Bright green future: how will we travel?

Photo credit: www.pedbikeimages.org / Ryan Snyder

Ok, so let’s get back to thinking about our bright green future. Today I’m imagining how transport would work for us all. At the moment, transport is responsible for 14% of our greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also responsible for a lot of other impacts on the environment, from peak oil to destruction of ecosystems to feed our need for more roads and carparks and airports. How could we fix that without losing independence and mobility?

Reducing the need for cars
Firstly, we could work on reducing the need for so much driving. Public transport is an existing solution that could be ramped up to really excellent levels, as it is in big cities like London and New York already. But as well as that, we need cities that are bike friendly, and pockets of pedestrian friendly areas.

Urban planning is important: I like the idea of making lots of small plazas easily reached by public transport and bike corridors, where people can shop for groceries or visit a doctor or see a movie without having to drive all over town. With enough of these, so many more families can go car-free, and save the expense and hassle of running a car.

Another way to reduce the need for cars is to use technology that allows us to talk and work and meet with each other, without having to all be in the same place. Teleconferencing lets us hold meetings between people on opposite sides of the continent. The national broadband network could go a long way to helping people work from home, instead of trekking in to an office every day. Google Wave is an experimental way for people to collaborate on projects and fun stuff online. By exploring these options, we can still get the benefits of our connected world, without causing so much pollution from long flights or rush hour traffic.

Can we make our transport cleaner?
Of course, there will still be a need for fast, individual or small group transport – we shouldn’t do away with it altogether. Ambulances are just one example, and there will always be people who have to live and work in isolated areas where bikes and buses aren’t an option. This is where alternate fuels come into play.

Electric cars will work well in a city that’s got clean energy sources, and the potential for battery swap stations instead of petrol stations. Biodiesel is currently a difficult option in Australia, but if we find a good source (i.e. not food crops) it could be very useful. Hydrogen cars are a long way from being a reality now, but since we’re daydreaming about the future, we can look forward to a time when their issues are fixed and they become a useful addition to our choices.

Finally, we need to look at airplane travel. It’s so cheap right now that people expect it almost as a right, but I’m not sure that’s a situation which can continue. And yet, there will always be ‘love’ miles: families and loved ones living far apart, and wanting to reconnect every so often in a way that a teleconference just can’t provide. I think high-speed rail could be an excellent solution for travel within Australia. The bullet train in Japan runs at 300 km/hour – it could make it across the Nullabor in just 4 hours.

For overseas travel, well – although airlines are working on alternative fuels, there’s no real solution yet. And planes release their GHGs at an atmospheric level that’s more dangerous than on land. We could go back to the days of sail, which would be quite nice for those of us not bothered by sea-sickness. Personally, I’d like zeppelins to make a comeback!

As you can see, the transport future will require a lot of co-ordinated effort to bring about, instead of the individual efforts we can make in our homes and gardens. But it’s totally do-able, if we make an effort to change things before it’s too late.

At the very least, you can buy a bike now, or use public transport like I do. Or be like my mother-in-law from Geraldton, and use a video-capable mobile phone to see and talk to her grandchildren in Cairns. As always, the future is what we make of it, so we need to think carefully about our choices. How do you see transport changing even now?