Sustainable urban transport: Four innovative directions

This paper examines the concept and implementation of sustainable transport. It traces efforts to define and operationalize the notion of sustainable transport in the urban context, noting that these efforts have tended to fall into two broad clusters of work: those that envision sustainable transportation as a policy pathway, and those that envision it as a policy end-point. The authors argue that to be successful, sustainable transport policy must avoid the common transportation policy pitfall of ignoring the larger systems in which transportation activity is embedded. The goal of sustainable transportation may be better served by a number of the organic innovations in transportation practice that are occurring in the field. The authors identify four emerging areas of innovation: New Mobility, City Logistics, Intelligent System Management, and Livability. Finally, the authors discuss the extent to which these innovations represent a more systems-oriented approach, and the institutional challenges inherent in these proposals.