Transport underpins everything we do, from getting us to work and school, to taking us on holiday and bringing in food and clothes for us to buy.

But as transport systems expand and businesses globalise, we and our goods travel further and further every year, gobbling limited oil supplies and increasing greenhouse gas emissions just when we know we need to cut them – UK transport emissions have risen by 10% since 1990, and now stand at 22% of all emissions.

If we don’t make changes, transport growth will undermine all our other efforts to deal with climate change, not to mention blighting the lives of thousands affected by new roads and airports.

So can we make mobility sustainable? We believe so. There are many more solutions out there than you might think; what is needed is to raise awareness of them, and make them work commercially. In particular we need to remember that transport is not an end in itself, but a way of accessing people, goods and services: often this can be done without travelling, especially with the rapid development of information and communications technology.

How we work with our partners in the transport sector

Forum for the Future is working with both public and private sector partners to help them envision a sustainable transport future and start working towards it.

Our approaches include:

• Working with public transport partners (First Group, Eurostar) to help people to switch from cars and planes, and keep pushing down their own impacts.
• Working with the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) and the wider industry to develop a vision for a sustainable rail industry.
• Furthering the debate on the role of aviation in a sustainable world with our aviation partners (BAA, Virgin Atlantic), and looking at shorter term ways to manage the growing impact of air travel.
• Working with private sector partners to reduce the everyday transport impacts of distribution, servicing runs and staff commuting, and with public sector partners to develop real integrated transport solutions such as Access West: a sustainable mobility strategy for the West of England.
• Developing an approach to sustainable shipping, to help us know and reduce the footprints of our increasingly well travelled products.

For more information please contact Rupert Fausset at r.fausset@forumforthefuture.org.uk or on 020 7324 3629.

Our partners in the transport sector:

FirstGroup
Eurostar
Rail Safety and Standards Board
BAA
Virgin Atlantic Airways
Land Rover