FRIDAY, FEB 3, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 4-15
Sustainable Transport Options
Transport is one the most difficult areas in which to lower the carbon footprint. We are so used to the effectiveness of fossil fuels to provide our mobile energy. We have created a globalized economic system that externalizes the environmental, social and health damage caused by our wasteful transport systems, while being directly supported by subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and cheap transport fuels. In the economic design dimension of this course we will take a closer look at these externalities and subsidies.
At this point we should simply remember that many of the goods we are using do not need to come from quite so far away, and if transport would not be subsidised and all the costs and damages created by this system would be included in the final price of imported products – in short if we actually had a free and fair market – we would rely on regional production for regional consumption much more than we do today. In short, just like we should start with energy conservation (“nega-watts”) when we try to reduce the impact of our energy systems, we should start with transport avoidance and more localized and regionalised supply chains if we want to create a more sustainable transport system.
For a designer focussed on the scale of sustainable community or ecovillage design, some basic guidelines apply:
- Minimise the need for transport within the ecovillage and the bioregion, which means localisation of activities and strengthening internal links.
- Encourage bicycles – perhaps electric bicycles for longer journeys.
- If biofuel crops are local, consider pressing suitable oils, and ensure that the production of bio-fuels does not deplete soils or compete with the regional capacity to provide a lot of its own food.
- If possible work with others in your community to create a community car pool (car sharing system) and explore whether enough people share certain transport routes enough to create public transport services or community buses to service that need.
- Adopt new technologies, as they become viable: the transport systems of the future are likely to evolve from today’s experiments with electric, compressed air and hydrogen fuel cell, and sustainable biofuel technologies.
The wide and important topic of sustainable transport options cannot be given justice within the constraints of this course. Breakthrough technologies are being developed in the areas of hydrogen fuel cells as well as in battery improvements and electric vehicle design. The debate whether future transport systems should be based on hydrogen or electric vehicles is still polarised between advocates of both systems, who each have convincing arguments in their favour. What is clear is that a shift towards improved public transport systems (like the rapid urban transport systems of South America for example) and technologies that allow us to share mobility with other users (like MIT’s mobility on demand) will all be part of the redesign of our transport systems.
Driverless cars, new types of collaborative use of transport infrastructures like car-sharing, Uber, or driverless cars are all likely candidates for being important elements of the sustainable transport infrastructures of the future.
Module 4, lesson 16
