Green transport

An environmental approach to transport 

Transport planning has been dominated by single-purpose planners and designers. Sustainability considerations have been off the agenda. To civilise means 'reclaim from barbarism'.This requires transport. Without it we would have no cities, no mass production, no specialisation, no journeys to work, no tourism, no modern conveniences. Hilaire Belloc, a poet, was clear on this point: The Road is one of the great fundamental institutions of mankind... It is the Road which determines the sites of many cities and the growth and nourishment of all. It is the Road which controls the development of strategics and fixes the sites of battles. It is the Road that gives its frame-work to all economic development. It is the Road which is the channel of all trade and, what is more important, of all ideas... the Road moves and controls all history (Belloc 1924). But the planning and design of roads, like other modes of transport, tends to become the preserve of blinkered specialists infatuated with the dream of maximising the transport mode for which they assume responsibility. They ignore other public goods. They neglect EID. With regard to highways Ian McHarg, the son of a preacher, observed that: