-in-car-km-by-2030/

    Posted 5 months ago #

  14. chdot
    Admin

    “

    The Scottish Government aims to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030.

    This is part of its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

    But car traffic has increased since 2020.

    And @scotgov has no delivery plan and is now unlikely to hit its target.

    More: http://bit.ly/Sustainable_Transport_in_Scotland

    “

    https://x.com/AuditScotland/status/1884886909228347768

    Posted 4 months ago #

  15. LaidBack
    Member

    Looking at the projected targets of car use worldwide.

    https://www.statista.com/chart/26237/car-use-by-continent/

    Obviously Europe is top in projected reduction but fighting off rural car dependency in Scotland is hard.
    If LB had a car we could drive twice as quickly as public transport options from Highland Perthshire. They are not actually bad but many buses are slow - even express FlixBus took 1 hour 30 mins from Perth to Edinburgh via Broxden.
    Most locals use the bus only if their car is broken. The village bus is very reliable but infrequent.
    EVs of course are very cheap to run and may actually increase miles driven.
    The bold answer is fast electric rail via Perth to Inverness. Will have to be resilient though as our publicly owned railway had loads of faults after Èowyn.

    Car use between Edinburgh and Glasgow shot up last
    weekend as trains were cancelled and buses were full although did their best to cover.

    Posted 4 months ago #

  16. Morningsider
    Member

    Another one bites the dust - the Scottish Government has binned its 20% car travel reduction target:

    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/plan-cut-20-car-journeys-35104394

    Posted 1 month ago #

  17. Frenchy
    Member

    Who could have predicted?

    Posted 1 month ago #

  18. Arellcat
    Moderator

    And @scotgov has no delivery plan and is now unlikely to hit its target.

    Three years ago, Transport Scotland published a route map for the target. It would be interesting to know how many of the 19 interventions have not come to fruition sufficiently.

    I'm not very surprised, though. But given the amount of working from home and hybrid working these days, who is doing all the driving?

    Posted 1 month ago #

  19. bakky
    Member

    Route map a very good find (as someone who will write about this shortly) - thank you for pointing to it.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  20. Morningsider
    Member

    Technically the route map was only ever a draft. I'm quite happy to run through progress (arf) on the interventions, but it will need to wait until later today or tomorrow as I am busy with other stuff.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  21. chdot
    Admin

    @M

    Would be good to get your analysis!

    There’s an annex here (which may or may not be useful!)

    https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/a-route-map-to-achieve-a-20-per-cent-reduction-in-car-kilometres-by-2030/

    Also (apparently) the original plan was that a final route map would be published taking into account this additional research -

    https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/travel-demand-management-options-study/

    From above

    “

    The Scottish Government has been clear that reaching our target of a 20% reduction in car use by 2030 will require a broad combination of interventions, including infrastructure, incentives and disincentives. This Transport Demand Management research was commissioned by Transport Scotland in June 2022 to explore fair and progressive options to reduce unnecessary car use.

    “

    Posted 1 month ago #

  22. neddie
    Member

    “Holyrood” article also discusses:

    https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,switching-lanes-scotlands-plan-to-make-transport-more-sustainable

    The big headline is if you don’t restrict car usage how we see it today, you can improve all the alternatives as much as you like, but if we don’t deal with the problem, we will just be left with more of everything. That’s what has happened in the Netherlands and Germany, they’ve got some amazing examples of public transport and active travel, but they still have very high car usage and ownership

    Posted 1 month ago #

  23. chdot
    Admin

    Here we go again -

    “

    When will Edinburgh Council’s anti-car eco zealots wake up and smell the coffee? This week the SNP Scottish Government has finally admitted its goal to cut car use by 20 per cent by 2030 will have to be dropped as it is completely unrealistic. Yet Edinburgh Council’s approach remains an even more unrealistic 30 per cent cut.

    “

    https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/city-councils-anti-car-policy-needs-a-radical-rethink-iain-whyte-5097449?

    Posted 1 month ago #

  24. Arellcat
    Moderator

    CEC, as a public body, is entirely within its rights to set its own targets for reducing distances people travel using cars. It's entirely within its rights to adopt a 20%, 30%, 40% or even 100% target, should it wish. It's also entirely within its rights to acknowledge that 'driving' (heh) down car use in cities is different from attempting the same in rural areas with poor public transport.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  25. bakky
    Member

    I would love to see how Iain Whyte proposes to tackle congestion in the city otherwise. These folk are all pearl-clutch and no answers.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  26. neddie
    Member

    Any councillor that tries to stop the council from implementing its own policies more than 3 times, without offering any viable
    alternative, should be booted off the committee.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  27. gembo
    Member

    2neddie you are being kind there. I would say sacked.

    Posted 1 month ago #

  28. mcairney
    Member

    As someone who is a bit of a car geek dare I say that cars are the modern equivalent of brown shoes?

    I generally avoid driving into town, the stress isn't worth it, if you were to get parked your parking costs would quickly outweigh the cost of taking a bus/train/tram and it's no faster as you're essentially making the same journey along the same road!

    In saying that my mum hasn't been well recently and I'm starting to regret choosing a car that does 30mpg on a good day...

    Posted 1 month ago #

  29. chdot
    Admin

    “

    It’s clear to edi.bike and other commentators that the issue here is not a lack of priority in the matter - be it from other countries, or other cities on a localised level - but the lack of political backbone to deliver not only incentives to reduce vehicular traffic, but disincentives also - regardless of popularity.

    “

    https://buttondown.com/edi.bike/archive/edibike-issue-90-28th-apr-25/

    Posted 1 month ago #

  30. chdot
    Admin

    Only tiny area of course, but even so -

    “

    Cycling in City of London rises by more than 50%

    “

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxek18z5eo.amp

    Posted 1 month ago #

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