Energy consumption and urban transport: toward a new rationality

Panel: Panel 6: Transportation, Urban Planning and Land Use

Authors:
Yves Crozet, Laboratoire d'Economie des Transport de Lyon
Marc Perez, Laboratoire d'Economie des Transport de Lyon

Abstract

Urban car traffic, with "traffic jam" and low vehicle occupancy, represents an obvious waste of energy. To face up to this problem, one needs to overcome the economic ?good sense? which says to increase simply the price of car driving. For that, we propose a twofold process:

1. The "wastmg rational" : a traffic-jam preference? After a reminder of the relationships between activities, localisation, and mobility, we propose a comparison between social external costs of automobile and an estimation of individual car users benefits. Such a monetization in the case of France will show the possibility of an implicit preference for traffic-jam and wasting energy: this waste of energy corresponds to rational economical choices by individuals.

2 Towards a new rationality? In his recommendations for a more sustainable mobility, the economist proposes generally an internalisation of the environmental costs. But this cannot be sufficient to change the implicit preferences for traffic-jams. More precisely, such an increase of urban transport prices, would not be socially bearable, if it were not integrated into a new global city planmng process: better &tblic transport, rehabilitation of city centres with less room for cars, diversification of activities, ethnic and social makeup, limiting of large commercial centres in suburban areas, and control of urbanisation with green belts.

Thus, our paper will attempt to demonstrate how the search for a new rationality must face up to a fundamental difficulty. On the one hand, the preferences for day-to-day living naturally tend to obey individualism. One the other hand, the preferences for sustainable development in a finite world with more friendliness, impose a minimum of collective organisation, only possible in a well living democracy.