Transport Challenges
Transport is one of the key challenges to sustainable development facing Ireland. Transport – the movement of people and goods – is essential to the Irish economy, but current trends pose a complex set of challenges that can be described as a cascade:

Limits to energy supply: Transport is dependent on energy, especially oil. Hydrocarbons are expected to become progressively more expensive and prone to short-term price shocks over the coming decades. Ireland’s heavy dependence on imported energy, especially imported fossil fuels, is projected to rise into the future.

Limits to natural carrying capacity: Even if fossil fuels were abundant and not faced by long-term supply shortages, there are limits to the Earth’s capacity to absorb the transport sector’s emissions. This is already being manifested in stressed ecosystems through pollution or lost habitats, urban and transboundary air pollution, and climate change caused by greenhouse-gas emissions.

Limits to social capital: Even if the environmental impacts of the transport sector can be addressed (e.g. through cleaner-burning fuels, filters, fuel-cell cars), car-based transport in particular carry heavy social costs, e.g. through urban sprawl, health impacts of an increasingly car-dependent population, vulnerability of non-motorists to injury and indirect impacts.

Recent policy measures have attempted to address some or all of these transport-related challenges, but with indifferent results. While other sectors have shown some decoupling of energy use from economic growth, transport has maintained a strong correlation and CO2 emissions have continued increasing as a result. The sector was responsible for 36% of Ireland’s energy related CO2 emissions in 2007, higher than any other sector. A key characteristic that distinguishes energy use in transport is the almost total dependence on oil as a fuel and on import dependency, over 99% in both cases. Nevertheless, transport policy offers an opportunity for addressing a range of societal problems in tandem through a more integrated policy approach.

Policy Framework
The visualisation and realisation of a sustainable transport system at the national level could have a greatly beneficial impact on the economy through reduced pollution and increased quality of life. These concerns are at the heart of the Government’s sustainable transport policy for Ireland called ‘Smarter Travel’. This sets the policy framework under five key strategic goals: (i) to reduce overall travel demand (ii) to maximise the efficiency of the transport network (iii) to reduce reliance on fossil fuels (iv) to reduce transport emissions (v) to improve the accessibility to transport.

The Government has also produced for the first time a ‘National Cycle Policy Framework’ that seeks to make cycling in Ireland more accessible and a much safer activity.

Comhar’s Work

• Comhar SDC reviewed the Options for restructuring the VRT and Motor Tax systems and proposed CO2-differentiated rates that could provide CO2 emissions reductions. Recommendations were made to Government.

• In 2007, Comhar SDC hosted a seminar series on transport. The purpose of the seminars was to examine the potential of policy measures, such as mobility management, modal shift and eco-driving, in order to manage transport environmental impacts and demand. The feedback from the seminars was used to help Comhar SDC formulate policy recommendations to Government, specifically to feed into the Action Plan on Sustainable Transport.