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Policy

Shrinking Cars, Big Benefits: What a New Global Analysis Found

Cars have been growing in size (sometimes referred to as car bloat), with SUVs growing from around 20% of global vehicle sales in 2008 to more than half in 2022. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and the University of California, Davis have recently published an analysis looking at the impacts of this trend across 6 countries.

Key Takeaways

• The analysis looked at 6 countries: Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and the USA.
• Five plausible scenarios for urban passenger transport in 2050 were examined:
  • Business as Usual (BAU): Current trends; increased car travel in most countries, slow electrification, rapid growth of vehicle sizes.
  • Mode Shift (Only): Increased walking, cycling, and public transport.
  • High EV (Only): Rapid vehicle electrification.
  • Small Vehicles (Only): Smaller physical size of new vehicles relative to BAU, maintaining vehicle sizes at 2020 levels.
  • Shift+EV+Small: Combined Mode Shift, Electrification, and Small Vehicles.
• Scenarios limiting the growth in vehicle size have significantly fewer negative impacts:
  • 19% to 22% reductions in consumer spending requirements.
  • An 11-14% reduction in liquid fuel requirements
  • An 8-12% reduction in electricity consumption
  • A 12-14% reduction in battery requirements
  • An 8-9% reduction in traffic deaths
  • A 4-10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
• These positive results also applied in scenarios with ambitious electrification and/or mode shift.
• Mode Shift measures could save a total of 1,500,000 lives and reduce road traffic deaths by 40% annually by 2050.
• Small Vehicles and Mode Shift can mitigate the increasing demand for energy and batteries.
• Greenhouse gas emissions can be significantly reduced through both mode shift and high EV strategies.
• A scenario with smaller vehicles would help implement a High EV scenario by reducing the cost, infrastructure, and materials needed for rapid electrification.
• Smaller vehicles bring other benefits that were not quantified, reducing the destruction of natural areas and farmland, reducing urban noise and freeing up road space for other uses.

Comment

Most countries are already struggling to replace their existing energy supplies with zero-carbon sources. The electrification of transport means they need to greatly increase their electricity production, making the transition harder.

Reducing energy demand from transport, through smaller vehicles and mode shift to more energy-efficient modes, will make the transition easier and bring many other benefits.

Unfortunately, most countries are ignoring the problems of car bloat.

What Next?

Are you looking at policies to address car bloat?

Policy

On the Right Track: The UK Rail Industry's AI Action Plan

Artificial Intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in our transport systems, including in rail. The UK's rail industry has recently published its AI action plan.

Key Takeaways

• The purpose of the action plan is to align the sector around industry foundations that support safe and scalable AI adoption and accelerate delivery.
• The focus is on system-level enablement, recognising that many of the highest value opportunities and foundations span organisational and functional boundaries.
• The plan identifies a set of opportunity areas where AI can deliver meaningful benefits:
  • Passenger and customer experience
  • Network operations
  • Network planning
  • Rolling stock asset management
  • Infrastructure asset management
  • Enterprise-level applications
• These areas reflect where improved understanding, prediction, decisions and actions can strengthen reliability, efficiency and service quality.
• Foundational enablers:
  • Data infrastructure - Shared data foundations are fundamental to allowing AI models to be trained, validated and used consistently across the railway.
  • Commercial structures - AI adoption depends on contracting models that support iterative development, shared data usage, model transparency and long-term maintainability.
  • Governance and ethics - Guide whether and how AI should be used by setting expectations and boundaries.
  • Regulation and assurance - Determine whether AI can be deployed safely and consistently in operations.
  • Workforce and skills - AI adoption depends on a capable workforce that understands how tools work and how to use them responsibly.
  • Strategic partnerships - To build sector capability, the industry requires access to leading expertise from across academia, technology companies, industry bodies and innovation centres.
  • Compute and model development - AI development requires compute capacity, tools and shared development environments.
• Progress is achieved through pathfinders. They operate in real environments and address operational, engineering or customer realities. Pathfinders generate evidence, reusable artefacts and delivery patterns that inform wider adoption.
• Implementation is structured across three horizons of impact that operate in parallel:
  • Acceleration of existing solutions with proven value
  • Strengthening shared enablers for adoption
  • Incubation through first principles pathfinders that deepen understanding of where AI can be applied effectively and what is required to support scale.
• To create the capability for sustained delivery, GBRX has founded the sector’s first Artificial Intelligence Incubator Accelerator (AIIA).

Comment

Before AI's recent rise, there were existing technologies that many national rail industries had been slow to adopt, for example, in more data-led proactive asset management.

Will AI prove any different? The action plan is a good start, but it will need to be relentlessly driven forward by senior leaders to overcome the inevitable barriers to adoption.

What Next?

Would your sector of the transport industry benefit from a similar AI action plan?

Policy

Crisis as Catalyst: Fuel Shocks, Active Travel, and the Case for Better Infrastructure

The conflict in the Middle East has increased oil prices and is changing transport choices. This paper from the ITLS at the University of Sydney has some early results on the impact in New South Wales, Australia, and the policy implications.

Key Takeaways

• The paper surveyed how people have responded to the crisis and how they expect to respond to future fuel price scenarios.

• Households with hybrid vehicles are more likely to continue driving as before during a fuel crisis than households with fewer or no hybrid vehicles.
• EV ownership increases the likelihood that households respond to fuel crises by reallocating vehicles within the household rather than reducing trips.
• Fuel price increases tend to lead households to selectively reduce discretionary travel before reducing all trips.
• The fuel crisis disproportionately affects lower-income households, who are more likely to reduce driving or restructure travel behaviour in response to fuel shocks.
• Short-run behavioural responses differ markedly from long-run adjustments, with immediate trip reductions much stronger than gradual adaptations such as EV purchase or mode switching.
• Remote work and public transport play an important but largely short-lived role, amplifying short-run reductions, but declining in influence in the long run.
• The key policy takeaway is that fuel pricing is a short-run signal and selective rationing tool.
• Long-run resilience depends on structural adaptation, especially vehicle technology, income buffering, and access to alternative modes.
• Policies that integrate pricing with technology transition and equity safeguards are far more likely to achieve durable mobility, energy security, and emissions outcomes than price-based measures alone.

Comment

Whilst the paper focuses on the impacts on driving and car technology, I found the increase in walking, cycling, and scooting (16%) to be interesting, given that NSW does not have great walking and cycling infrastructure and spends very little of its transport budget on it.

This shows the potential for what could be achieved and strengthens the case for pop-up bicycle lanes to support this mode shift.

What Next?

What policy opportunities does the crisis open up to improve your local transport system?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​How Singapore's car-lite strategy has panned out over 12 years - A news article looking at Singapore's transport policies.
• ​Toward sustainable urban freight: A two-stage station-network design framework for metro-based underground logistics system - A research paper looking at how metros could be used to support urban freight deliveries.
• ​We Must Price and Manage The Curb Before Robo-Taxis and Other AVs Scale Up - A blog looking at how we should manage the curb in an age of robotaxis.

Podcast

Road Safety - Overcoming Barriers

The latest Transport Leaders podcast is the third part of our road safety series. In this episode, we discuss why, if we know what works in road safety, we aren't doing it.

You can listen here​

You can watch here​

Seminar

Shifting Modes

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Last week, I gave a presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance on mode shift and its implications for high-speed rail. You can view it here.