Skip to main content

Moving in the right direction: promoting sustainable transport in European Mobility Week

European Mobility Week (16-22 September 2012) sees the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) reaffirming its stance that a long-term commitment to invest in public transport is key to reducing congestion in European cities and encouraging the development of sustainable economies. With around 80% of Europeans expected to be living in urban environments by 2020, public transport is essential for ensuring quality of life and delivering green growth. Encouraging a modal shift from private motori
September 10, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
European Mobility Week (16-22 September 2012) sees the 3833 International Association of Public Transport (UITP) reaffirming its stance that a long-term commitment to invest in public transport is key to reducing congestion in European cities and encouraging the development of sustainable economies.

With around 80% of Europeans expected to be living in urban environments by 2020, public transport is essential for ensuring quality of life and delivering green growth.

Encouraging a modal shift from private motorised modes to public transport will unblock gridlocked cities, lower energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Public transport also plays an important socio-economic role, allowing access to education, health services and economic activities, enabling them to function properly whilst providing all social classes with a form of mobility that is affordable, clean and pleasant.

“This year’s European Mobility Week highlights the importance of relieving congestion, improving quality of life and providing sustainable and fluid mobility solutions in our cities,” said UITP Secretary General, Alain Flausch. “We are convinced that public transport, which is both environmentally friendly and socio-economically beneficial, is ideally placed to meet the challenges of increasing urbanisation in the coming years. There are many positive examples around the world and the cities taking part in the European Mobility Week are good examples of the willingness to work towards this objective.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Hyperloop: from sci-fi to transport policy
    April 16, 2020
    The future is here. While it has long looked like something from a sci-fi movie, Graham Anderson investigates a technology whose time might have come.
  • Costing transit is complicated case
    August 19, 2015
    David Crawford welcomes fresh thinking from Canada. Public transit improvements can bring society “significantly more value” than conventional transport models normally indicate, argues Canadian researcher Todd Litman. “Traditional evaluation practices originally developed to assess roadway improvements, and focus primarily on vehicle travel speeds and operating costs. “They do not generally quantify or monetise basic mobility benefits, vehicle ownership and parking cost savings, or efficient land developme
  • Progress of ICT transport research projects
    February 3, 2012
    Juhani Jääskeläinen, head of the ICT for Transport Unit, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission, details the results of Call 4 for research projects in ICT for transport. Since the closure of the call and evaluation process during the summer of last year the European Commission (EC) has been negotiating and signing contracts with projects which were selected from proposals submitted to Call 4 of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) fo
  • Maintaining momentum: learning lessons from the London Olympics
    November 15, 2013
    Japan will not only host this year’s ITS World Congress but has been selected for the 2020 Olympics. So what can Japan, and indeed Brazil, learn from the traffic management for London 2012 - Geoff Hadwick finds out. It was a key moment when Olympic boss Jacques Rogge signed off London 2012, calling the Games “happy and glorious.” Scarred by the logistical disaster of Atlanta 1996 and the last-minute building panic for Athens 2008, Rogge clearly thought London 2012 was an object lesson in how to plan and