Transport underpins everything we do, from getting us to work and school, to taking us on holiday and distributing 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, 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.

And it's not just about climate change. Our addiction to oil-fuelled transport has to be radically reversed, as we face the end of the easy oil supplies we have taken for granted and the realisation grows that we may well face a peak and decline in oil availability within a decade. It is quite likely that the oil price spike of 2008 was merely a dress rehearsal for the main event, and any organisation whose operations, suppliers or customers remain heavily dependent on oil for transport will be increasingly vulnerable.

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.

In a sustainable future we may well travel less, as well as smarter.

Our work

Forum for the Future works with a broad range of partners to help them envision and make progress towards a sustainable transport future. Our work focusses on four areas:

• Sustainable places. We bring public, private and voluntary organisations together to identify the initiatives and infrastructure that will make a  significant contribution to cutting transport impacts and improving health and community linkage within a region. As part of our Sustainable Bristol work we have helped introduce a new website to encourage walking. We developed a sustainable mobility strategy for the West of England (Access West).
• Sustainable journeys. We want to make it easier to travel by low-carbon methods and reduce the enviornmental impact of vehicles. Our Overland Heaven project aims to make low-carbon journeys acorss Europe mainstream. And we are working with FirstGroup and the Rail Safety and Standards Board on reducing the environmental impact of bus and rail operations. 
• Sustainable organisations. Whether they're running schools, hospitals, supermarkets or offices, businesses and public sector organisations both need and generate transport. We work with them to understand and manage the impact of these operations. We are working with retail sector partners to help them to understand and reduce the full range of transport impacts from their business, including import, distribution, staff and customer travel.
• Aviation. We don't shrink from one of the toughest transport challenges: the role of aviation in a sustainable world. We work with aviation sector organisations on understanding and managing the current and future impacts of and options for the industry, and on visualising and realising alternatives, for example via the Low Carbon Living 2022 and Overland Heaven projects.

Our partners

BAA
Eurostar
FirstGroup
Rail Safety a
Jaguar Land Rover
Rail Safety and Standards Board  (RSSB)

Contact

Rupert Fausset

Image: Timothy Passmore