Safer arterial roads in Latin America: lessons from Bogotá, Fortaleza and Mexico City

International Transport Forum All Transport ,

Three Latin American cities provide effective road safety lessons using a holistic management approach to a culture hooked on speed.

Bogotá permanently reduced maximum speed limits from 60 to 50 km/h in May 2020 | Source: Secretaría de Movilidad de Bogotá

Road safety is a growing concern in cities aiming to become more liveable. Where people feel unsafe, policies to promote walking and cycling will be handicapped, and deliver far less than their potential. Reducing crash risks thus not only saves lives, it also unlocks sustainable forms of transport that cut pollution, fight congestion and improve the physical and mental health of citizens. Cities all around the world have committed to deliver safer streets. Many have taken a leadership role in the battle for road safety. Much can be learnt from cities that have achieved large reductions in traffic fatalities, as revealed in this ITF report. The publication details seven case studies of cities implementing data-driven policies that inspire best practices in urban road safety.

In Latin America, the case studies provide insights into how to address high road mortality rates (PDF) in the context of rising motorisation and a culture hooked on speed. Lessons from Bogotá, Fortaleza and Mexico City are the key to delivering safer arterial roads. In all three cities, streets with a mix of vulnerable road users and motor vehicle traffic were limited to 30 km/h in accordance with international guidelines, while arterial roads were limited to 50 km/h. Strategies to improve speed limit enforcement, including introduction of new speed control systems, were also part of the holistic speed management approach taken in these cities.

Safe speed limits on Bogotá’s most dangerous roads

In 2016, the administration in Bogotá adopted a ‘Vision Zero’ approach as the roadmap for their road safety strategy. From the adoption of a speed management programme, the city targeted arterial roads for speed reduction and installation of speed cameras. In 2017, these corridors accounted for three out of four traffic deaths.

The speed reduction programme on arterial roads first targeted the five corridors with the highest casualty rates. It tested the benefits and then disseminated results via social media before the expansion to other roads. Headlines included the number of lives saved since implementation and days without recording a death. The demonstrated reduction in lives lost convinced many of the administration’s strongest critics to accept the speed management programme as effective.

Positive results led to the reduction of speed limits on another set of five corridors at the beginning of 2019. The arterial roads that received treatment under the programme showed a decrease of 21% in traffic fatalities compared to the average for the three years 2015-2018, corresponding to 46 lives saved. Data from speed cameras also indicated improvement in compliance, with lower excess speeds although the proportion of vehicles exceeding limits, old and new, was unchanged at around 20%.

Arterial roads selected for new speed limit of 50km/h in 2018 and 2019 in Bogotá:

Source: Secretaría de Movilidad de BogotáSource: Secretaría de Movilidad de Bogotá

Plans for the programme to cover the entire arterial road network of Bogotá were accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis. The city announced a permanent reduction of the maximum general speed limit for all roads from 60 km/h to 50 km/h in May 2020. Intended to clear hospitals of traffic injury victims during the peak of the pandemic, the measure also aimed to protect the lives of citizens in the long term. 92 speed cameras placed at 40 points in the city will monitor speeding and issue automatic sanctions to offenders.

Disrupting the high-speed culture in Fortaleza

Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Fortaleza

Fortaleza is one of the rare places in the world that achieved the United Nations’ target of cutting traffic fatalities by half during the Decade of Action for road safety. The city went from a rate of 14.9 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants in 2010 to 7.4 in 2019. A successful strategy targeted the culture of speeding in Fortaleza through street transformations. Bike lane and dedicated bus lane networks were both expanded. Traffic calming measures were implemented in specific areas, with the redesign of pedestrian crossings, modernisation of the traffic light system, and speed limit reduction on arterial roads.

The city followed a similar approach to Bogotá in securing public support and winning over opposition. Each intervention was first tested on pilot projects, with positive outcomes publicised extensively. A first experience targeted Fortaleza’s most dangerous arterial road, the Avenida Leste-Oeste. Framed as an infrastructure improvement, this pilot proposed to complement the speed reduction with a redesign of the avenue. The new limit of 50 km/h accompanied new traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, lighting, bike lanes, and bus lanes. Narrower lanes and more frequent stop lights were also used to nudge drivers towards compliance with the new speed limit.

Redesigned Leste-Oeste avenue with safer speed limit of 50km/h:

Source: Prefeitura Municap de Fortaleza

The success on the Avenida Leste-Oeste was measurable: collisions involving motorised vehicles and pedestrians decreased by 63%. Data from the city’s camera enforcement system also revealed a higher rate of compliance. The city applied a tolerance period without penalties to give drivers the time to adapt: the police notified drivers of infractions but gave no sanction to people driving between 50 km/h and 60 km/h during the first six months. Positive results from this pilot project resulted in a decision to expand the same treatment to another four avenues. Fortaleza is now working on a Road Safety Plan for the next 10 years to scale up interventions and consolidate a Safe System approach (PDF) to the whole of the city.

Innovative speed control systems in Mexico City     

Source: SEMOVI Mexico city

In Mexico City, hostility to traffic surveillance and control mechanisms, in particular speed cameras, pushed local authorities to rethink their speed control system. The city shifted from Fotomultas (automatic fines) to Fotocívicas, a new system that replaced monetary fines with civic sanctions. Traffic penalties in Mexico City are now educational and correspond to the number of infractions perpetrated by the driver. They range from online courses, to awareness workshops, and up to 10 hours of community work.

The new system aims at improving driver behaviour and increasing compliance with speed limits. To curb speeding, Fotocívicas considers speed violations of more than 40% above the limit as more serious. Such infractions correspond to five penalty points, in contrast to one-point penalties for other violations registered by red light and speed cameras. The programme also relocated the surveillance technology to road sections and intersections with a higher incidence of traffic collisions and speeding.

An online course is one of civic sanctions from the new Fotocívicas system:

Source: SEMOVI Mexico City

Early results from the new system indicate improvements in the compliance with speed limits. Fotocívicas identified a reduction of almost 60% in the average speed of the vehicles exceeding the limit of 50 km/h on urban roads. The results also reveal a lower repeat offence rate: one out of three sanctioned drivers violated traffic rules on more than one occasion, in contrast with one out of two for the same period under the old system.

A positive repercussion of the awareness workshops among the population incited Mexico City to plan an expansion of this educational programme towards all drivers. As a first step, the administration selected motorcyclists engaged in commercial activities to be the first road user group to attend the workshops. Currently, one out of two crashes in Mexico City involve a motorcyclist.

Bogotá, Fortaleza and Mexico City are members of the ITF’s Safer City Streets network, which includes more than 40 cities across the globe. Together in the network, cities share data and draw lessons from their various approaches to urban road safety policy. To join the network, contact the ITF secretariat: alexandre.santacreu@itf-oecd.org

Why Container Shipping is a Lot Like Farming

International Transport Forum Maritime, Uncategorized

Transporting massive amounts of containers across the high seas has much in common with the business of rearing dairy cows or growing wheat – and alternative thinking about agriculture holds lessons for the maritime industry.

By Olaf Merk

Remorkers carrying containers to ships in Hong Kong harbour,

I have not always worked on maritime transport. One of my first assignments at the OECD was to conduct a Rural Policy Review of the Netherlands. This is how I met Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, professor at the agricultural university of Wageningen. I mention this because I think that his insights on agriculture are very relevant for container shipping. I will summarise them here briefly.

Van der Ploeg’s analysis of business models in agriculture goes against the received wisdom that economies of scale are always desirable. Over the past decades, farms have grown bigger through consolidation of land, driven by a race for market shares via cost reduction. This has required big investments in expensive equipment and huge loans to finance these.

In the process, agriculture and the local environment have become decoupled. The farmer’s main inputs (machines, seeds) are bought abroad. Most of the work has become automated. Agricultural land has turned into a space exclusively dedicated to production – it is no longer a multi-functional area where work and leisure, production and consumption can be combined.

Van der Ploeg’s merit lies in his detailed calculations showing that smaller but more diversified firms are more productive and profitable. They are less indebted, less dependent on intermediaries and less affected by price volatility, because they have developed economies of scope. And they provide more added value, jobs and biodiversity for the local community.

A container terminal seen from above

Striking similarities

Container shipping has followed a course strikingly similar to agriculture. The dominant idea: more economies of scale. The way to achieve it: cost reductions, ever larger ships and industry consolidation. The result: the large majority of the goods we consume are now moved by a handful of very large global shipping companies that source their workforce from developing countries and register their ships in tax havens. These companies have accumulated as much debt as a mid-size country they emit as much CO2 as a big country and have difficulties to be profitable except in the most bullish of times.

Container ports follow the same pattern. Completely sealed off from their surrounding communities, highly specialised, continuously trying to catch up with ever-larger ships, today’s container terminals leave no room for the intermingling that once gave port cities their charm.

In both agriculture and container shipping, policies – notably those of the European Union – are designed to pursue economies of scale. In agriculture the tool was subsidies; container shipping’s equivalent is the tonnage tax. Both sectors have special regimes that make them hybrids: market-driven sectors in name, but dependent on public support in practice.

In both, creating local synergies is an afterthought that goes by the name of rural development policies in one case and maritime cluster development in the other. In both sectoral policies, building large firms is more important than guaranteeing competition. In both cases, policy reform has become very difficult considering sunk investments, path dependency and regulatory capture by corporate lobbyists.

Cargo ship entering Singapore harbour, one of the busiest ports in the world.

Where the parallel ends

There are of course differences. Probably the most important is the extent of what economists would call the symmetry between buyers and sellers. Farmers buy from very large companies (seeds, pesticides) and sell to very large companies (food industry and retailers). In this constellation, company size could be a countervailing force to the monopoly power of buyers and sellers: larger farms – or cooperatives of farms – might better able to negotiate with the large multi-national companies in seed production, the food industry and supermarket chains.

In container shipping, liner companies buy from fragmented suppliers (shipyards, ports and port service providers) and sell to fragmented buyers (the companies that import and export), so it is the shipping company itself that is the major source of monopoly power. 

There is of course another major difference: agriculture is vital, in the true sense of the word. Container shipping is essential to the extent that global trade is. With many world leaders pleading for more regional sourcing, long-range containerised transport might be less inevitable than thought – which opens the perspective for possible fundamental change.

A policy choice

Professor Van der Ploeg proposes an alternative to the large-scale industrialised agriculture: smaller, more localised, quickly adapting to demands of clients. It is time to imagine similar alternative perspectives for container shipping, if only because that will make shipping more resilient.

The first step in sketching potential new futures would be to realise that there is nothing self-evident or inevitable about the strategy of economies of scale. It has been stimulated by public policies – and these policies can change.

Olaf Merk is ports and shipping expert at the International Transport Forum. He is the (co-) author of The Impact of Alliances in Container Shipping (2018) andContainer Shipping in Europe: Data for the Evaluation of the EU Consortia Block Exemption Regulation (I2019). Views are are his own.

Put Women In The Driver’s Seat

International Transport Forum Uncategorized , , ,

If you are looking for a user-friendly, safe and accessible mobility system, involve female transport users and workers.

By Emma Latham-Jones

Every step made to improve the experience of women in transport is a win for everyone. When policy makers address gender issues in transport, they increase accessibility for all. What this means is taking a user-centric approach: every single transport user is the focus. We need to rethink transport policies that are biased against certain users, especially vulnerable citizens: children, pregnant women, disabled people, those from poorer backgrounds – they all need to be at the heart of transport policy decision making.

To do that, it is important to look at the data. The evidence should inform transport policies to ensure they reflect real-life situations and solve real-world problems. Rich evidence shows that gender is a significant determinant for the choice of transport modes. Women’s travel habits tend to be more multifaceted than those of men: they tend to take more frequent, mostly short trips; they use different services than men, and at different times of the day.

Women’s trips also more often involve children. To make transport inclusive, we cannot only serve those who make few, direct trips at set times and normally alone. Transport needs to work for everyone. When it does, it has an incredible ability to empower citizens.

Female leadership

Here at the International Transport Forum, we celebrate women who work across the sector and work to amplify women’s voices and visions for improved transport for all. The ITF appreciates the importance of diversity for the quality and value of our transport systems, and we know that women can be powerful agents of change. That is why we have a broad  range of work on Gender in Transport: from consultations on (and with) women in transport, via conferences on how to attract more females to the transport sector, to reports on how to ‘Plan and Design Transport Systems That Will Ensure Safe Travel for Women’.

Female leadership is of critical importance to increase representation of women in the transport sector. At the ITF, we are proud that three members of our staff – Mary Crass, Sharon Masterson and Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli – have been honoured as “Remarkable Women in Transport” by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initative (TUMI); testament to our commitment advance the mainstreaming of gender perspectives in transport, together with our partners in governments, international organisations, academia and the private sector.

“The transport sector needs more gender diversity”, say argues Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli, who is Manager of Summit Preparation at the ITF. “One of the most effective way to motivate women to make themselves heard and felt in transport is to tell stories about inspiring women who thrive in the sector.”

Outstanding female researchers

Women already achieve great things on the frontlines of transport, as bus drivers, aircraft pilots, logistics planners, and so on. But they play an equally as important role as researchers, academics and thinkers. When French transport scientist Anne de Bortoli won the ITF’s Young Researcher of the Year Award 2020, with a groundbreaking study on the environmental impact of shared e-scooters in cities, she was only the latest female success story in a long history of female excellence in transport research.

2013 Young Researcher of the Year, Laura Schewel from the United States, won the Award with a fascinating analysis of the history and policies of moving retail goods. Today, Laura is the CEO of Streetlight Data, a start-up that provides transport and urban planners the with an easy and affordable way to incorporate data on mobility behaviour into important decisions – for instance how citizens are using roads, bike lanes and sidewalks. Last year, Schewel’s company created the first ever bike and pedestrian metrics for the urban transport industry. The MIT Technology Review named her one of its “35 Innovators Under 35” in 2013.

Laura Schewel receiving the Young Researcher of the Year Award at the ITF Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany, in May 2013

Women researchers are also making major contributions to better understanding the link between transport and climate change. In 2015, Dr Nihan Akyelken from Turkey won the ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award for developing a conceptual framework for the governance of sustainable freight transport, which the jury honoured for its’ originality and policy relevance. Today, Nihan is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, where she is teaching students in the Masters and Doctoral programmes in Sustainable Urban Development, she helps to form the next generation of innovative transport leaders, many of them women. Her forthcoming book is, appropriately, titled “Women, Work and Mobilities”.

This year’s award winner Anne der Bortoli also has a clear take on gender and transport: “Women are generally under-represented in expert panels, academia, PhD programs, and industrial leading positions higher education. This is particularly noticeable in some STEM subjects, to the point that it’s almost jarring, she says. “Yet women have proven time and again that we can overcome barriers and smash glass ceilings, and this is exactly what we must do in order to see long-lasting positive change.

We must be confident, we must challenge discrimination, and we must take action for what moves us. Women need a large variety of role models. I urge all female researchers who work in transport-related fields to apply for the next ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award. Why? Because every time you give yourself a chance to win, you’ve made a major step towards gender equality.”

2929 Young Researcher of the Year Award, Anne de Bortoli

Emma Latham-Jones is a Young Associate at the International Transport Forum. You can read more about the 2020 ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award, Anne de Bortoli’s research, and find the recording of the ceremony here.

Scooting Around: Are Shared E-Scooters Good Or Bad For The Environment?

International Transport Forum Uncategorized , , , , , ,

The shared e-scooters floating around Paris may have emitted 12 000 tonnes of additional greenhouse gases over the course of one year, according to a new study. Are the popular micro-vehicles good fun, but not good for the climate?

by Anne de Bortoli

The sudden arrival of massive numbers of shared electric scooters in many cities around the world since 2017 has triggered considerable resentment from other users of our urban space. The skepticism is shared by governments and local authorities – some of whom have banned e-scooters outright, as is the case in London and many university campuses in the United States.

Others have targeted e-scooters with specific regulations. France added a new section to the Code de la route that covers motorised micro-vehicles. The city of Paris will allow only three selected companies to operate in the city, which will be partly chosen on environmental criteria.

But assessing the hoped-for environmental benefits of e-scooters turned out to be a headache for public authorities. The first scientific assessment was not published until the summer of 2019 and was too narrow to draw general conclusions about their environmental effect: it only estimated the environmental impact of using a free-floating e-scooter over an average of one kilometre in US cities.

Change to the system

Yet e-scooters are disrupting the long-established patterns of urban mobility and should not be looked at in isolation. They are not just something additional, they are bringing real change to the system: by replacing trips with cars, bicycles or on foot, but also by inducing people to take an e-scooter when previously they would not have bothered to move.

The environmental question, therefore, should be addressed in these terms: have shared e-scooters reduced the overall environmental impact of human mobility so far? If the answer is yes, how can we exploit these benefits even further? If it is no, should there be any room for e-scooters in a sustainable mobility system?

What’s in a lifetime?

At the University of Patras, we took up the challenge. Using a cutting-edge method developed in-house, we were able to calculate how CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions for the entire mobility system of Paris over a whole year were affected by the usage of shared e-scooters

The model reflects how people switch from other transport options to shared e-scooters as well as the new trips these trigger, information that was gleaned from a dedicated survey. It also uses a so-called life cycle assessment, which takes account not only of direct emissions during operation but the entirety of emissions over the life cycle of the elements that make up the transport system, including infrastructure and vehicles.

This is crucial. The operation of shared vehicles is comparatively energy efficient, and much of the environmental impact stems from manufacturing, maintenance, and disposal. The model also anticipates changes that are likely to occur in relevant industries – for instance a change in the carbon intensity of the electricity consumed – to calculate environmental performance.

In the (carbon) balance

The result of the modelling exercise was perhaps unexpected: Parisian e-scooters (shared ones, that is) generated 12 000 tonnes of additional greenhouse gases in the city over one year ─ that is equivalent to the annual emissions produced by a French town of 15 000 inhabitants.

Three reasons lie behind this negative carbon balance.

First, the production of e-scooters is not very environmentally-friendly. Production accounts for a full third of the Parisian e-scooters’ marginal environmental impact, that is to say of the absolute values of the GHG savings and extra-emissions due to shared e-scooters. This is notably due to the carbon-intensive production of the aluminum used for the vehicle frame and because of the lithium-ion battery.

Second, servicing the e-scooters causes considerable emissions. Standard vans with internal combustion engines are used to collect the e-scooters, charge them and then drop them again across the city. This support also makes up one third of the Parisian e-scooters’ marginal emissions due to shared e-scooters.

Finally, e-scooter trips often replace low-carbon trips. This is due to 60% of modal shifts coming from massive electrified public transport – the Metro, the RER light trains, the trams, 13% from walking, and 9% from cycling. These transport modes present a lower carbon footprint than the shared e-scooter: respectively 8, 9, 20, 2 and 36 gCO2eq per passenger-kilometre traveled, compared to 108 g for the e-scooter.

Strike ‘em?

So should e-scooters be struck from the list of solutions for green mobility? In fact, things are not quite that simple. Their environmental impact depends on three factors: firstly, their entire life cycle emissions (and how operators manage these), the specific mobility patterns of the cities in which they operate (and the shares of transport modes e-scooters replace); and, finally, the carbon intensity of the electricity they consume.

The carbon footprint for a shared e-scooter roaming Paris is 50 grams of CO2eq per kilometre, if servicing impacts are excluded – which is about as much as that of a shared bicycle. And if the e-scooter’s lifetime mileage increases to 5 200 kilometres instead of 3 750 (our base case scenario in the model), the emissions fall to 30 gCO2eq per kilometre traveled: in Paris, this is one quarter of a diesel bus, one seventh of a private car, and one tenth of a taxi’s emissions per passenger-kilometre traveled.

Operators thus have their work cut out: they need to simultaneously green manufacture of e-scooters, improve their durability and recyclability, and drastically enhance their servicing process. In the case of Paris, the last point is necessary to get a positive impact of the shared e-scooters.

Each city has a unique mobility system with specific environmental impacts and different user behaviors, and these factors shape the impact e-scooters have on the overall system. The results of our analysis thus cannot be simply transferred to other cities, and even less to other countries. But  an extra analysis we did on the impact of the electricity carbon intensity does suggest that, beyond the case of Paris or similar cities, shared e-scooters have a good potential to make urban mobility greener, once the three main factors that make their current carbon balance negative – at least in Paris – have been addressed. Whether that promise materialises in different contexts will need to be examined in well-tailored, case-by-case studies.

Watch the life cycle

What are our conclusions and recommendations? First, the environmental performance of transport options must be assessed for the complete life cycle to ensure shared vehicles are really green(er). Conventional wisdom assumes that using more shared vehicles reduces the environmental footprint, but our somewhat counter-intuitive results show that servicing and shorter lifespans can in fact lead to higher overall emissions.

Secondly, proper assessments of transport modes needs (good) data. Operators should therefore be required, as a licensing condition, to share their data with the public authorities ─ vehicle components and energy consumption, as well as statistics on servicing, lifetime mileage, maintenance schemes and recycling. For our study, we contacted the thirteen e-scooter operators in Paris in the summer of 2019 ─ only one answered, and finally did not share any data.

Finally, e-scooters and other micro-vehicles have a role to play in a green mobility system ─ even  where their eco-balance is less good than other modes. E-scooters can help overcome the first/last mile problem that keeps many people from using public transport because the closest metro station is too far to walk to.

The availability of shared e-scooters can also trigger a ripple effect: the experience could nudge people to buy their own personal e-scooter, which will likely be used much longer and thus with a much lower life cycle emissions ─ we estimate them as low as 12 gCO2eq/km for a life-cycle use of 15 000 km.

Let’s not forget that mobility systems are dynamic. Thus, environmental assessments need to be updated regularly, especially when new services enter the mix and change somewhat established patterns. And it is a safe bet that the current pandemic is changing mobility habits drastically, possibly for good.

Anne de Bortoli is the ITF Young Researcher of the Year 2020. This blog summarises the findings of her winning paper, which she wrote while at the University of Patras, Greece, and currently under peer review for an international journal. Anne is now an eco-design researcher with Eurovia, the road construction subsidiary of the VINCI Group.

Sleepless at the Wheel

International Transport Forum Road , , , ,

Few things are as healthy as a good dose of sleep – except when we’re driving. Then, nodding off becomes a lethal danger, and instantaneously. Emma Latham Jones sat down with road safety expert Veronique Feypell on World Sleep Day 2020 to talk about driver fatigue and why it is underestimated.

ELJ: What exactly is “driver fatigue”?

VF: There are two main types of fatigue from a road safety perspective. For one thing, it is the result of a lack of sleep. Simply put, drivers who are tired because they either haven’t slept enough or haven’t slept well are at risk of fatigue. The second type of fatigue is as a direct result of the task of driving. Perhaps the driver has been driving too long without taking a break. Perhaps they have had a long work day and is already tired when getting in the car. For truck drivers, this second type of fatigue could result from the waiting time during the loading and unloading. These two kinds of fatigue have different causes, but both have same negative effect on the ability to drive a car safely.

ELJ: How does that negative effect manifest itself?

In a number of ways. Loss of vigilance is one. Drivers suffering from fatigue may misperceive the road environment. They may not notice important road signs and warnings; or they may not register the complexity of a traffic situation at an intersection. Fatigue makes it more likely that the driver will overlook other road users, as it negatively affects vision. Tired drivers are much less likely to spot a cyclist in their peripheral vision, or a pedestrian coming out into the road. And since fatigue also reduces reaction time, the result can be fatal. In the extreme case, drivers may feel asleep and completely lose the control of their vehicles.

ELJ: Who is most likely to get drowsy when driving and should take particular care?

One might think that older drivers are particularly susceptible to concentration loss. But in fact young drivers are also very much at risk from fatigue. They have less experience on the road, so even slight fatigue may affect their driving performance. Certain medications can contribute to drowsiness. Also, those driving long distances on motorways are more at risk to fall asleep at the wheel. Fatigue is a main source of fatal crashes on motorways. Driving there can be pretty monotonous, which contributes to the fatigue.

ELJ: How big of a problem is driver fatigue? What do the statistics tell us?

VF: We don’t have a lot of statistics, unfortunately, and the ones we have are not very accurate. If one follows the police statistics, one or two percent of fatal crashes are due to fatigue. But a crash usually involves multiple factors, so the link to fatigue is often not obvious. It’s very difficult for the police officer at the scene to pick up all of this. Hence there is probably significant under-reporting. In-depth investigations put the share of crashes in which fatigue played a role at up to 10 percent.

ELJ: Are there attempts to measure how many drivers experience drowsiness, without there necessarily being a crash?

Some such studies exist, but far too few because it’s not easy. You can measure seat belt use by simply about counting who wears them and who doesn’t. But you can’t sit on the roadside and reliably count who is falling asleep at the wheel. Most studies rely on drivers to report their experience. In the United States, a survey by the National Sleep Foundation found that 60% of adult drivers had experienced fatigue while driving at least once per year. But there have also been some studies with monitoring equipment in cars to evaluate drowsiness. They use cameras that detect how often the driver blinks and also register other movements that are indications of fatigue.

ELJ: Couldn’t such technology also be used to warn drivers when they’re about to fall asleep?

VF: Absolutely, that is something researchers and the car industry are working on. It won’t be very long until new cars will be equipped with sensors that can detect drowsy drivers and then triggers a loud “wake up” message. This sort of driving assistance system might play an important role in enhancing road safety. But then there are also very effective low-tech means. On motorways, rumble strips are very good at waking up drowsy drivers when they drift off their lane.

ELJ: What should drivers do who don’t have hi-tech helpers?

VF: Nobody should take the risk of relying on sensors to keep them awake. Stop for a break when you notice you are getting tired. It’s okay to take a 15-minute nap in your car at a petrol station or on a parking area on the roadside. Many countries recommend a break from driving is recommended every two hours. Freight managers also should be encouraged to provide proper information about the risk of fatigue and how to prevent it to their drivers. And freight companies must of course respect legislation on driving time. A cup of strong coffee make help for a short time, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it will get you home safely if you have a long drive– it won’t. What you need is enough sleep.

ELJ: Thank you so much for your time on World Sleep Day, Veronique.

Veronique Feypell manages the road safety work of the International Transport Forum. She is currently working on, among other things, on the creation of regional road observatories for Africa and the Asia-Pacific. These will help countries in those regions to collect better crash data and use them to inform more effective road safety measures.

Emma Latham Jones is a Young Associate at the International Transport Forum.

Road safety will also be on the agenda at the International Transport Forum’s 2020 Summit on “Transport Innovation for Sustainable Mobility”, inter alia in a session on Road Safety and Security in The Age of New Mobility.

“To Empower Women, Everyday Acts Matter Most”

International Transport Forum All Transport , , , , , ,

How can the transport sector get better at serving the needs of women – both as customers and as employees? On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2020, Sharon Masterson spoke to Emma Latham Jones about women innovators, why getting girls interested in STEM is not enough, and inspiring female voices at the transport ministers’ Annual Summit.

How can the transport sector become more attractive for women?

ELJ: Innovation will be the core theme of the ITF Summit in May 2020. What is the role of women in innovation?

SM: There have been women among transport innovators throughout history – they just weren’t acknowledged. Think of Katherine Johnson, a woman and mathematician who worked for NASA. Her trajectory calculations were critical for successfully sending the first humans into space. Despite her enormous contributions to space exploration, she remained mostly unknown until the 2016 movie “Hidden Figures” made her a household name – at the age of 98. Sadly, Katherine Johnson passed away this 24 February; she was 101 years old.  

NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson at the 2017 Academy Awards

ELJ: A powerful reminder of both of the impact women can have and how little their contributions are often valued! I know you have a strong interest in developing female innovators and leaders. When you look at the next generation, what do you see?

SM: I am more than interested, I am passionate about the development of the next generation. If I look at the young women of today, I see they are strong and not afraid to claim their space at the decision-making table. They know exactly how to make their voices heard – and others are listening! 

ELJ: Can you give me some examples?

SM: This February, I was at the Global Ministerial Road Safety Conference in Sweden. One of the largest delegations at that conference was the delegation of the World Youth Assembly for Road Safety. Their co-chair, Omnia El Omrani, a medical student, made an impassioned plea to all present for safer and more sustainable roads and cities. She demanded “no false promises or fake commitments”. She made the very poignant point that today’s youth feel that their future is uncertain and not enough importance is given to critical issues that affect it.

If we think of sustainability, and in particular climate change, it is also a young female activist, Greta Thunberg, who has the largest following. Her message is a very simple one: listen to the climate experts and the science, and then act upon their advice.

Young women are making their voices heard

ELJ: How can the transport sector attract more women and girls?

SM:  The sector is working hard on this, but there is a still a lot to do. Last year the ITF’s Corporate Partnership Board organised a workshop on “Hiring and retaining a diverse workforce”. Two of the many interesting findings from that discussion were the need to address unconscious bias in the workplace and to put measures in place that ensure diversity of applicants in the recruitment process.

To get there, the transport sector has to raise awareness about all the different types of jobs that exist in transport and mobility. We produced a video aimed at encouraging girls and women to consider a career in the transport sector, to simulate their curiosity.

One of the things I would point out is that while there is a lot of emphasis on getting girls interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the professions related to the STEM subjects,  there are many non-STEM jobs in the transports sector, for instance in transport policy, tourism, or urban planning.

#WomenInTransport: ITF Corporate Partnership Board event on 8 March 2019

ELJ:  Transport ministers and delegations from more than 70 countries attend the ITF Summit. How present will women be? Which remarkable women will ministers be hearing from at the Summit in May?

SM: First of all, there is an increasing number of female transport ministers. This traditionally male-dominated portfolio is led by women in ITF member countries from Albania and Austria via Italy and the Netherlands to Korea and the United Sates. They are still a minority, but things have clearly begun to move.

In May, we’ll have a host of remarkable women speaking at our Summit. If I had to pick just one or two from that list, I would highlight Mary Robinson and Sinéad Burke, because they’re Irish and Ireland holds the ITF presidency this year.

Mary Robinson will give a keynote at the Summit. As an Irish woman myself, I remember her election as the first female President of Ireland well. In her acceptance speech she stated: “I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system”. Since her presidency she has gone on to do other very important things in many areas, including advocating for climate change and human rights.

Mary Robinson, former Irish President, will be a keynote speaker at the ITF Summit 2020

Sinéad Burke is a young Irish lady and a powerful advocate for diversity. I was fascinated by her TED Talk and an intervention she made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she spoke about why design should include everyone. So when I met Sinéad in person I asked her if she would speak at the ITF Summit and give us a user perspective on transport design and inclusion. It will be inspiring to have Sinéad with us!

ELJ: Whose responsibility is it to help women and girls succeed?

SM: I believe that all of us have a shared responsibility to help the next generation, both the young men and the young women. Kind words and encouragement go a long way. It is the everyday acts that matter most to empower women. Diversity and equality matter every day, not just on International Women’s Day. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad is an old Irish saying meaning young people will progress and grow better with praise than criticism. I grew up with that saying and it is something that I’ll be passing along to my daughter.   

ELJ: That’s a beautiful saying. Thank you for sharing it. Finally, how will you be celebrating International Women’s Day?

SM: The two events we had prepared for International Women’s Day 2020 have had to be postponed until later in the year because of the Coronavirus situation, unfortunately. We will reschedule our workshop on “Gender: The Importance of Co-operation between Industry and Government” and share experiences and best practices among the ITF Corporate Partnership Board’s member companies. The focus will be on how to build and maintain successful women’s networks, as well as the mentoring and coaching activities our member companies have put in place. We will also find a new date for a high-level panel discussion on the same topic – stay tuned!

ELJ: Thank you so much, Sharon.

Sharon Masterson is the Manager of the ITF Corporate Partnership Board (CPB), the International Transport Forum’s platform for engaging with the private sector. The CPB works with the ITF on emerging transport policy issues around topics such as the sharing economy, blockchain, drones, innovative mobility, transport decarbonisation, and gender and diversity.

Emma Latham-Jones is a Young Associate at the International Transport Forum.

Global pandemics and transport systems in an age of disruptions

International Transport Forum All Transport, Aviation, Maritime

The Coronavirus is the most recent in a list of global pandemics – and it is the most impactful. The human and economic costs of Covid-19  go far beyond those of Sars, the Swine flu or Ebola. Its immediate impact on transport activity has been nothing short of dramatic. Will it also change human mobility and freight transport in the long run?

By Francisco Furtado

Arriving passengers are tested for Coronavirus symptoms at Bologna airport in Italy | Source: Shutterstock

It is still early in the cycle of this global pandemic and care needs to be taken not to draw rash conclusions. But some of the striking effects of the Coronavirus on transport and related sectors are evident.

Air travel demand decreased for the first time in a decade from mid-February, according to estimates by IATA, the global association of airlines. In the Asia-Pacific region, air travel is forecast to fall by 8.2% in 2020 compared to 2019. Worldwide, the sector will shrink by 0.6%.

The bulk of this reduction is associated with the domestic Chinese aviation market, which is set to contract by USD 12.8 billion in 2020. Foreign airlines reduced capacity for flights to and from China by 80%, and Chinese airlines by 40%, according to ICAO, the UN aviation body.

More container ship tonnage is idle now than during the global financial crisis. Port operators in China say that volumes for container shipping were 20 to 40% less than last year. On the land side, warehouses and factories are unable to receive or send goods as imposed quarantine exacerbates the existing shortage of truck drivers.

Cancelled and postponed

Supply chain disruptions have led to factory closures and the shutting down of assembly lines – from Hyundai in South Korea to JCB in the United Kingdom – mainly because of the cessation of activity in China and the lack of components sourced from there.

Tourism is another highly visible victim of the Coronavirus. Up to 90% of tourism-related bookings for March are cancelled in some parts of Italy. Preliminary estimates for France point to a 30 to 40% drop in the number of tourists compared to what would be expected for this time of the year. The practically complete absence of Chinese tourists in Europe since the outbreak of Covid-19 points to lost revenue in the order of EUR 1 billion per month.

Rail passengers wearing face masks in Bangkok, Thailand | Source: Shutterstock

The cancellation and postponement of events worldwide has hit big-ticket meetings from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks, or the US-ASEAN summit in Las Vegas. The cancellation of the Berlin Tourism Fair ITB, scheduled for early March, meant 160 000 expected visitors did not travel, use their hotel rooms, or visit the German capital’ s restaurants. Where organisers maintain events, attendance drops dramatically as big employers like Amazon take steps to limit staff travel.

Will things get worse?

Much of this activity should pick up towards the end of the year. To what extent that probable resurgence can make up for the first-quarter plunge is an open question. Some of the above figures, for instance for the aviation sector, were published before the virus reached Europe and other regions outside China. So while they take into account the impact on China, the effects of the global spread of Covid-19 are not yet included. Worse may be to come.

The economic impact was most vividly reflected on the stock markets. The week of 24-28 February was the worst week for stocks since the 2008 crisis. Covid-19 could shave 0.5 percentage points to 1.5% of GDP growth in 2020 compared to previous estimates according to the OECD’s Interim Economic Outlook published on 2 March. In a more severe “downside scenario” global economic growth would halve.

Unlike 2019, NO2 levels in Wuhan did not rise after Chinese New Year | Source: NASA

Nasa images show the dramatic extent to which transport activity and industrial production came to a grinding halt across China – not just in Wuhan province – as drastic anti-virus measures were put in place. The levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air were 10 to 30% lower in January and February 2020 than the average of the same period for 2005-19. Such a dramatic drop across such a vast area has never been registered before – an indication to how much drastically reducing transport and industrial activity can impact emissions.

Figure 2. Pollutants in early January 2020 across eastern and central China compared to mid-February

Pollutants across eastern and central China in early January and mid-February 2020 | Source: NASA

Are telework and virtual meetings the new normal?

The contraction of transport activity is twofold: Right now, restrictions on travel and voluntary cancellations of trips compound the impact of reduced economic activity that is beginning to be seen. Later, when transport activity resumes towards the second half of 2020 – which is not a given – the bounce back to compensate for the earlier stoppage might lead to congestion on certain nodes of the transport networks, with increased costs and travel times as a result.

Most likely, Covid-19 will also have more long-term effects on transport systems and the demand for their services. Widespread cancellations of business trips and global events could drive the wider adoption of remote meetings and virtual conferences. Rather than an exception, virtual attendance might become a standard practice or even the norm. Improved digital connectivity and changing corporate cultures could work in the same direction.

The same is true for teleworking. The cost to organisations of having staff members in quarantine to contain the spread of Covid-19, is being considerably softened where those concerned can telework. The likely effect is that this form of work will become more widely accepted, reinforcing an already existent trend.

Will virtual meetings become the new normal?

A boost for re-shoring and resilience?

The tendency for nations to trade relatively more with countries of the same region than with the rest of the world is another trend this health crisis could reinforce. The disruption caused to supply chains by events on the other side of the world highlights security, safety and strategic concerns associated with off-shoring industrial production. The 2008 crisis triggered a rise in protectionism and the regionalisation of trade. In recent years, shutdowns of factories resulted in shortages of components “Made in China”, resulting in a push for the diversification of supply sources, including re-shoring.

A third relevant issue for which the pandemic could become a turbo-charger is resilience. The interest in strengthening transport networks’ ability to absorb shocks, deal with slumps and peaks, or to adapt to shifting trade flows was originally stimulated by extreme climate events, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The rise of global trade disputes in recent years further nourished it.

Resilient transport networks feature different transport modes that can be used alternatively, they offer multiple route options to circumvent stoppages, and possess built-in flexibility –  for instance to easily mobilise resources to deal with activity peaks and repurpose them for other needs during slumps. More resilience reduces the costs of shocks to the system and increase safety and security of supply – but it also comes with a price tag.

There is still a great degree of uncertainty about this pandemic’s long-term legacy with regard to the mobility of people and the transport of goods. What emerges more and more as the situation evolves is that it could be significant and long-lasting.

Francisco Furtado is an Analyst and Modeller at the International Transport Forum. He is currently working on a project on Decarbonising Transport in Emerging Economies.

Read more about disruptions to the transport system in the ITF Transport Outlook 2019

The case for a 30km/h speed limit in cities

International Transport Forum Road , , ,

As urban populations grow, city streets will overtake rural roads as the major scene of fatal traffic crashes in many countries. The evidence in support of a 30 km/h speed limit on all mixed-use urban roads is undeniable, and mounting.

Written by Stephen Perkins


International Transport Forum’s Safe Speeds YouTube Video

A lot has happened to sharpen policies for preventing deaths and serious injuries on our roads in the build-up to the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety that will meet in Stockholm on 19/20 February. The results of bold safety initiatives in a number of countries and cities have clearly demonstrated that aligning safe speeds to the design of infrastructure and the mix of road users lies at the heart of Safe System policies. Marshalling evidence on what works and what doesn’t is the key to getting public and political buy-in for these policies.

First of all, nobody any longer fatalistically regards increasing numbers of deaths on the roads of lower-income countries as the inevitable, “normal” result of increasing motorisation. The myth that death rates would only start to come down once incomes rose sufficiently has been debunked through careful review of the data by the Independent Council for Road Safety International: There is no correlation between income and peaks in road deaths.

Instead, all OECD countries saw improvement from around 1970, when their road safety policies began to be based more systematically on evidence-based, proven interventions. The powerful message here is that all countries can cut the number of deaths and injuries on the roads, regardless of GDP per capita. It also means that there is no longer an excuse: all countries must urgently implement those road safety policies that have been shown to work in their specific economic context.

Lessons from India, Colombia, France

Convincing examples of effective policies can be found in all parts of the world. Often, they were introduced in the face of vocal opposition. Pune was awarded ITDP’s Sustainable Transport Award in 2020 for doing what seemed impossible in Indian cities: establishing a sensible allocation of street space to motor vehicles to replace the chaotic free-for-all and building simple sidewalks for pedestrians.  This is the basis for safe streets and may indeed be basic. What was remarkable was creating the necessary political will by convincing the public this should be done.

Pune at night

In Colombia, the capital city Bogota is similarly making a growing number of its streets radically safer by implementing comprehensive interventions in school, residential and commercial zones, and reducing the speed limits of arterial corridors. These initiatives to promote safer interactions between all road users include the reallocation of space from cars and parking to pedestrians, often just using bold paint. But the biggest achievement has been turning around public hostility to reducing speed limits from 60 to 50 km/h on the corridors bisecting the city. By publicising the number of lives saved on these arterial roads, citizens and some of the administration’s stronger critics have accepted that speed reduction is an effective measure to save lives. 

Bold paint: pedestrian crossing in city centre

France has been in the headlines because of protests over its latest efforts to save lives by curbing speed. The policy to reduce speed limits on the fast secondary road network from 90 to 80 km/h is an outstanding example of basing policy on evidence: Evidence that shows rapidly diminishing survival rates in crashes at higher speeds; evidence that shows lower speed limits do result in lower speeds because drivers do not simply ignore limits; and evidence that shows lower average speeds always result in fewer fatal crashes.

The Safe System in action

Protests led the French Senate to modify the law, delegating responsibility for limits to Department councils. At the same time, Senators applied the Safe System principle to their decision, setting out quality and design standards to be met for 90 km/h roads. Only one Department has reinstated the 90 km/h speed limit.

This interplay between speed and infrastructure is a perfect example of the Safe System approach in action. The system has to be designed to protect against death and severe injury even when humans make mistakes. This can be achieved through controlling behaviour, improving vehicles or enhancing infrastructure, or all three – but it must be done in concert to ensure all users can use the roads safely.

Infrastructure enhancements: road works in Bogota

The basis for effective interventions is good data and analysis. The ITF supports national and city safety agencies enhance their capacity and compare their performance with our IRTAD and Safer City Streets databases. These show that the majority of traffic fatalities currently occur on rural roads, hence the importance of France’s new speed limits. Other countries need to look carefully at similar measures. At the same time, as our populations become more urban, city streets are soon set to account for the majority of casualties in ITF countries.

Safe urban mobility needs a 30km/h speed limit

The success of sustainable mobility policies will see increasing numbers of pedestrians, cyclists and electric micromobility users on our streets. This will require a redoubling of efforts to allocate space for protected cycling and pedestrian infrastructure and create mixed use roads with low speed limits. This is the front line for the safety targets under the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is taken up in Recommendation 8 of the Academic Expert Group convened to support the 3rd UN Global Conference on Road Safety. The Group recommends implementing a speed limit of 30 km/h for all mixed-use roads in urban areas. This is a true life saver, and it should be a primary focus of discussion at the conference.

An increasing number of cities have moved in this direction. Starting with 30 km/h zones in the early 1990s, almost all of Helsinki is now subject to a 30 limit. Oslo has followed suit as part of its Vision Zero policy as have Munich, Grenoble and a rapidly increasing number of cities in Europe and on other continents. With 19 cities in the 30 club, Spain is now pioneering the move at national level, with a proposal before Government for all cities to limit speeds to 30 km/h. The policy works, with Toronto reporting a two thirds reduction in serious and fatal injuries from crashes since it reduced speeds from 40 to 30 km/h in 2015. The case for making 30 km/h the default speed limit for all vehicles in urban and residential areas is clear.

Stephen Perkins is Head of Research and Policy Analysis at the International Transport Forum (ITF). The ITF runs the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) and the Safer City Streets network.

“Gender is One of the Most Robust Determinants of Transport Choice”

International Transport Forum All Transport , , , , , , ,

What has gender got to do with transport? A lot, but few people know it. That needs to change, was the message from a consultation on gender and transport organised by the ITF with 34 transport stakeholders.

Mary Crass at ITF Summit 2019

Mary Crass, the ITF’s Head of Institutional Relations and Summit sat down with Emma Latham Jones to discuss female representation in the transport industry, women’s personal safety and how gender influences travel behaviour.

ELJ: Is it still necessary to focus on women in transport in 2020?

MC: Without a doubt! Women represent the largest share of public transport users around the world. In France, for instance, two-thirds of passengers on public transport networks are women. A study that we’ve recently done here at the ITF reveals that gender is often a more robust determinant of modal choice than age or income. So it’s really significant, especially since transport services and policies are still not gender neutral.

ELJ: If gender is so important to journey decisions, why is it so often overlooked?

MC: Data collection and analysis very often do not include gender to reflect differences in travel behavior. This means that transport policy is potentially not accounting for 50% of travelers’ needs. It’s a huge missed opportunity for transport authorities, planners and operators to ignore the specific trip patterns and access needs of women— a market that represents over half of public transport clients. Clearly, gender needs to be better taken into transport policy consideration.

ELJ: Are travel policies not gender neutral because women are not well represented in the transport sector?

MC: I think this certainly plays a part. The transport labour force remains heavily male-dominated. Only 22% of transport employees in the European Union are female. In the Asia-Pacific region, women are typically found in fewer than 20% of transport jobs. There are relatively few women working as operators, drivers, engineers, and similar positions. A survey of ITF member countries also found that only 13 out of 60 member countries currently have female transport ministers. As a result, women’s voices in decision-making are under-represented across all levels, which leads to a lack of incentive for transport services to respond to the particular needs of women as users. It also contributes to the fact that gender considerations are largely ignored in transport data collection and analysis, and therefore in policy decisions. We need to change this to ensure that the voice of women is heard in public transport decisions.

ELJ: Does this mean female representation in the transport industry is a priority of the ITF?

MC: Absolutely – the lTF is working alongside its members and stakeholder organisations to better understand the questions related to gender in transport, both on a travel-behaviour level and in terms of representation in the sector. Our consultation on women in transport just now in January brought together 34 stakeholders to explore these questions. We hold this consultation annually, and our understanding of the importance of a gender-diverse transport sector is advancing year to year. We greatly appreciate the insights of our partners and we feed the findings to our summit in Leipzig in May. There we’ll examine how innovation in the sector is impacting women, in terms of their travel and mobility choices.

ELJ: How else does the ITF support women in transport?

MC: We’re looking at gender in transport within the context of inclusive transport and we examine the question from three different angles: travel behavior, safety and security, and representation in the sector. We look at how the gender balance in the industry can be more effectively pursued by understanding the distinctions between how men and women navigate the transport system as users – and how they evolve as workers and professionals serving transport operations and activities.

ELJ: I am a young woman, and sometimes on public transport I find myself concerned about my personal safety. How do issues like these influence women’s decisions and their lives more broadly?

MC: Women are more likely than men to be dependent on public transport. Yet they face personal security challenges that hinder and often deter them from using transit systems. As a result, women’s access to jobs, services and amenities is severely compromised. A Reuters survey of 16 major cities worldwide found that women in Latin American cities faced the highest rates of harassment, with about 60% of women reporting physical harassment on public transit systems. Even under conditions where infrastructure is considered to be safe, women’s perception of that security can influence their willingness to use collective means of transport. Simple, low-hanging fruit can go a long way to improve perceptions of security – including better lighting, clear signage and presence of security personnel. Our work has shown that if women do not feel safe and secure using transport, they will switch to taxis or private vehicles faster than men. So ignoring gender impacts of transport infrastructure and operations is a disservice to the sustainability agenda as well.

ELJ: February 11 is International Day of Women and Girls in Science. How can we increase the number of women in transport related science, technology and engineering roles?

MC: If we look at this question from the perspective of education and training, then I’d say employment in the transport sector needs to have greater visibility in higher education. Too often, opportunities in the transport sector for women are not properly understood.

ELJ: What about the more practical aspect of being a woman in a male-dominated sector?

MC: For operational jobs in the sector – driving vehicles for instance – the conditions of employment need to ensure that the needs of both genders are met. Too often required clothing, equipment and even facilities are not appropriate for women in the sector. This can be rectified by ensuring that upstream purchasing and planning of the worker environment take into consideration the presence of women in these jobs.

Thank you so much for your time, Mary.

Mary Crass is Head of Institutional Relations and Summit for the International Transport Forum. She is responsible for the ITF’s relations with member countries, international organisations and associations, and the Annual Summit of the International Transport Forum. The next Summit will be held from 27-29 May 2020 on the topic of “Transport Innovation for Sustainable Development” in Leipzig, Germany.

My year of train-bragging

International Transport Forum Aviation, Rail , ,

In 2019, ITF shipping expert Olaf Merk decided to live up to his own recommendations on cutting transport CO2. So for all his professional trips, he tried to avoid air travel and use the train instead. Did he manage, and what did he learn?

By Olaf Merk

For many years I was a frequent flyer, with an average of 35 trips annually. Then three things happened: Greta showed how to walk the talk; I had an accident that made it impossible for me to take a plane for four months; and Paris suffered a record heat wave that once again illustrated the urgency.

It was time to live up to my own recommendations. As a transport expert, I have been advocating drastic reductions of transport CO2 for a long time.  Now I decided I would no longer take the plane for travels within Europe.  And so, of the 17 international trips I took for my work in 2019 (of which 16 were within Europe), I made 13 by train.

What did I learn from this?

Welcome to your comfort zone

The first lesson: taking the train instead of a plane is not that hard. Expect more space and more freedom to move around. Some trains also have very pleasant dining cars. On a more metaphysical level, train travel offers the feeling to be connected to the countries that you cross. You are actually travelling, not just being moved from one place to another.

Of course, a train ride often takes longer. To get from Paris to Copenhagen took me 15 hours, and 11 hours to Rome. The links could be faster – astonishingly, relatively few European capitals are directly connected by rail connections.  

And there are quite a lot of weak links: taking the train to Copenhagen meant in practice taking three different trains, a ferry and a bus. It would have taken me two full days to get to Tallinn by train and bus from Paris, so I decided to fly instead. My excuses for the other non-train trips also somehow illustrate the vulnerabilities of train travel: a national strike and flooded rail tracks in southern France.

Travel longer, lose less time

Trains take longer, but I did not have to waste time going shuttling to and from airports. For obvious reasons most airports are located outside most cities, far from where you need to be, whereas train stations almost always lead directly to city centres. No need either to factor in time to work my way through gigantic airport shopping centres.

Changing trains is also less time-consuming than changing plane, too – not to mention that trains (usually) don’t require queuing at the security check or for boarding. Of course a ten-hour train journey wears me down. But, on balance, I find it is less stressful than air travel. The prospect of spending more than a working day travelling – even if you can actually work more effectively during train travel than during flights – makes you think twice whether you really need to make this trip, or whether tele-conferencing would not be a better option.

The price is not right

Lesson number three is that the price is not right. The main drawback of train travel is that it is often more expensive than travelling by plane. There are some noticeable counter-examples, but not enough. And as an employee, I am obliged to pick the most economical travel option – and in that logic, train travel involves extra costs that the organisation I work for needs to avoid. The same is the case for many other organisations.

I paid the difference in price between the train ticket and what an airline would have charged me. But I fear we cannot depend on the altruism of frequent flyers to see a massive shift to rail.

Bragging is contagious

The nicest part of train bragging is that it is contagious. There is a whole online community of co-braggers that are more than happy to support their peers. And so your example might well inspire others. I was excited when a German executive told me about his own shift to train travel a few months after I had shared with him my own conversion. All these small behavioural changes are starting to become visible at the macro-level: in countries like Sweden and Germany, air travel volumes in 2019 were down.

Yet, not everyone was equally enthusiastic: I also encountered sceptics when I outed myself. Some denied that planes have bigger carbon footprint than trains. Just to get this out of the way: in almost all circumstances, train travel is less carbon intensive than air travel. In the parts of Europe where trains are still dirty, they can be electrified; and electricity is becoming quickly cleaner in Europe. This in contrast to aviation: there are no immediate solutions to reduce aviation emissions except reduced demand. The most direct option that frequent flyers have to limit their carbon footprint is to fly less and shift to rail travel.

Picking up speed

What is my personal conclusion? Employers should encourage staff to travel less, and if they have to travel, travel by train. The costs of greenhouse gas emissions should be taken into account in the price comparison of travel modes, not as an afterthought via a carbon offset from a separate budget. Ideally, it should also cover other climate change impacts, such as radiative forcing, high for aviation. Employers should also make sure that flights for work reasons won’t be counted towards personal frequent flyer cards, which will incentivise their staff to fly more.

Train operators can also do better. More attention to customer service rather than on stacking as many people as possible in a train will make train journeys more attractive. They can improve service in train stations for frequent travellers; maybe develop a pan-European frequent rail traveller programme. There is huge potential in better integration of rail services with airports and aviation networks, too. Some airlines have started to realise this.

Competition among railway operators also helps, as do governments committed to a modal shift towards rail. They should accelerate the upgrading of missing links: I found Hamburg-Copenhagen, Lyon-Turin and railway connections to the Baltic states a pain. In parallel to investing in high-speed rail, governments should close loop-holes that keep the price of flying so low – aviation fuel, for instance, is not taxed at all.

If I can take the train most of the time, I guess almost everyone else can. After one year of bragging I know one thing for certain: The train with destination “low-emission transport” has left the station. For now, its pace is accelerating but still too slow. Together we can turn it into a high-speed train.