A covenant of halflings? developing a roadmap for the european urban transport goal

In the 2011 Transport Policy White Paper, the European Commission introduced ten goals for a more competitive and resource efficient transport system. One of the goal concerns urban transport, with the dual targets: “To halve the use of ‘conventionally-fuelled’ cars in urban transport by 2030; and to phase them out by 2050; and “To achieve ‘essentially CO2- free city logistics’ in major urban centres by 2030.” This paper describes how the EU FP7 project TRANSFORUM conducted a stakeholder-driven process to produce a roadmap for the urban transport goal.

A main conclusion was that the implementation of a roadmap for urban transport needs to adopt a broad and open approach, given the diversity among member states and cities across Europe. Also it was found that replacing conventional vehicles and fuels is an important but not sufficient strategy to reach the goal.

A roadmap to reach towards the ‘halving’ goal would need to engage many cities in shared political commitments to generate a stronger momentum for change. The notion of a ‘Covenant of Halflings’ would be one way to express this need.