The Annual International Transport Forum Summit will take place on May 21-23 2014, in Leipzig, Germany.  The theme for the 2014 ITF Summit is“Transportation in a Changing World”. 

The SLoCaT Partnership representatives will blog live from the International Transport Forum on sustainable transport related discussions.  We had three persons blogging: Cornie Huizenga (Secretary General of SLoCaT Partnership), Heather Allen (Sustainable Transport Director of Transport Research Laboratory), Michael Replogle (Managing Director Policy & Founder of Insitute for Transportation and Development Policy)

           

  Cornie Huizenga                     Heather Allen                    Michael Replogle

Financing Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport – an uncompleted, but critical, agenda to realize sustainable development by Cornie Huizenga, Thursday, May 15

The sustainable transport community got a boost on 4-5 May at the Ascent Meeting in Abu Dhabi, which was an important staging post for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit on 23 September in New York.  Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has decided to engage directly on climate change to help ensure that the new climate change agreement that is to be agreed in December 2015 in Paris, France will be sufficiently ambitious.

6 Transport related initiatives were presented in Abu Dhabi divided over 4 impact areas: transportation; cities; energy; and short-lived climate pollutants.  The 6 initiatives reflect well the growing consensus that effective action on transport needs to combine an expansion of transport infrastructure and services with a reduction of the negative externalities of transport including greenhouse gas emissions. If success fully implemented these Ascent transportation initiatives will result in an expansion of railways that at the same time will be more energy efficient; wider use of public transport through amongst other Bus Rapid Transit systems; accelerated introduction of electric vehicles in urban areas; improved fuel efficiency of new light duty car fleets; and greater action on the greening of freight and logistics. Read More…