by Stephen Pollard, hybrid car specialist and owner of The Clean Green Car Company For years, we have been encouraged to choose “sustainable transport” -- carpool, ride a bike, walk, use public transport -- for the sake of future generations. Now, thanks to Internet technology, we are being asked to consider working and shopping from home to further reduce our environmental transport footprint. And yet, over this same time, motorways have been widened and extended, suburbs have sprawled over greater distances, neighbourhood shopping has given way to the long drive out to the malls and large, heavy SUVs have become status cars in urban areas where their four-wheel-driveability is completely unnecessary. Do we need any further proof of how addicted we are to our cars? The reality for most of us is that we have to get around. We also want to get directly to where we want to go, whenever we want, without having to wait for anyone. Petrol consumption and noxious emissions are an afterthought, if they are thought about at all. If anything, the idea of “sustainable transport” just makes us think guiltily of our last flight overseas or our daily drive to take the kids to and from school, but it is not stopping us from doing these things. But slowly this is changing, in the face of recent and ongoing petrol price rises and ever increasing public environmental awareness. With “sustainability” the hot word of this generation, government policies are taking shape which will affect the way we live, work and drive. The future Where I live, in New Zealand, the government’s plans to make the transport sector sustainable are ambitious, and it will be interesting to see how the general public and the business sector take up the challenges the final plan will present. One aspect of the government’s sustainable transport plan that intrigues me is the way it anticipates a future in which “users will face the full costs [of transport], including the cost of emissions.” This will hit us all very hard, not only at the pump. When we begin paying the real cost of our reliance on petrol, the prices of everything we consume will jump – and our wages are unlikely to leap up to match. The spectre of this is beginning to influence behaviour. Interest in hybrids, new diesel vehicles and other fuel-efficient cars is on the rise, as evidenced directly by the increasing number of them on our roads. Even the government has made the bold statement that it wants New Zealand to be among the first countries to widely deploy electric vehicles and is considering ways to remove barriers to their ownership. Given our attachment to private vehicles, and assuming electric cars will start being produced over the next few years then this may be one of the government’s more realistic sustainable transport goals. The current situation However serious we become about sustainable transport, personally or as a nation, it will take years to put the infrastructure in place that makes sustainable choices available and attractive. For example:

• We can only increase our use of public transport when it really gets us where we want to go – on time and more cheaply than driving.
• Goods will only be transported by sea and rail when it is competitive – both in terms of cost and speed – to do so.

In addition, it might be decades before we have the fuel technology, lightweight materials and fuel-efficient trains that can substantially reduce vehicle emissions. We don’t have to wait for these new and efficient alternatives to be fully integrated into our lives and economies to reduce petrol consumption. At the moment, hybrid vehicles, which cut petrol consumption by 50% and slash emissions by up to 90%, are the most promising candidate for immediate petrol and emissions reductions. Other alternatives include new diesel and LPG technologies. Today’s diesels can reduce fuel consumption by 30% and LPG vehicles cut noxious emissions by 10%. The choices are out there. But, ultimately, as Wikipedia’s definition of sustainable transport says: “...sustainable transportation mainly refers to human behavior, not to technology.” It takes a long time to change behaviour. Until external forces (petrol prices, climate change, scarcity of supply, cost of goods) force us to change, solutions that enable people to reduce their petrol consumption and emissions without a drastic change in behaviour will have the greatest environmental impact.