Towards an operational concept of sustainable mobility

Abstract

The magnitude of the social and environmental costs owed to transport in the European Union (EU) has shown the urgent need to introduce measures for the internalization of externalities and to advance, this way, towards a more efficient transport system. The growing development of the theory of externalities and the most efficient instruments for its internalization have contributed to the introduction of road transport charges in some countries like Switzerland, Austria or Germany. In spite of this, the infrastructure pricing seems insufficient to cut off urgent environmental problems such as climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Taking the limitations of the conventional transport policy as a starting point, this article aims to advance an operative definition of the concept of sustainable mobility, and to set a framework capable of assuring that sustainable mobility becomes a useful and efficient tool for transport policy in the 21st century. In this context, instruments that traditionally were out of transport policy, such as land use or urban planning, acquire great importance. The Basque Country, a region in the western Pyrenees Mountains that spans the border between France and Spain, will be used as an example because of sharing with many regions of the EU similar transport and environmental problems. © 2009 WIT Press.