Dare to think out of the box

Mobility must become sustainable. So at the start of our 21st century a major modal shift was announced: the roads are a thing of the past, everything must be transported via canals and rail. It certainly is a good idea to relieve the roads by means of good public transport and good alternatives by rail. But if we know that the expected growth of transport will be difficult to match at the level of infrastructure, then we should not forget our main mode of transport, and that is still the road.

It is clear by now that if you want economic growth, you will get growth in transport. If our regional governments want Belgium to become the logistics platform of Europe, this will require a free- flowing transport network in every mode of transport. In a country such as Belgium a compromise between quality of life and economy will always need to be found. So if you conceptualise and construct infrastructure, you must think long-term with a multidisciplinary approach. And we must transcend all boundaries: there is a Flemish Institute for Mobility, there exist Walloon initiatives on mobility, there are countless studies done at federal and/or regional or local level. We urgently need to move towards a more global approach and the best way to do that, given that it is politically difficult, is to do it at a research level – let us exchange experiences.

The challenge is that balance, that conflict, between the objective of making Belgium a logistics platform, the crossroads of Europe, and the problems of the environment, quality of life, health, spatial planning, etc... I believe that we urgently need to start thinking more out of the box and really long term. Let me take an example. We have so many airports in Belgium that are all situated very close to urban areas. Why don’t we investigate the possibility of building an airport at sea, on a sandbank? We are busy constructing wind turbines there, why not an airport? Such a project did exist and in the Netherlands the expansion of Schiphol will be on the sea. Imagine: a grand airport on a sandbank. And from there, underground express train connections to London, Brussels or Amsterdam – connections of about half an hour. No more noise at night ... Take Hong Kong as an example. The airport of Hong Kong is now situated on an island 30 km from the mainland. There is a motorway with a few large bridges between different islands which takes you to Hong Kong. And the financing comes from the building sites freed up from the old airport, close to the city. That land is priceless.

Another possibly surprising example of innovative thinking: a road of sugar. A road must be coarse, but also smooth (for driving comfort) and clearly visible. Sugar is ideal – the surface would be rough and hard enough, and clearly visible at night. We only need to find something to stop sugar from dissolving in the rain. But that must be possible. And when we want to demolish the road, we just let it dissolve. Greater sustainability cannot be imagined.

With all of this I only want to illustrate that it is possible to think out of the box about the mobility problem, also in a so-called traditional sector such as road construction. We must dare to transcend the boundaries of our own expertise. If you think only in terms of concrete or asphalt, you are on the wrong track. If a motorway will cost twice as much tomorrow but will be quieter, produce less CO2, require less maintenance, therefore fewer road works, therefore fewer traffic-jams due to road works, then it will be worth it and that is what we now want to work towards.

For sustainable mobility we must also address a totally different parameter, namely transport demand. A shocking example: why do we still accept that shrimps should be caught at Ostend, shelled in Morocco and then returned? It is one of our freedoms and that is the contradiction: Europe has come about precisely to promote the free movement of goods and people. It is therefore very difficult to determine limits. One way is to charge for the external costs of transport, for example through road pricing. But that is not obvious; there are many conflicting opinions about this. Yet it does seem very important to me that we should try to harmonise such systems at a European level. 

The central problem, therefore, is this balance between logistics (our economic future?) as opposed to quality of life and environmental problems. For some this is simply a conflict, it is either the one or the other. Others believe that we can find solutions, that we should manage the balance wisely, via mobility concepts such as co-modality, but also via new technologies. We are definitely taking part in this search for long-term solutions