Good To Go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic

Good To Go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic is part of LPP’s Perspectives series, which is edited by Diane Coyle.

Travel is central to our lives. The transport system brings us the goods and services that we need and allows us to access the experiences and opportunities that we seek. Yet our transport system has many problems: congestion and overcrowding, noise, air pollution and carbon emissions, deaths and injuries, and the intrusion of vehicles into unsuitable locations. Much effort and money has been devoted to tackling these problems, over many years, but progress is slow.

Recognition of the urgent need to respond to climate change is prompting major transport developments – particularly a switch to electric vehicles – and it is also argued that the amount of travel we undertake will need to be reduced. The coronavirus pandemic caused a great shock to our travel patterns, showing us that we could manage with much less movement if we had to. But as the pandemic recedes, our travel behaviour is largely reverting to what it was before, albeit with less commuting to work and less shopping in person.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the transport system. It looks at how it has developed, at how it will need to evolve to meet our need for travel – sustainably and economically – and at what our options are for meeting those needs.

Praise for Good To Go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic

“David Metz is a true guru in the field of understanding transport behaviours, and anything he writes is worth reading. The path of pandemic recovery, and the burning platform of decarbonisation, have highlighted the existential importance of under­standing how and why people travel in this rapidly changing world, and as such David’s insight is more important than ever.”

— Isabel Dedring, Global Transport Leader, Arup, and
former Deputy Mayor for Transport, London

“This is a tour de force survey from one of our most thoughtful transport experts. He shows how the car will remain important and how transport planners and modellers keep focusing on the wrong thing in looking at time savings. Decarbonising will thus require a new way of thinking; no easy answers but lots of options.”

— Bridget Rosewell, Commissioner, National Infrastructure Commission

“If there were any justice in the world, David Metz would be carried around London in a golden palanquin, rather than, as he admits in the book, driving a 2004 Fiat Punto. The author has been consistently right about transport for many years, in the face of collective insanity from transport policymakers. His central insight about what people value from transportation is revelatory, and could perhaps have prevented many billions from being squandered in misdirected investment.”

—Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy UK and co-author of
Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

See also the following Transport Planning Society blog post, with a Q&A session with the author:

https://tps.org.uk/transport-planning-day-and-campaign/read-our-blogs/qanda-from-david-metz-following-the-launch-of-his

David Metz is an honorary professor in the Centre for Transport Studies, University College London, where his research focuses on how demographic, behavioural and technological factors influence travel demand. He spent part of his career as a senior civil servant in a number of UK government departments, both as policy advisor and scientist, including five years as Chief Scientist at the Department of Transport.