Weaving Sustainable Change to Transport within a Fast Changing World
What does sustainable transport really mean? If we are to achieve sustainability then the transport design needs to address all system effects that could lead to failure of the selected approach including ensuring short and long term equity. The real effects of most, so called ‘sustainable transport’ are far too often poorly thought through and and their unpopularity of poor long term viability lead to failure. By definition, that is not sustainable.
Derek Halden contributed a EU funded workshop in Seville in 2022 to review these issues and in 2025 the book with the proceedings “transport in a Moving World” was published by Edward Elgar. The Seville presentation explains how accessibility planning has succeeded in delivering sustainable transport change where mobility planning has failed.
Accessibility planning connects the individual aims of people with the organisational processes that can effect change, setting them within the context of social and political values. This means that accessibility planning makes sustainable outcomes more achievable, by ensuring impacts on people and places are more transparent, and are built into delivery frameworks more effectively.