Road
How Governments Can Bring Low-Emission Trucks to Our Roads – and Fast
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
13 December 2023
- Now or never. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, governments cannot let technological uncertainty be a barrier to action.
- Assess the likelihood. Governments need to carefully assess the likelihoods with which different technologies will deliver effective climate action. They must promote the most likely technologies, even with uncertainty.
- Bet on batteries. Battery-electric vehicles currently have the highest likelihood of successfully decarbonising road transport.
Shifting the Focus: Smaller Electric Vehicles for Sustainable Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
26 September 2023
- Shift the focus of policies that promote electric vehicles to end the dependency on large, under-used vehicles.
- Help make smaller electric vehicles an attractive choice for citizens.
- Ensure the transition to smaller electric vehicles goes in hand with adequate safety provisions.
- Fast-track the electrification of shared mobility services in complement with public transport.
- Ensure the availability of enough charging points to make electric mobility attractive.
Accessibility in the Seoul Metropolitan Area: Does Transport Serve All Equally?
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
1 August 2023
- Develop people-focused policies to improve accessibility.
- Measure the impacts of policies on access and equity.
- Enable conditions for people-focused transport policies.
The Freight Space Race: Curbing the Impact of Freight Deliveries in Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
5 December 2022
- Manage curb space with a focus on the needs of both passengers and goods transport.
- Apply access restrictions for delivery vehicles in urban areas while considering business practices.
- Use more logistics data to better monitor and manage freight flows.
Decarbonising Europe’s Trucks: How to Minimise Cost Uncertainty
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
4 September 2022
- Ensure that policies to promote direct electrification of trucks remain technology-neutral.
- Launch targeted studies and pilot projects to assess the merits of electric road systems for road freight decarbonisation.
- Further investigate decarbonisation technologies for particularly challenging road freight applications.
- Introduce policies that help zero-emission vehicles become cost-competitive sooner.
- Accelerate the deployment of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure.
- Strengthen regulations that make trucks more energy-efficient.
Mode Choice in Freight Transport
Research Report, Policy Insights,
27 February 2022
- Apply integrated policy approaches to create coherent interventions across freight-transport modes.
- Focus on mitigating external costs associated with each freight mode, rather than on modal shift as such.
- Improve the evaluation of policy interventions’ effectiveness to better inform measures that influence the choice of freight transport modes.
- Create fair competition between freight transport modes.
Micromobility, Equity and Sustainability
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
5 September 2021
- Base regulation on sustainable urban mobility policy objectives.
- Consult micromobility companies on public policy issues early and often to avoid distorting regulations.
- Apply outcome-based regulations linked to specific performance criteria.
- Ensure limits on market access allow competition; avoid static caps on shared micromobility vehicle fleets.
- Limit data-reporting requirements to information used for mobility planning.
- Set regulatory fees in light of the potential value of micromobility for sustainable mobility and the uncertain viability of business models.
- Support equitable and affordable micromobility services.
- Follow the principle of mode-neutrality when developping an urban transport system.
- Reallocate road and parking space to micromobility users, cyclists and pedestrians.
- Address motor vehicle speeds when regulating micromobility speed.
- Apply coherent regulation that treats micromobility operators equally.
- Adopt a permissive and adaptive regulatory approach to micromobility.
How Urban Delivery Vehicles can Boost Electric Mobility
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
9 December 2020
- Prioritise electrification of vehicles with high mileage and regular daily activity, including LCVs in last-mile delivery.
- Promote electric light commercial vehicles in cities and tightly regulate combustion-engine vehicles.
- Strengthen fuel economy standards, zero-emission mandates and economic incentives for light commercial vehicles.
- Define regulatory requirements and clarify costs for upgrades to the electricity grid needed for electric vehicles.
- Use vehicle design and components of electric passenger cars to unlock price reductions of electric light commercial vehicles.
- Strengthen co-operation among stakeholders to reduce investments risks for the manufacturing of electric light commercial vehicles.
Regulations and Standards for Clean Trucks and Buses
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
14 September 2020
- Ensure that vehicle safety regulations and standards for electric and hydrogen cover all classes of road vehicles and better differentiate between light and heavy vehicles.
- Leverage the experience of international regulatory fora to extend the coverage of safety-related requirements to heavy electric vehicles.
- Ensure that the scope of regulations on the safety of hydrogen-powered heavy vehicles addresses aspects that are currently not adequately considered.
- Involve diverse transport and energy stakeholders in the development of charging standards for electric heavy vehicles.
- Address missing elements in regulations and standards related to electric road systems.
- Develop hydrogen refuelling protocols for heavy vehicles using gaseous storage at 70 MPa, new nozzles and instruments guaranteeing compliance with stringent fuel quality requirements.
- Increase the focus of pre-normative research on the safe use of low- and zero emission vehicles with existing vehicle infrastructure, especially for hydrogen-powered options.
- Harmonise regulations on tailpipe GHG emissions and energy consumption of heavy vehicles, also integrating instruments evaluating energy use for low- and zero-emission vehicles.
- Fully integrate electricity and hydrogen into regulatory policies on low-carbon fuels.
- Address non-regulated pollutants and integrate hydrogen-powered vehicles using internal combustion engines in regulations on tailpipe pollutant emissions.
- Address the environmental performance of vehicle batteries with regulatory innovation targeting their durability, carbon footprint and the sustainability of associated supply chains.
- Develop an internationally harmonised regulatory framework for the application of differentiated road charges and access restrictions based on environmental performances of vehicles.
Transport Innovations from the Global South
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
6 November 2019
- Update transport policy and regulation to accommodate innovation that can contribute to economic growth and make transport more sustainable.
- Cooperate with research and industry, coordinate with all government levels.
- Leave room for bottom up innovation through a light regulatory touch.
- Be ready to facilitate discussion between innovative actors and traditional operators.
- Foster innovation in the delivery of concessioned transport services.
- Support change and build on existing cultural practices in order to improve quality of life for all.
- Create innovation sandboxes/living labs.
- Look beyond transport towards non-traditional policy matters.
Benchmarking Accessibility in Cities
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
19 May 2019
- Use the new urban accessibility framework to compare and benchmark cities.
- Improve accessibility by reducing trip lengths and enhancing transport performance.
- Learn from similar cities with higher accessibility scores.
- Collect more and better urban mobility data, notably on walking and cycling.
Повышение торгово-транспортной связности и развитие грузоперевозок в Центральной Азии
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
13 May 2019
- Улучшение транспортного сообщения на местном уровне наряду с развитием международных коридоров.
- Установление цен на транзитные перевозки, покрывающих все связанные с ними расходы.
- Реформирование системы финансирования дорожно-ремонтных работ и инвестиций в дорожные сети.
- Привлечение частных инвестиций исходя из соображений экономической эффективности.
- Содействие в формировании современной логистической отрасли.
- Внедрение передового опыта в сфере транспортного планирования.
- Установление стандартов деятельности для таможенных органов.
- Упорядочение регионального и международного сотрудничества.
Enhancing Connectivity and Freight in Central Asia
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
13 May 2019
- Enhance local connectivity along with improvement of international corridors.
- Price transit traffic to cover its full costs.
- Reform road investment and maintenance funding.
- Pursue private investments for cost efficiency.
- Support the creation of a modern logistics sector.
- Institutionalise best practices in transport planning.
- Set performance standards for customs.
- Straighten regional and international cooperation.
High Capacity Transport
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
1 May 2019
- Use the potential of High Capacity Vehicles to increase transport efficiency, reduce traffic volumes, lower emissions and achieve better safety outcomes.
- Use well-monitored trials to introduce High Capacity Vehicles on a road network.
- Configure High Capacity Vehicles for the specific area in which they will operate.
Policies to Extend the Life of Road Assets
Research Report, Policy Insights,
20 December 2018
- Introduce a proactive approach for the maintenance of road assets.
- Build a proactive, data-driven approach to the maintenance of road assets.
- Strive for continuous professionalisation in road asset management.
- Move from managing the assets to cross-asset management.
- Adopt regulatory frameworks that treat the use of road assets as an economic input.
- Implement infrastructure pricing for trucks to improve cost recovery.
- Better understand the reasons for non-compliance with truck weight limits.
- Focus on positive incentives for efficiency in regulatory and compliance frameworks.
- Develop use cases and business models for the digital infrastructure of truck traffic management.
- Create incentives for the logistics sector to implement truck traffic management.
- Improve awareness of the mutual impact that policies have on the environmental performance of road freight transport and extending the lifespan of road assets.
- Focus on creating a comprehensive regulatory environment rather than on individual measures.
Cooperative Mobility Systems and Automated Driving
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
2 May 2018
- Shared mobility is still a relatively new field but is progressing rapidly. With business models and preferred technologies still in flux, policy makers need to prepare considered responses to these developments without delay.
- Service concepts and technology currently and on the brink of being explored need to consider a range of design domain restrictions, dependencies on infrastructure, operating principles and user interfaces.
- Specific service concepts should be matched to specific operational environments, on a detailed local level as well as across continents and cultures.
- Government action will affect how automated vehicles will impact society. Existing approaches will not be appropriate for long. Their understanding and input will help to balance the debate on whether AVs can indeed alleviate a series of stubborn problems.
Managing the Transition to Driverless Road Freight Transport
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
30 May 2017
- Continue driverless truck pilot projects to test vehicles, network technology and communications protocols.
- Set international standards, road rules and vehicle regulations for self-driving trucks.
- Establish a temporary transition advisory board for the trucking industry.
- Consider a temporary permit system to manage the speed of adoption and to support a just transition for displaced drivers, while ensuring fair access to markets.
Data-led Governance of Road Freight Transport
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
30 May 2017
- Use currently available data within existing frameworks.
- Consider a completely new data-driven regulatory approach.
- Develop cross-sectoral approaches to data handling and processing.
- Investigate the best uses of new technologies, systems, and data science.
- Investigate applicability of wider and less structured big data sets.
- Consider impacts of automation of road freight vehicles.