Paving the way to sustainable mobility

National climate commitments to date will not be sufficient to keep global warming to below 2°C. Transportation has the highest growth of CO2 emissions of any industrial sector. The UN Conference in Paris (2015) recognized the importance to build more sustainable, green and smart transport systems. Increased environmental pressure impacts on a number of interrelated socio-economic and technological trends. Although mobility is essential to the functioning of European society it does, at the same time, presents major problems in terms of congestion, safety and environmental impact. Transport is a complex system that depends on multiple factors, including infrastructure availability, level of services, advances in technology, socio-economic needs (European Commission, 2009). The performance of the transport system is influenced by several different key drivers and has itself an effect on mobility, passenger transport and corresponding framework developments in the future. In order to understand all the significant relationships in context, one has to consider the key drivers that have an effect on changing mobility behavior and the transport system. Therefore this paper presents the results of an analysis of the future trends based on demand/behavior factors.
For the forecast of trends, the Delphi Method was used to identify key mega-trends, the most predominant of all proved to be the ‘Development of large metropolitan areas’ which according to the participating experts is expected to be the most challenging trend with a great impact on mobility. Delphi method is also used to determine the relation between the selected key drivers grouped in clusters representing the social, economic and environment trends. In this paper, sustainable mobility is defined as: “A sustainable transport system is one that is accessible, safe, environmentally-friendly, and affordable” (Ministers of Transport, 2004)