Planning Sustainable Transport

Chapter 5

Fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG)

Sustainable objectives

Chapter 1 argued that reducing the production of greenhouse gases (GHG) was not only an end in itself but could stand proxy for other aspects of sustainability. One way of lessening the pollutions from transport is by reducing the number of vehicle-kilometres and a potent way of doing this is to reduce average journey length. This is best achieved by controlling the spread of urbanisation by the development of agricultural land. Hence a policy to control GHG has a related effect upon sustainable agricultural policy.

This extension of the case put forward in Chapter 1 for using the control of GHG as the touchstone of sustainability is to argue that one comparatively ...