A recent EPA Report has highlighted how policy problems are interconnected, and need a whole-of-government response By Tadhg O’Mahony Transport and the environment are in the air. Recent weeks have brought debates on CETA and the evolving Climate Bill, and on radical moves by local authorities to facilitate pedestrians and cyclists. Far deeper EU targets have been set for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, 55% by 2030, and a new EU mobility strategy. The EPA produced a report, Ireland’s Environment: An Integrated Assessment 2020. Published every four years, the report is “not optimistic”, and shines a new light on the transport sector in Ireland. Transport is our second-highest carbon-emitter, and emissions continue to grow, despite the urgent need to rapidly reduce its footprint. Globally, transport is a major carbon emitter. It is associated with significantdeath, injury and disease, from air pollution and road traffic accidents, and imposes major costs on economies through traffic congestion. In Ireland, many of these problems are even more pronounced. Our carbon emissions, per capita, are the fourth highest in the EU, while our cities rank amongst the most congested in the world, according to data collected by INRIX and TomTom. Six years on from Ireland’s original Low-Carbon Development Act 2015, and after declaring a ‘climate emergency’ in 2019, Ireland still has no plan to reduce emissions to 2050, and transport is a chief area for concern. As the pressure for change builds, understanding how Ireland has developed these systemic problems is essential to moving forward. Our History in Transport, and how we Became ‘Locked-In’ The total number of vehicles on our national roads, squeezing into our towns and cities, is now heading towards three million, and the private car has come to dominate travel in Ireland. According to the latest survey from the CSO, almost 80 per cent of journeys are made by private motorised forms, even dominating the shorter journeys of up to two kilometres. “National energy and emissions modelling studies have consistently focused on changing vehicles, fuels and behaviour – reinforcing the dominance of the private car and road freight, pushing more beneficial systems change out of policy discussion” The Irish transport system was very different a century ago, at the time of Independence. Dominated by sustainable modes, an extensive rail network served communities throughout the country, from the Hills of Donegal to the Dingle peninsula. Much of our national rail network was dismantled over the course of the last century. This coincided with the rise of the private car, and glossy industry advertising promising ‘freedom’.The car was marketed as a potent status symbol, and signifier of ‘success’, and it was adopted in ever greater numbers as the expression of a prosperous lifestyle. Fast forward to the 1980s, and the vision of successive Irish governments to grow the economy, develop the regions and drawdown European funding, was for major investments in roads, and a new motorway network. Incomparison, public transport largely stagnated, rail freight became almost non-existent, and walking and cycling were reduced to more nicheactivities than sensible mobility options. We were diverging substantially from our European neighbours. At the same time, laissez faire spatialplanning allowed proliferation of one-off housing in the countryside, and low-density suburban and commuter developments. This ‘urban sprawl’renders alternatives to the private car far more difficult to implement. Our towns and cities were increasingly designed, car-first, human-second,with wide roads and narrow paths making our public realm more unsafe for vulnerable users and less comfortable for everyone. Our physical settlement and infrastructure were becoming deeply set. From the mid-1990s, policy, investment, market and lifestyle all dictated that we would funnel our growing economy and population into the private car. When all of these factors line-up it is called ‘lock-in’. Described by global sustainability expert Gregory Unruh, and later platformed by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘carbon lock-in’ becomes both inevitable and difficult to escape, blocking off options for more beneficial outcomes. Successive spatial, transport and emissions policies came and went, and all failed. The focus, largely fromengineering and economics, was on improving technology, through efficiency, and implementing a carbon tax. This narrative, andthe measures it encouraged, were far too weak to overcome lock-in. Throughout the ‘boom years’ transport carbon emissions continuedtheir inexorable rise. The financial crisis and recession, in the late noughties, were a blip in the long-term trend of increasing vehiclenumbers and burgeoning emissions. An Appetite for Change, but Deep Structural Problems Block our Progress In recent years, the Citizens Assembly and an Oireachtas Committee have demonstrated that there is significant public and political appetiteto change course. The main policy response, the government’s 2019 Climate Action Plan, had the laudable goal to bring a new seriousness to tackling emissions, to pursue our 2030 targets, and “put the country on a trajectory to net zero by 2050”. Yet two critical flaws had already undermined the Plan’s approach to transport, and these were baked-in from its inception. The plan did not address the long-term, to at least 2050: a key precondition documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard of scientific knowledge on the topic. Even more problematic, the most important decisions had already been taken, in the much heralded ‘Project Ireland 2040’. This establisheda settlement plan up to the year 2040, known as the ‘National Planning Framework’, and an infrastructure investment plan to 2030. It aimedfor 40 per cent of new housing development to be “within or close to built-up areas”, and for the addition of 500,000 active and public transportjourneys per day. The targets are at the lower-end of ambition – compromises that could evade political challenges, but insufficient to overcome lock-in and support transition. Project Ireland was not subject to analysis of the long-term emissions implications, of the kind that couldprovoke reflection on alternative paths. As the Climate Action Plan was developed, it became clear that Project Ireland would not help in achieving 2030’s emissions targets, let alone2050’s. In a sign of desperation, the Plan continually ramped up the number of electric … Continue reading Our Congested Transport System Needs an Era-Defining Reset, Now