Investing in people to shape a sustainable future
There is a lot of talk about sustainability but how much day to day practice in transport is actually sustainable? A new paper by Derek Halden has been published which argues that it is through investing in people that we build a more sustainable world. People focused approaches to transport start from the places people live and work and plan access to opportunities and places. The accessibility planning approaches are used at various geographical levels but the paper argues that the greatest impacts over the last 10 years have been for individual sites and in encouraging non transport policies to think about transport issues. Is accessibility planning the most practical approach yet devised to actually deliver sustainable transport? It is not easy to identify anything else that has been more successful in practice. The paper is at times controversial highlighting that the transport industry often still prefers to celebrate successes for individual modes of transport rather than integrated accessibility planning approaches. Some people liked the paper and Derek Halden received the 2013 European Transport Conference award for the best paper on sustainable development. The full paper can be read at the Journal of Transportation Research Procedia.