The long road to better mobility

Every day people make hundreds of choices. Some need to be made again each day, others only on occasion. Each day we can choose afresh whether we bake our own bread, or whether we ‘outsource’ it and fetch it from the baker. 

Here we always want the best price/quality ratio. But often our choice is not the ‘optimal’ choice. The reasons for this can vary but include, for example, lack of information, time, personal preference, availability, budget ... This applies to our choices in relation to food, clothes, but also our mobility choices. Where do we work and how do we get there? By bike, car, bus or train? Do we visit distant friends and how do we get there? To move around we very often use the car. According to the new OVG (Travel Survey) for Flanders, we use the car for almost two-thirds of our journeys. It is possible that the car is not always the best choice in terms of price/quality, but the car definitely has a number of characteristics in its favour such as availability at all times of the day for every journey. Public policy has different ways of influencing this choice. To this end it can strike and appease, tax or subsidise. And nowadays it does this a lot. The Belgian state collects 4 billion euro per annum in excise duties on vehicle fuels. The various regions together collect 1.8 billion euro per annum in road taxes. Of this 1.17 billion euro is for Flanders. On the other hand the Flemish region has subsidised De Lijn (the tram & bus operator) to the tune of approximately one billion euro per annum. As a result the actual cost price per passenger is kept down and using public transport becomes more attractive. Currently the cost price ratio of De Lijn is less than 14%. In other words, the average user pays just 14% of the cost price of a journey. All our choices combined mean that about 125 billion passenger kilometres (2005) and about 39 billion ton-kilometres are travelled in Belgium each year. By 2030 the Federal Planning Bureau expects growth of 30% in passenger transport and growth of about 60% in goods transport. This growth in passenger and goods transport will have to be absorbed by our transport system. It is therefore of crucial importance to ensure that everybody has access to the right information at the right time and that public policy “strikes and appeases” optimally. Spacial planning is very important in this. Good spacial planning can optimise the number of journeys and the distance covered. As far as that is concerned we have unfortunately inherited a weighty legacy that we cannot simply change overnight. But the organisation of transport by road, rail and inland shipping will also need to become more efficient so that everyone and everything can reach their destination on time…. Why the enormous growth in passenger transport? The greater part of the growth comes from “leisure” travel. Today too only one in five journeys is for home-to-work or business purposes. We are experiencing a strong individualisation of our society which makes us less inclined to travel collectively. Moreover, by 2030 we will have a large wealthy group of pensioners with drivers’ licences. All too often it is commercial vehicles that are identified as the culprits responsible for congestion and pressure on the environment. We should however not lose sight of the fact that only six per cent of our passenger vehicles are registered as lease vehicles by companies. A recent study produced a number of remarkable results. Firstly it was shown that if people no longer had a company car 26% of them would no longer go to work by car. The majority of these (10-17%) would go by train, the rest by bike or car pool, one or two by bus, by tram or on foot. The most important reasons for not using public transport to go to work appeared to be the inadequacy of the public transport network and the travel time. From the questions it also appeared that company cars drive more kilometres per year than private cars. Here it is important to distinguish between three different categories of “company car owners”: the representatives, the commuters and the enjoyers. The representatives drive the most kilometres per year, most of it for business (75%), the commuters mostly for home-to-work (64%) and the enjoyers mostly for private journeys (50%). Remarkably, however, the main reason for the higher number of kilometres was business journeys and not using public transport for home-to-work journeys. As far as private travel was concerned the researchers noticed little difference in the number of kilometres with private car owners. All this indicates that a policy change in respect of company cars should be handled carefully. Why the enormous growth in goods transport? Again this is related to choices. Choices that are influenced world-wide. Today we live in a world economy that allows us to produce goods where the price/quality is the “best”. It would take us too long to explore this more deeply, but it does give a first impression why goods are moving around the world. Those goods for which we are the “best” are manufactured here. Those goods which we find the “best” are brought here. Trucks, ships, trains and aeroplanes are simply means to bring goods to consumers. Because of our unique position in Western Europe, Belgium is ideally situated to fulfil a logistics function or to further distribute the goods which enter Europe via the harbours. In addition we have highly skilled personnel and knowledge to process these optimally. The logistics sector covers 8% of employment and Belgian GDP annually. So why should we invest more in our logistical location if this means that we will only get more congestion? In the area of passenger transport it is expected that leisure travel will be the predominant reason for growth. Moreover only 8% of the vehicles in the traffic jams are trucks (+3.5 ton). Can trucks not avoid traffic jams? If they could, they would. But trucks must take account of loading times, working hours, window periods, ... which mean that they have to be somewhere at a specific time. The cost of being stuck in a traffic jam for one hour is approximately 3 euro per ton. For a 32-ton truck it therefore costs 96 euro to be in a traffic jam for one hour. This takes into account different aspects, such as the wage of a driver, the cost of a truck, etc. For a passenger vehicle used for business travel it costs almost 24 euro per hour and for home-to-work travel 8.5 euro per hour. It is obvious that companies would prefer their trucks and employees to be in traffic jams as little as possible ... Isn’t it possible to have fewer trucks or passenger vehicles on the road? Probably yes. But much would have to change. Due to lack of information, in respect of passenger as well as goods transport, it is currently not known which goods and persons could be transported together. It would be ideal if we knew at all times who is moving what, when, where to, and to put these (together) on the “best” mode of transport. We need a sort of Big Brother. With this we would be able to reduce the number of vehicles on the road for people as well as goods. In terms of people, of course, the question is whether we really want this and how we can take personal preference into account. But matching the various goods is also not that obvious. Tubs of ice-cream that have to go from Antwerp to Brussels can hardly be taken along by the tipper truck that just transported sand from Brussels to Antwerp. And then we are not even taking into account the times when they are due at their destinations. But as far as goods are concerned we see growing consensus towards combined transportation of goods in order to reduce the costs and the pressure on the environment. It’s lucky that goods have not yet developed any personal preference, ... It is clear that the road to better mobility and logistics is still long and not very easy.