Transport and Covid-19: responses and resources

Sustainable Transport Systems Initiative

Sustainable Transport Systems Initiative
This initiative promotes sustainable transport, helping to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It identifies the challenges governments face in developing sustainable transport policies and supports policy makers to implement solutions.

Prosperity requires access to opportunities. Alongside proximity and virtual connectivity, transport connects people with opportunities. But transport uses finite resources, like energy and space, and exacerbates the climate emergency through greenhouse gas emissions and local pollutants.

Transport is relevant to achieving each of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as it provides vital access to opportunities. To meet current needs without comprising the future, transport policies must be consistent with health, environmental, and decarbonisation objectives, and use resources sustainably. This is the principle of Sustainable Transport.

The Sustainable Transport Systems Initiative engages and mobilises stakeholders. Using systemic analysis based on ITF's world-class models, it identifies options to overcome challenges to achieving sustainable transport. The project supports dialogue between actors in the system to offer implementable solutions for policy makers. It is an example of collective problem-solving. 

Each project within this initiative follows a four-step process:
Step 1. Identify specific challenges countries are facing
Engaging with ITF’s Transport Research Committee, surveying ITF's member countries, and building on previous ITF work. These challenges may be globally relevant or specific to a region.

Step 2. Propose options by mapping systemic relationships between different sectors
ITF’s world-leading PASTA framework includes indicators to assess welfare and SDGs. Indicators related to SDGs include local pollutants, safety, congestion, vehicle space consumption, accessibility, affordability and resilience. The project also works to expand ITF models to include indicators that relate to more SDGs and welfare assessment enabled by transport. This phase exposes the interactions, independencies, and tensions between different policy areas to achieve common goals.

Step 3: Mobilise the system of actors across government, industry and NGOs
Sustainability challenges cannot be resolved by the transport sector alone. It requires action and alignment from policy makers from transport and non-transport actors.

Step 4: Dialogues identify actions and support implementation for each challenge
Transport and non-transport sectors are mobilised through ITF's strategic relationships, bringing them together in dialogue focused on implementation.

Projects already under development include:

The Sustainable Transport Systems Initiative is an evolution of ITF’s Decarbonising Transport initiative