Transport has a major role in advanced economies in the movement of people and goods, in maintaining standards of living and in improving the quality of life. However, it is also a major consumer of non-renewable sources of energy and is responsible for much of the growth in pollution emissions. These two conflicting views, together with congestion and delay, health effects and accidents, have raised transport as one of the main unresolved problems facing decision makers at the end of the 20th century. This paper examines the patterns of energy use in transport and how they have changed over the last two decades. It then establishes the links between urban form and energy consumption in the transport sector. This has formed the basis of a series of major research projects in the U.K. and elsewhere. The analysis focuses on settlement size, density and other physical factors, but also develops measures of the economic base and social structure of the city. All these factors seem important in determining levels of energy use in transport. It is concluded that although energy efficiency in all forms of transport is increasing, this is more than outweighted by the growth in traffic. Energy use in transport is likely to continue to increase and it will be difficult to meet the targets set at the 1992 Rio Summit. Moreover, the tendency to live at lower densities, to value open space and a higher quality of life, to commute long distances, to establish complex activity patterns, all means that it is very difficult to change these trends. As cities themselves become more dispersed and looser agglomerations, the prime concern of planners should be to make cities more attractive places in which to live. That is the only way to maintain the city in the next century and transport inefficiency may be one of the costs of achieving that objective. (Author/publisher)
Abstract