European Commission eyes large-scale transformation of transport on the continent

The ‘Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy’ is the core of this roadmap plan

Motorized mobility is an inseparable part of our daily routine. In fact, being able to move and travel is already deeply ingrained in our understanding as the necessary components to good quality of life.

It is also an important economic sector, with a 5% contribution to the European Union’s GDP and the provision of 10 million jobs. At the same time, however, transportation’s contribution to the overall greenhouse gas emissions on the continent is highly disproportionate – it is responsible for 25% of those.

That is why the European Commission considers that this is the right time to forge ahead and implement a radical change in mobility in line with the new greener understanding of material well-being, while also maintaining affordability and employment occupancy. How this will be achieved was presented today with the ‘Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy’, together with an Action Plan covering the next four years.

Success here means a 90%-cut in emissions by 2050

The year 2020 was tough but also one from which lessons have been learnt, more specifically on the need to add resilience to crises in addition to sustainability in the design of the future transport system.

“To reach our climate targets, emissions from the transport sector must get on a clear downward trend. Today's strategy will shift the way people and goods move across Europe and make it easy to combine different modes of transport in a single journey. We've set ambitious targets for the entire transport system to ensure a sustainable, smart, and resilient return from the COVID-19 crisis,” said Frans Timmermans, who is the Vice-President for the European Green Deal.

The Strategy sets very concrete milestones, which promise developments that not long ago might have sounded like science fiction but today are ever closer to becoming reality in no small part thanks to changing attitudes, apart from technological innovation.

Among these are zero-emission marine vessels, 100 climate-neutral European cities and double the high-speed railways that we have today, all by 2030. Twenty years after that and the roadmap envisions that nearly all of the heavier vehicles will be zero-emission, including aircraft.

That sets a framework and a guideline for innovations and inventions in the future, which should also keep in mind 3 principles when developing their projects. They have to be Sustainable, Smart (AI and multimodal interconnected mobility) and Resilient (which also means safe and secure).