National legal targets to reach “net-zero” by 2050 and the local ambitions that will deliver them, require a definitive pace and scale of change. As one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, adjustments to mobility represent one of the best collective chances to meet targets, focusing not only to infrastructure and behaviour, but also the enabling support and supply economy.
Active travel and cleaner transport, including keep-your-car-at-home schemes, reduce unnecessary travel and encourage low carbon connectivity. These visible schemes go hand-in-hand with behaviour change campaigns at-scale, including on energy use, waste and active travel.
However, it’s clear that a more integrated approach is necessary, one that targets the end-user with more informed choice, but also investment to support re-skilling and employment as a result of sector transitions, R&D capacity, and new fiscal mechanisms to incentivise clean growth. There is also an important role for the supply sector in developing and delivering new techniques, whether it is vehicles and engines, software for public apps and transport management.
It is here that metropolitan regions and areas play a transformative role as ‘anchor institutions’. To use size and scale, and a focus that spans urban and rural, to implement changes that have greater impact.
A METREX Expert Group
METREX Members and other authorities joined us in Birmingham and online, hosted by West Midlands Combined Authority at the BCRRE
Study visit Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE), for a first Expert Meeting to support metropolitan regions and areas in setting up their plans to achieve a net-zero in mobility and freight transport.
The Città Metropolitana di Milano is preparing a Metropolitan Sustainable Freight Transport Plan and in supporting them, we will propose a series of expert meetings, to be concluded with a conference in Milan in Spring 2023.
Programme – 14:30-17:00 GMT
Presentation from
Sandeep Shingadia, Transport for West Midlands
Dario Parravicini, Director Città Metropolitana di Milano
Alexandra Covrig, Airport Regions Council, Brussels
Dr. Cecilia Braun, Director, Rhine-Alpine Corridor EGTC
Proposal for expert meetings on the Metropolitan Sustainable Freight Transport Plan, Henk Bouwman & Daniele Zucchelli, CMdMilano; Evelina Saracchi, CMdMilano
Roundtable discussion and Draft programme for next steps
For more information please contact stephen.gallagher@eurometrex.org.
