Greening Transport: Final Report

Abstract

The vision of the Greening Transport project was to merge the technical evaluation of emissions from transport, and improvements in their calculation, with an assessment of the behavioural changes needed to realise reductions in emissions. Past attempts to evaluate land passenger transport policies in terms of emission reductions from transport have failed to fully merge these two disciplines. The project team believes that, in order for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to have a holistic picture of the potential emission reductions that are possible in Ireland by 2030 (and beyond), it is vital not to ignore the behavioural constraints in which transport analysis is framed. While it is possible to predict targets for take-up using assumptions, to ignore human behaviour would be to fail to fully grasp the problem in question.With this in mind, the work packages for this project were designed to tackle technical emissions and land transportation modelling, as well as the application of behavioural constraints to these models, to provide the EPA with details of what emission reductions are possible based upon current research. The research was conducted through the following work packages: ●work package 1: project management; ●work package 2: review of environmental and transportation modelling methods and development of a transport emission model; ●work package 3: examining smarter travel options to reduce emissions; ●work package 4: examining the emission reductions from changes in the private car fleet and the public transport bus fleet; ●work package 5: measuring the impacts of fiscal changes on promoting sustainable car use.Reports for all of the above Greening Transport work packages are available on the Greening Transport website (www.greeningtransport.ie). This report presents the main highlights of the project but further details of the research conducted are available on the website (www.greeningtransport.ie)