Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil

This focuses on changing oil-based patterns of transport through the early adoption of electric vehicles and grid-based systems. The authors note that “…we are alarmed, but we also are confident that solutions exist to deal with our predicament” and solutions to redesign transport could “…begin today with good planning and effective leadership” (page 10).

The introduction explains the book’s goals and intended audience, including government officials, forward-looking businesses and transport students. To ground the subsequent discussion, Chapter 1 gives an analysis of past transport revolutions (including high-speed rail in Japan and France and transformations in air freight and passenger jets). Current patterns of passenger and freight transport are discussed in Chapter 2, with data from the US, EU and China as well as some low- and middle-income cities.

In Chapter 3, on the links between transport and energy, the authors advance several important arguments. They suggest that supply constraints contributed to high oil prices in 2008 and argue that peak oil is likely by 2012; also that the 2008 oil price shocks indicate that “…high oil prices bring the very real risk of devastating economic depression” (page 129). They suggest that high oil prices can serve as a useful warning to alter current patterns. Policy makers are urged to respond with prompt anticipatory measures to reduce oil consumption, particularly in the transport sector, and electric vehicles and grid-based systems are the best alternative. Gilbert and Perl argue that electric motors can “substantially replace” internal combustion engines in the next 20–30 years (page 146) and the chapter also includes some discussion of how sufficient electricity for transport may be generated.
Chapter 4 reviews the adverse impacts of transport at global scale (including its role in climate change), as well as its local/regional environmental effects and socioeconomic impacts. The chapter closes with a table assessing the relative strengths of different passenger and freight modes (page 222). Chapter 5 discusses how to revolutionize freight and passenger transport so that by 2025, richer countries can reduce their use of liquid fuels for transport by 40 per cent below 2007 levels while low- and middle-income nations can increase their use of liquid fuels for transport by at most 25 per cent (page 228). The chapter focuses on achieving transport revolutions in the US and in China, selected because they are the “most challenging cases” of higher- and lower-income nations and currently the top two consumers of oil (page 224). The authors sketch scenarios to achieve a 51 per cent reduction in the US’s per capita oil consumption by 2025 and a 13 per cent increase in China’s (which would fall after 2025). Chapter 6 concludes with a discussion of the global economic crisis and highlights the role of political leadership to ensure a sustainable way forward.