Sustainable transport in rural areas Post navigation

It seems that when talking about sustainable mobility one always thinks of a big city with a lot of people, traffic, a wide range of public transport, and where almost everything one needs can be found within the city itself or in your metropolitan area.

But what happens in the villages? Don't rural areas suffer from unsustainability problems? Where the population is much less dense, more geographically dispersed and where not all services can be found in a single town, what are the alternatives to the car?

A few weeks ago, one of our readers wrote to us commenting that most of our articles focused on mobility in large cities and that he missed some analysis of the problem in rural areas. As he was undoubtedly right, we accepted his proposal, which we publicly thank here, and we began to think about it. The result is this article, which hopefully is the first of many on transport in rural areas.

Preliminary considerations

The fact that the sustainable mobility debate talks more about cities than rural areas is no coincidence. This is because the data shows that it is there where the bulk of the problem is concentrated and where, although it is not easy, it is less difficult to tackle it.

This is so because the population grows and is increasingly concentrated in increasingly large cities and it is road passenger transport in metropolitan areas that is proportionally more unsustainable and easier to replace, Since most of the trips are short distances, instead of using low-occupancy cars, they could be done on foot, by bike or by public transport.

That said, it is true that the problems and solutions for rural areas should not be ignored. Given that the subject raised in this way in a generic way is very broad, I have tried in this article to focus on a review of the different sustainable mobility options that I have grouped by travel distance.

Let's face it, since transportation is a derived demand (that is, it is a means and not an end in itself, with few exceptions), the most sustainable trips are those that don't happen. Therefore, the first measure for more sustainable mobility in both towns and cities would be to reduce the need to move. That is to say, that everything we need to satisfy our human needs (subsistence, work, leisure, social relationships, etc.) is "nearby".

There is a part of this need that is individual responsibility, since whoever wants to move in a more sustainable way should always ask themselves if they need to make that trip at all (or if perhaps it is enough to call by phone or do the management online) or if You can make it shorter (for example, by buying bread in your town and not in the one next door).

The other part is the responsibility of the administrations and has to do with the structure of the territory and land use.

But nowadays there are always things that need to move. Therefore, here are some ideas to improve the efficiency of those trips in rural areas.

Through the town: short distances

Towns, due to their small size and little traffic, are perfect for active mobility. Walking or cycling should be the first option to move within the municipality.

For example, initiatives such as pedibus or school routes could be promoted so that children can walk to school.

For the problem of carrying the purchase, there will be someone who can resort to the cart of a lifetime or to baskets or panniers on the bicycle. For those for whom this is not feasible, local home delivery services should be promoted, which could be designed with cargo bikes to be more sustainable.

Something that is very fashionable and that seems very new in big cities are shared and multi-use spaces that promote a greater modal balance and peaceful coexistence between modes instead of the usual domain of the car. But this has existed for centuries in the squares and streets of the towns, which are spaces where there is a market as well as a parking lot and where people walk, rest, play, or ride their bikes while the vans make their deliveries and a few cars circulate. See as an example the photograph that opens this article, of the Plaza Mayor in Torrelaguna. These types of spaces must be protected and promoted.

Around the region: medium-distance mobility

There comes a time when it is necessary to leave the town, whether it is to work, go to the institute, to the doctor, to shop, or for leisure.

For a range of up to about 7km (or up to 10km if commuting to a full-time activity like work or school), cycling remains a viable option for a large number of people. This is based on studies, surveys and statistics of the behavior observed in different countries.

Undoubtedly, this possible latent demand must be unlocked through packages of measures that could include the construction of bike lanes on the roads, awareness and road safety campaigns, incentives for the purchase of cycling equipment and the installation of cycling parking lots , showers and changing rooms in work or educational centers, etc.

As an alternative to cycling, collective transport should be promoted, which in rural areas will almost always be by road. In many cases, there are already school buses that link different towns in the same area, and similar models could be applied to other activities that attract high demand such as large workplaces/industrial estates, health centers/day centers/residences, malls, etc.

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To make these buses more sustainable, their efficiency could be improved with fully electric vehicles (since the distances between these towns should not pose a problem of autonomy), hybrids or with alternative fuels.

It is true that the difficulty and resources needed to organize these transports increase rapidly with geographic dispersion and are ultimately restricted to specific purposes. But this is already a step forward in covering the most frequent travel purposes and those that generate the most demand for transport.

Above a certain size of the population, regular public transport usually exists and it is viable to promote it. Of course, the issue of frequencies is a barrier for many people, but it is also true that sometimes it is not (economically) sustainable to increase them.

For those cases, the on-demand transport model, which we have already discussed on more than one occasion, can be interesting. There have already been initiatives of this type in Spain, like the one in the photo.

If, despite everything, it is necessary to resort to using the car, which is always the last option in sustainability, there are also ways to make a more rational use of it for trips in rural areas.

The easiest way is to share rides (known as car-pooling). This can be organized informally among acquaintances or can be facilitated through mobile applications or web platforms such as BlaBlaCar, Amovens, etc. Along the same lines, some larger towns have taxi services, sometimes only on demand, or even parataxis such as Uber, and both are always a better option than a private car from the point of view of sustainability.

Another option would be to extend the models of mobility as a service that seek to evolve from the culture of possession of the means of transport to that of their availability for use at any time. The easiest to imagine for rural areas would be car rental by the hour/minute that companies such as Bluemove, car2go, emov or respite are currently offering in large cities.

If each population had a small fleet of shared cars, the number of cars could be reduced and consequently the number of car trips, since it has been proven that owning a car is the greatest incentive to use this one and not another medium to move.

Car-sharing solutions could also be adopted via agreements between acquaintances or through clubs of several members who live in the same area.

Finally, another aspect to consider to make medium-distance trips more sustainable is whether there is a stage of the entire trip that can be done in a more sustainable way. For example, one may need to commute 30 km to go to work, which is too long to cycle. But perhaps you can go 5 km by bike to a train station or a bus stop that brings you closer to your destination and either take your bike or leave it parked and pick it up on your return. This is what is known as park-and-ride or park-and-ride, and in this example it is for bicycles, but it could well be for cars, since it is still more sustainable to drive 5 km than 30 km, and more if those 5 km are by shared electric car.

But for these multimodal options to be viable, it is necessary to invest in infrastructures and technologies that support it, such as safe park-and-rides for bikes or cars at those stations, information about the possibilities and benefits of these intermodal trips, modal integration (at the rate level, schedules, information), etc.

From the town to the world: long distance

Lastly, it is worth considering long-distance trips that originate or end in towns. In my opinion, the easiest way to think about how to make these long trips more sustainable is to break down each trip in stages.

If you start from the premise that you want to make the trip in a single stage, it will be difficult to find a more attractive alternative than the car, unless there is a public transport service to the destination in the town in question . But assuming that we want to make our trip more sustainable, we must consider how to make it sustainable in each of the stages that lead us to the destination.

To achieve this, you can combine the ideas presented in the previous sections (for shorter distances) with those already known within large cities and for journeys between large cities (for example, prefer the train to the plane or the bus to the car).

What is needed is to promote these more sustainable alternatives through information, the creation and service of integrated public transport intermodal nodes from where a large number of destinations can be reached, the combination of express and regional services to create fast connections between large cities while providing regional access, etc.

The longer and more complex the journey, the more difficult it will be to combine the use of public transport and more sustainable ways of getting around. And in long distances, the total travel time will also play an important role, because psychologically it costs more to accept a 5-h trip compared to a 2-h one than to accept a 50-min one compared to a 20-min one, the relative increase being exactly the same (5 to 2).

But it's not about never using the car either. The car is useful and a good option at times, and if it were practically eliminated for short and medium distances and only relegated to long and difficult journeys (or some stages of them), that would already be a great advance.

Conclusion

There will be those who, having read this article, are disappointed for not having found definitive solutions, much less new ones, to the problem of sustainable mobility in rural areas.

But in the end, whether in a town or a city, the sustainability of transport is always attacked in the same way:

1. Reduce the need to move (at all; or if you have to move, the shortest distance possible)
2. Use the most efficient way, starting with walking, cycling, public transport, car sharing and finally private car
3. Set the mode, use the most efficient vehicles (electric, hybrid, alternative fuels, low emissions)
4. Finally, use the service in the most efficient way (for example, off-peak hours)

The conclusion I draw is that alternatives and technologies exist. What is often lacking is will. Undoubtedly, a part is political will and resources allocated to these problems by the administrations; but there is also a lack of individual will on the part of citizens to change their mentality and especially their habits, since sometimes there are those who expect sustainability to appear magically without one stopping doing the things that they have always done and in the same way as always.

And you, what other problems and possible solutions of sustainable mobility in rural areas do you know? Tell us on Twitter @ecomobilidad or in a comment.

And if you also have suggestions for topics that you would like us to talk about on the blog, write us an email with your proposal and we will try to write about it as soon as possible.