American Dream

The White Paper "European transport policy for 2010: time to decide" [see below] published in 2001 sets out a strategy for a sustainable transport system. A key objective of the paper is to shift the balance of transport in Europe from road and aviation towards rail, shipping and intermodal operations by 2010. But is this realistic? Now we know.

A taboo-breaking conference was organized on July 12th in the European Parliament in the presence of Jacques BARROT, Commissioner for Transport, in addition to European industry, e.g. Nokia, with eye-opening contributions. A taxpayer initiative was also launched.

The straw that broke the camel's back was a new study presented by Professor Rémy Prud'homme. It concluded unequivocally that:
* Modal shift from road to rail is impossible and even attempting it will undermine Europe's prosperity. Road transports account for more than 85% and rail transports for a mere 4%. Even doubling rail transports — through massive subsidies to the rail — would reduce road transports by only about 5%, its increase in two or three years.
* Decoupling transport growth from economic growth is a well-meaning but wrong target. We need to decouple the negative consequences of traffic, not traffic itself so long as it is sustainable.
* Many environmental effects of the roads are "threatened by extinction" through tougher standards. Besides, railways are far from being clean, just think of the coal mountains burnt to generate electricity... CO2 needs to be dealt with, but not more harshly in transports than in other sectors of society.
* Roads generate radically more tax revenue than they receive in investments. The very opposite is true for railways. And still we go on discriminating against roads, regardless of their indisputably higher social benefits.

The conclusion of the conference is crystal clear: the current European transport policy steers towards a prohibitively expensive and inefficient utopian ideal.

Ari Vatanen comments: "For much too long European transport policy has been based on myths. The time has come to recognise the facts and stop wasting people's money. Dreams about modal shift from the road to the railways can only handicap Europe without actually leading anywhere. That is why I, together with the Taxpayers Association of Europe, have launched a Transport Commitment to Taxpayers (TCT). I hope as many as possible decision-makers in the transport sector have the courage to sign this commitment. We must finally take action - the mobility and prosperity of Europe are at stake."

Further information:
+32 2 2847995,
avatanen@europarl.eu.int and
http://www.arivatanen.com

Transport Commitment to Taxpayers (MS Word .doc format, 32.5 KB)

Seven questions and answers (MS Word .doc format, 433 KB)

Comprehensive transport report July 2005 (Adobe Acrobat .pdf format, 552 KB)

The items above rebut and respond to the white paper at the link below:

EU WHITE PAPER: European transport policy for 2010:
time to decide (Adobe Acrobat .pdf format, 1.07 MB)