EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 3. Understanding the Drivers of Transport Environmental Pressures Passenger Transport Key sectoral indicators are pointing in the wrong direction at the national level. Analysis can help to understand the driving forces of environmental pressures and can support the development of evidence-based policymaking that considers the full range of policy solutions available. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers drivers such as demand, infrastructure, technology, and the public policy, private market and lifestyle factors that underlie these (Sims et al. , 2014). While transport greenhouse gas emissions are a challenge globally, Table 11.1 indicates that in Ireland this is more pronounced. In recent decades, alongside the push of economic and population growth, Ireland has experienced low-density and sprawl patterns of spatial development (EEA and FOEN, 2016; Ahrens and Lyons, 2019), and an infrastructure investment priority on road development and mobility dominated by private cars. All these factors are associated with higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and increased road congestion. They are represented in long-term trends towards more private and motorised transport, and at best marginal increases in the active modes of walking and cycling (CSO, 2020a). In contrast to other European countries, a higher proportion of public transport is by bus than rail, and rural areas have limited access. While some progress has been made on key transport air pollutants, these drivers are of major concern regarding greenhouse gas emissions, noise, urban sprawl and land-take, and biodiversity. These patterns of development implicitly increase mobility demand and related emissions, and risk long-term ‘lock-in’ to unsustainable patterns that are difficult to escape (Seto et al. , 2016). More dispersed and sprawling development can imply private benefits, but these must be weighed against their societal environmental and economic costs, such as the cost of providing public services to lower density patterns (OECD, 2018). The most recent National Travel Survey, of 2019, suggests that journey distances and durations have increased since the first national survey in 2012 (CSO, 2020a). In 2019, almost two-thirds (64.9%) of journeys were made as a driver of a private car, or 77.6 per cent by ‘private motorised transport’ 2 , with little shift to sustainable modes in recent years 3 . In addition, the survey 2 ‘Private motorised transport’ is taken here as car drivers, car passengers, taxi/hackney, lorry, motorcycle and van. It excludes the new ‘other’ category of e-mobility at 0.7% in 2019, see CSO (2020a). 3 The ‘sustainable modes,’ defined here as walking, cycling and public transport, have declined by 1.2% from 2013 (22.8%) to 2019 (21.6%). showed that 43.6 per cent of all journeys in 2019 were of shorter distances, less than 4 kilometres, which are ideal for active modes. Within this, 51.5 per cent of journeys of less than 2 kilometres were by car, rising to 66.1 per cent for journeys between 2 and 4 kilometres. Together, this suggests the potential for switching to active modes for shorter journeys, particularly when noting apparent gains in sustainable modes in some urban areas. The impact of the reliance on private vehicle transport on greenhouse gas emissions is compounded by increasing journey lengths and the energy and carbon inefficiency of the vehicle choice. The total distance travelled by cars rose by more than 14 per cent between 2012 and 2018 (SEAI, 2019a). Gains from improvements in the energy efficiency of new private cars are also being overwhelmed as consumers favour larger, less efficient vehicles such as SUVs (SEAI, 2019a). Carbon efficiency has shown only minor improvement. Biofuels have increased to 3.9 per cent of road and rail transport energy consumption in 2018, from 2.4 per cent in 2010 (SEAI, 2019a), and 8,827 battery electric cars were licenced in Ireland between 2010 and 2019 4 (CSO, 2020b). While increasing, this remains a tiny fraction of the national car fleet, which stood at over 2.1 million vehicles licensed in 2018. The problem of road traffic congestion is also of note here, as Irish cities frequently place high in global surveys. In the INRIX survey from 2018, Dublin ranked as the 15th most congested city, with Galway 50th, Limerick 72nd and Cork 80th (INRIX, 2018). 5 Congestion is known to have negative effects not just on the environment and economic competitiveness, but also on quality of life and human health, through concentration of air pollution, increased stress, obesity and lost time. 4 This is the number of new and used electric cars, not including other vehicle types. Over the same time period, 51,014 new and used hybrid cars, including petrol, diesel and plug-in options, were added to the fleet in Ireland. It is important to note, that in general, hybrid vehicles have less potential to eliminate carbon emissions than battery electric vehicles. 5 In the 2018 TomTom index, similar results are found: Dublin was ranked as the 14th most congested city in the world, with Cork at 70th and Limerick at 94th (TomTom, 2019). 286