Introduction

The ManagEnergy initiative aims to encourage global thinking on strategic local issues and support local actors in the capacity building process, resulting in better use of available solutions to sustainable energy and transport problems.

The main objective of ManagEnergy is to develop strong networks between the local and regional agencies in order to facilitate the development of usable replication strategies. ManagEnergy will help identify expertise and success obtained to date through projects and other relevant activities carried out in various regions and localities throughout Europe.

In the transport field, ManagEnergy also work in collaboration with the European Commission initiative European Local Transport Information Service, ELTIS (www.eltis.org).

EC transport policy - Mr Leydon, Head of unit, DG TREN

Mr Leydon introduced the workshop with an overview of the current transport situation. He indicated that there is a need to substitute oil products in transport as we already see a decline in oil production. To reduce oil consumption and reduce congestion we need to shift balance from road to rail - a modal shift within transport is of high priority. Traffic growth in Europe is of major concern, as it will contribute to big problems in many areas, including road safety, land use, congestion and environmental issues such as climate change. To avoid future problems, the Commission works in the area of faster and better climate models, diversification of transport, alternative fuels including biofuels and natural gas, where clean vehicles will facilitate the introduction of these fuels.

In the transport area, it is important to work with cities and agencies at the local and regional level as they need to use energy efficiently in their local transport. The transport RTD programme CIVITAS is oriented towards good practice in cities and the programme aims to illustrate efficient bench marking of better use of transport in the cities.

 The local and regional agencies have a crucial role in achieving a common understanding of the problems, partly raised here, and in the long term in identifying and establishing common objectives.

An enormous amount of energy is used to transport groceries and other household goods from producers to end-users. The share of energy used is equally divided between transport from producer to retailer and from retailer to end-users. Models show that a smoothly operated web-shopping system with a penetration level as low as 10% of purchased daily household goods will lower the energy consumption as well as CO2 and NOX emissions by 7-8%. If the use of web-shopping penetrated as much as 50% of the total household market, the reduction could be around 45-50%.

One of the problems was to change the consumption dynamics and to get people to shop on-line for daily household goods.

The project was funded by official money to 90% and the goal was to reduce transport use by 50% in a 10 years period.

In Genoa, many initiatives have been taken to achieve an integrated transport policy at the local level. Electronic parking is one aspect of this, where empty parking lots are clearly marked when they have spaces.

The planners also try to meet the need of the urban transport users by benchmarking different passenger transport systems. The city is planned so there is a priority for buses and an emphasis is put on changing people's behaviour.

Another large part of the policy is the use of GPS, public access terminals and roadside displays to manage the public transport fleet. This means that passengers never have to wait for a bus and can plan their journey without delays.

Genoa has electric vehicles with free charging points to test a fast battery recharging system. It takes only 45 minutes to recharge 80% of the battery capacity.

The use of taxis is also improved by using an "intelligent" taxi that has a sign on the roof indicating where it is going.

It has been shown that as a result of this work almost half of the daily movements in the city are made by local public transport.

The travel plans aim to reduce car dependency and reduce sustainable transport. The plan is site specific and demands strong partnership. The plan in Nottingham is oriented towards companies and their staff, therefore support from senior management is essential. It also has to be attractive to the staff and monitoring and evaluation is very important in order to ensure that the plan is continued efficiently. The following lessons were learnt during the project:

• Do not alienate the car driver
• Travel plans are problem-solvers
• Have realistic targets
• Need human resources
• Identify champions
• Marketing and money and health arguments win over environmental ones
• Keep it fun!

For urban freight transport, the logistic systems for freight and passengers are vital for the urban economy. There are however problems, for example pollution, noise, time loss, safety, hindrance of pedestrians, damage and intrusion into the urban core etc.

In 1997, trucks accounted for 10% of all transport operations in urban areas, but produced 40% of pollution and noise. The truck industry works hard to improve their negative image and impact on the environment. There are remaining problems, such as CO2 emissions, consumption of fossil fuels, congestion etc.

There have been important changes for urban goods transport, such as market globalisation, just-in-time logistics, increased welfare with environmental concern and technology. The effects that follow are, for example, centralization of manufacturing; cities become less self-supporting leading to higher transport demand. Urban logistics have to cater for customers that demand high product variety. In the transport sector this can lead to more frequent journeys with smaller vehicles and outsourcing of service activities - which in turn leads to a large increase in urban transport.

The reactions of the city authorities vary. They consider time and weight, dimensions restrictions for goods vehicles, urban distribution centres and congestion charging. Logistics is not local, but regulations are local and, moreover, not harmonised between regions and cities. However, restrictions may lead to the opposite of what is hoped to achieve. For example, not allowing large trucks in certain areas may lead to more frequent trips with smaller vehicles. Current needs are communication and co-operation with transport industry and other market parties, as well as harmonisation of restrictions. For policymakers, the involvement of private parties is essential in order to achieve a sustainable transport policy.

BESTUFS (www.bestufs.net) is a thematic network under the EU 5th Framework Programme, bringing together experts, projects, research results and stakeholders within one theme.

BESTUFS recommendations are formulated as follows. Goods transport should be incorporated and integrated in transport policy and urban planning, an overall approach, including passenger transport, in a policy mix with accompanying measures.

Copenhagen has introduced a City Goods' Ordinance that states that vans and lorries over 2 500 kg total weight must be 60% full and have an engine that is not more than eight years old. The main objective is to use the full capacity of the vans and lorries driving into medieval Copenhagen. This requirement for capacity utilization should lead to a reduction in the number and/or size of lorries and vans.

In 1996, 3500 vans and lorries made 6 000 daily trips in and out of medieval Copenhagen. The same year a working group was formed. In 1998 a voluntary test scheme started, and in 2000 a new traffic law was passed in Parliament. The ordinance consists of three types of certificates:

Green certificate: 60% capacity utilisation as average over a three-month period that is to be reported once every three months, only vehicles with engine younger than eight years, exclusive right to use attractive loading zones, the cost is 325 DKR and is valid for a two-year trial period.

Yellow certificate: A dispensation for those who cannot fulfil the green certificate, it costs 325 DKR and is valid for six months.

Red certificate: For those who rarely come to medieval Copenhagen. The certificate can be bought for 50 DKR, and is valid only for the day.

There is a stop-zone to every entrance into medieval Copenhagen where the drivers can read about the ordinance, and there are parking-guards employed to check lorries and vans for their certificates. 1 800 applications have been handled, 4 000 certificates issued, of which 900 are green, and 2 500 fines have been issued by parking-guards. The net costs is about 2 million DKR, but in reality cost-neutral due to the selling of certificates.

The effects are, amongst others, that 25% of all vehicles in the ordinance have a green certificate and the average weight of those with green certificates is over 7 000 kg. There are two types of transportation, goods transport and service transport. There has been a large increase in the amount of vans between 2 500 - 3 500 kg.

More information can be found on: www.citygods.dk

Discussion

Q How do the parking guards know what certificate belongs to whom?
A The certificates have the registration number and end-date on the certificate, which is visible. The ordinance makes people perhaps consider if they need many vehicles, or if one is enough.

Q But, what about the possibility that this may lead to newer cars in the centre and older in the rest of the city? And it could perhaps lead to smaller vehicles - but more frequent trips. In another large city, it might be better to encourage people to use larger vehicles instead. In Copenhagen, with the old and narrow streets, smaller vehicles are of course better. Perhaps the ordinance would have even greater impact if the certificate were more expensive.
A The "City Gods" cannot decide entirely on their own how much the certificates should cost.

The partner cities in the Zeus project are Stockholm (lead city), Athens, Bremen, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London Boroughs with the City of Coventry, Luxembourg and Palermo.

The aims of Zeus are to:

• develop infrastructure for CNG, LPG, ethanol, biogas and electric recharging
• introduce more than 1,000 alternatively fuelled vehicles and 600 'City' bikes
• develop the market for alternatively fuelled vehicles
• spread awareness of sustainable transport
• develop new intermodal transport facilities

The Zeus Project, funded under the EU Fifth Framework Programme, was concerned with the introduction of alternatively fuelled vehicles in order to tackle the major issues of global warming and air pollution. In order to help create a market in electric vehicles, the partners established the Zeus Procurement Consortium, ZPC, by which five cities undertook an international joint procurement of over 300 electric cars and vans. The procurement followed restrictive public procurement procedures and signed four Framework Agreements establishing terms and conditions of sale. The process was successful and had a significant impact on the development of the market for electric vehicles.

The Genoa project presented in the main session was discussed in more detail.

Leaving these issues aside, the first paper discussed the best way of looking at the availability, procurement and use of electric vehicles in the public sector. Initial investigations showed that purchase from established manufacturers was the best option and such cars and small load carrying vehicles were purchased and tested as pool cars for local authority staff use. The idea was to look at performance and bring these options to the attention of other possible users in the private sector by demonstrating their reliability. The vehicles have performed well around town and some have been adopted by postal services. In an ideal situation it would be of great benefit if families would buy such vehicles as second cars, since the use of these may be restricted to short journeys (shopping, taking children to and from school and so on), where pollution is increased as the engines/catalytic converters (if fitted, which may not be the case as such second cars may be older models with worn engines, which again increases pollution), do not have time to warm up. Cost of the new vehicles (compared to that of an old petrol car) as well as 'acceptability' of the concept of an electric car, still limit the extent of private take-up. However, this might increase as the local authority sells off used electric cars.

The second paper considered a range of measures (including the establishment of a light electric railway), where a common factor was the use of electronic recording and charging methods for controlling the number of private cars entering the city centre in Genoa. This including recording the passage of cars in various zones, recording parking costs (with parking away from the city centre linked to tickets to ride the train), recording the age of cars and restricting older (more polluting) cars from entering some zones. Some activities were linked to the use of portable (WAP) phones. Although not discussed, some suggested activities could raise questions as to the extent to which people might (not) want their movements to be monitored, as well as what would happen to people who did not want to have phones.

The main critical aspect connected to the overall implementation of Mobility Management (MM) measures is the difficulty in defining a common methodology for legislative and organisational assessment. Plenty of literature and initiatives deal with the technical aspects of MM but until recently adequate attention has not been dedicated to the institutional framework analysis. There is an outstanding need for innovative policies and measures that both public administration and private companies are encouraged to adopt in order to implement MM strategies.

In Italy, a national legislative strategy was adopted to introduce the MM concept on a wider scale. The legislation calls regions to develop their regional plan for air quality improvement and protection. It also establishes that firms and public authorities with more than 300 employees in a single unit or 800 in total should , appoint a mobility manager to adapt commuting plans for home-workplace routing for their employees. The mobility plans have to be submitted by the Municipality every year. It is very important to try to reduce the additional cost occurring in the company. There have been big problems in implementing the legislation as this usually incurs extra costs but the legislation does not include any punishment or fine for the companies that do not respect the decisions.

In Italy, 1200 mobility managers have been appointed. There has been discussion in Italy about their effectiveness. The funding allocated to these activities is 13 million Euros.

The general condition for success is a concerted policy of all mobility actors, such as collective transport operators, municipalities, ministries, agencies for mobility, associations of private companies and users. As seen in the Netherlands, the base has to be represented by an endogenous process of collaboration among key actors. A wide social base consensus platform actively promoting MM implementation has to be established both on a local and a European level. The legal and regulatory climate in Europe needs to be more conducive to innovation, while the regulatory and administrative obstacles to innovation remain too great, and further efforts are required.

More and more parents bring their children to school by car, which creates a lot of safety, environmental and health problems. To stop this trend and change the habits of parents and children there has to be a well-planned step-by-step approach. In Limburg, Belgium, the project to change the trend is divided into four sub-projects: school agreement, school travel plan, bicycle pool and car-free school days. To succeed with the implementation of the project a strong partnership between parents, school boards and teachers, pupils, police and the municipality is needed.

When attempting to cause a behaviour shift, it is important to influence the right group in the right way. Children can strongly influence their parents. The children got a badge every time they came to school without a car. Leaflets to inform the parents were important and a lot of support from school, via parent meetings, also had a big influence. The results is that today almost 100 schools are involved with around 14 000 pupils.

Bicycle pools were another way of reducing car journeys to school. Adults accompanied pools of children on their bikes. This raised an important issue of safe and environment-friendly ways of travelling to school. The project was considered to be fun and had a low threshold for implementation.

Another part of the project was the school travel plan. The plan triggered a continued attention to the issue of mobility in schools. It required engagement from all partners, realisation within a set time frame to maintain credibility of the project and brought about structured consultation with parents.

A general definition of mobility management is: Improving mobility effectively through employers introducing measures to influence the business related movement of their staff/employees to reduce avoidable solo-use of the car.

The concept of company mobility management originated in the USA, driven by the oil crisis of 1973 and air quality issues.

The Netherlands had a very ambitious start for MM during the year 1989-93 but congestion grew faster then expected. A McKinsey report at the time was clear "more utilization, less construction. Company mobility management is 15 times cheaper than road constructions".

During the period from 1997-2001, the experiences from CMM have been growing. The conclusions are:

• solve accessibility problems where they occur
  
• more influence from local and regional governments is needed
  
• CMM also helps environmental protection and energy conservation
  

Present government measures on a national level focus on: tax-benefits via travel allowance schemes for car-pooling, bicycle and public transport.

Present regional/local measures focus on improving alternatives such as public transport and cycling, location policy for businesses and facilities and regional CMM policy.

Some basic plans to get CMM started:

• Simple ideas prove to be effective - bicycles, car-pooling and public transport lead to a reduction of 6-8% of car use. Large Dutch companies are willing to accept the idea, possibility to make deals with local authorities.
  
• If there is acceptance from employers, develop promotion plans and materials, inform local and regional government in order to integrate CMM concept in policies. A pilot project could be applied in newly developed business areas.
  

Maria Alfayate, Clean Urban transport Unit, DG TREN, concluded that it had been an interesting day with many interesting, applicable topics and reminded the audience to use the European Local Transport Information Service, ELTIS (www.eltis.org).

The transport issue will also be a major topic at the annual conference.

This conference was broadcast live on the internet and the video on demand recording (click on "watch video" in the proceedings above) is now available. A parallel local media conference was held by CODEMA in Dublin, Ireland. A report of their experiences is available.

This workshop on Sustainable Transport is the first of a series of workshops organised by ManagEnergy within the process of facilitating global thinking on strategic, local issues. The aim of the workshop is to support local actors in their capacity building process and in their development of concrete replication strategies.

About three-quarters of the EU population live in urban areas. Over 30 percent of all transport kilometres are made in towns. According to estimations, around 80 percent of all external costs of transport in urban areas result from congestion. Energy consumption of transport in cities is rapidly increasing. In the EU, private cars and commercial vehicles are responsible for 98 percent of energy consumption and 10 percent of CO₂ emissions in urban transportation. The danger of unsustainable traffic growth and worsening living conditions, as well as political commitments such as the Kyoto agreement and the Europe initiative, emphasise the need for an integrated approach.

The need for radical change, based upon a mixture of technology and policy based measures, has been emphasised by the White Paper: European transport policy for 2010: time to decide adopted by the Commission in September 2001.