The Effect of Transport on the Scottish Environment
CONTENTS
Road Vehicle Exhausts - the Number One Problem
Urban Degradation and Rural Necessities
The Need for an Integrated Government Policy on Transport
Links to SRT's Environment and Energy Pages
Further Information
Links to other SRT Project Pages
The Effect of Transport on the Scottish Environment
Chapter from the 1994 Church and Nation Committee Report
"The Environmental Impact of Economic Activity in Scotland"
In recent years transport has emerged as one of the most urgent
environmental issues. Like energy, all forms of transport impact
on the environment. Even the more benign can damage by overuse
in a fragile location, as the effects of repeated booted feet on
a popular "Munro" bear witness. How much more with mechanically
propelled transport! The scale and type of impact varies widely
- extreme events like accidents involving hazardous cargoes, as
in the wreck of a supertanker, persistent effects like noise,
and cumulative damage by pollution and encroachment on land. It
is, however, in road transport where the most serious issues are
arising. The greater availability of the car has extended the
advantages of mobility. Better roads have have opened up greater
economic opportunities for many areas. The availability of the
car for general popular use has created the possibility, and
thereafter the universal desire, for personalised transport,
with the maximum of speed and convenience, and an equivalent
effect in the freight sector. But these largely positive
developments have brought an increasing cost. Our cars and
lorries are steadily eroding our atmosphere, our living space
and our very lives, through the relentless increase in the scale
of road use. Of all these environmental impacts, this is the one
most in our immediate control.
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Road Vehicle Exhausts - the Number One Problem
Petrol and diesel exhausts are now the major cause of urban
pollution, through a combination of noxious gases and airborne
particulates, and especially the nitrogen oxides. Within a
generation, cities which were so effectively cleaned up by the
change to "smokeless fuels" following the 1957 Clean Air Act are
now showing signs of serious atmospheric degradation again, but
this time caused by vehicle exhausts. Edinburgh has a
particularly bad air pollution record. The countryside is also
affected. Vehicle and aircraft emissions make a significant
contribution to acid rain damage in forests in Scotland and
Scandinavia. Moves to reduce the emissions with more efficient
engines and with catalytic converters on new cars, while
welcomed, only partly reduce the symptoms. They do nothing to
remove the cause, which is the fossil fuel-powered internal
combusion engine itself. Moreover, no vehicle exhaust system yet
devised can remove the "greenhouse" gas CO2. Transport now
contributes nearly a quarter of UK emissions. The various
Government measures being taken to reduce our CO2 releases by
the year 2000, and to reduce acid emissions, will be overwhelmed
in the succeeding decade because of emissions from the projected
demand for road transport.1,2
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Our insistence on road transport is causing many other problems.
Ever more road schemes lead to increasing impact on our urban
and rural landscape. To avoid the alarming predictions which are
being made from becoming reality, urban planning and transport
between cities need radical rethinking. Central Region have
pioneered an exemplary and imaginative lead in co-ordinating
transport and planning in an environmental context,3 which
larger and more complex conurbations could follow. The cost of
failing to take radical action will be a decline in the quality
of urban living, not to mention the appalling annual statistics
of road deaths and injuries. If such routine harm occurred in a
chemical or energy industry plant, it would be shut down
overnight. But because the use of the car affects the
convenience of our daily lives, we turn a blind eye.
Transport in the rural sector is a different story. Population
densities do not support adequate public transport without heavy
subsidies. Given our greater desire for mobility, remote
communities usually have little alternative to the car for more
than local journeys and to road freight for goods and produce.
There will always be a measure of rural road use which is
inescapable, but the environmental effect will be
correspondingly smaller. The emphasis remains on the need for
reductions in unnecessary urban and inter-urban road transport.
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There are serious long term penalties for society if the rising
trend of road use is allowed to continue. The Government's
Sustainable Development strategy expresses a new level of
concern over the issue, but stops short of firm measures which
need urgently to be put in place to stem, or even reverse the
trend.2 The employment of road use and car sales statisitcs as
fundamental indicators of economic growth should be abandoned,
and measures taken to counteract the undue influence of the road
transport lobby on Government policy.
To plan for the cities of the future requires an integration of
public transport with the planning of land development and use,
affecting business, schooling, shopping and leisure patterns.
The siting of new developments needs to be met by a
corresponding emphasis on public transport services to it. To
persuade people on a very large scale to reverse the trend of
the past 20 years, by leaving their cars in the garage and going
by bus or train, requires a minor revolution in the convenience
of public transport. American precedents suggests that the
future may be to enact measures leading to the banning all
non-essential vehicles from Scottish city centres, unless they
are powered by other means than fossil fuels, coupled to an
urgent change of will on the part of the Government towards
local authority investment so that finances can be released for
developing new public transport and light railway
infrastructure.
Rail, bus and air services need co-ordination, to optimise
convenience for the public. Certain effects of bus deregulation
- the excessive duplication of buses in some rush hour routes
and a significant drop in less remunerative but socially vital
services - show the opposite effect if things are "left to the
market". It appears that corresponding and widespread warnings
from both experts and the general public about similar effects
arising from rail privatisation have gone unheeded by the
Government.
In the carriage of freight, the continuing drift to the roads
and away from the far more environmentally sensible use of rail
is alarming. Goods vehicle mileage in the UK rose by over 40% in
10 years up to 1989.4 Yet there is a legislative and investment
bias which continues to favour road use. The full cost of road
use & new road investment is not being met by the users.
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We often feel that global environmental issues are so big that
we can make little difference. Transport is the exception.
Striking examples of increased car use arise from the spread of
edge-of-town shopping complexes, the habit of driving children
to and from school, and driving to work with only one person in
the car. A generation ago, most of us shopped locally and walked
to school or work, or went by bus. We can all ask ourselves
whether our car journeys are really necessary. If we wish to
have towns and cities worth living in, the future lies in a
return to walking, cycling and public transport for most local
journeys. The convenience of the car is beguilling. We have got
used to a pace of life which relies on it, but it is exacting a
terrible price on life, limb and our environment. It is always
easy to see how other people can change their car use, but it is
our own we have control over, and that is where the change
should start.
References
- Sustainable Development : the UK Strategy, Cm 2426, HMSO, January 1994.
- Climate Change : the UK Programme, Cm 2427, HMSO, January 1994.
- All Change - the Transport Challenge for Central Region, Central Regional Council 1993.
- Reducing the Transport Emissions through Planning, Departments of the Environment and Transport, HMSO, 1993.
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Risk
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