'Transport poverty' is a new buzzword. I recommend no longer using this. There is certainly poverty in the Netherlands, because we have food banks and thirty-two thousand 'registered' homeless people, in reality more. Six percent of Dutch population lives below… Read More
Five topics are kept off the table in the debate about mobility policy. Taboos are very effective in influencing policies. Relevant topics are kept out of publicity and off the political agenda. It is no surprise that these five taboos are in the interest of the mobility lobby.
- Car mobility doesn’t grow anymore in the urban regions of Western-Europe. See Car mobility decreases in the Netherlands.
- Mobility has a huge unpaid bill. For the EU-28 the external and infrastructure costs not covered by taxes and charges amount up to 900 billion euro per year. See this recent study for the European Commission.
- Road congestion is inevitable in urban regions. See The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion
- Increasing urban density is a cheap and effective way to improve accessibility. See this study of the International Transport Forum.
- Metropolitan areas are the appropriate government level to improve accessibility and not the national government.
This is a short summary of my blog in Dutch.