Redesigning Ireland’s Transport for Net Zero
Towards Systems that Work for People and the Planet
Current mobility patterns in Ireland are incompatible with the country’s target to halve emissions in the transport sector by 2030. While important, electrification and fuel efficiency improvements in vehicles are insufficient to meet Ireland’s ambitious target: large behavioural change in the direction of sustainable modes and travel reductions are needed. Such changes will only be possible if policies can shift Irish transport systems away from car dependency. Building on the OECD process “Systems Innovation for Net Zero” and extensive consultation with Irish stakeholders, this report assesses the potential of implemented and planned Irish policies to transform car-dependent systems. It identifies transformative policies that can help Ireland transition to sustainable transport systems that work for people and the planet. It also provides recommendations to scale up such transformative policies and refocus the electrification strategy so that it fosters, rather than hinders, transformational change.
Glossary of terms
Accessibility results from the interaction of mobility and proximity (Silva and Larsson, 2018[1]). The term implies that well-being does not ultimately depend on how often and how far people can travel but on their ability to meet their needs with ease, including by not having to travel long distances, if at all. Accessibility can be measured in a number of ways, including the number of opportunities which can be reached within a given travel time, distance or cost; or the (average) time/cost required to gain access to a fixed number of opportunities from a given location. “Connectivity” is sometimes used instead of what in this report we define as accessibility, while “accessibility” may be used to mean ease of access for those with mobility impairments.
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