Hierarchy to help transport engineers get priorities in order

Just as the refrain reduce, reuse, recycle has been adopted by environmentalists worldwide to prioritise sustainable practice, so the transport engineering sector has its own equivalent – the Transport Hierarchy.

Developed by Duncan Kay and Daniel Kenning, engineers with decades of experience in the field, and published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMeche), the Transport Hierarchy report is designed as a framework to ensure network resilience and the delivery of societal transport needs into the future.

The Hierarchy’s priorities place the need to minimise demand above the enabling of low carbon transport modes, provision for system efficiency and finally increased capacity. It forms a central pillar of Transition Engineering, an emergent discipline seeking to weave sustainability concerns into engineering projects at all stages, in the same way that safety requirements are currently incorporated.

Who is the Transport Hierarchy for?

Daniel Kenning, co-founder of the International Society of Transition Engineers, is keen that the model be adopted by those who design transport systems and test proposals – those with the power to ensure networks are sustainable. However, it has broader implications as a framework for anyone with an interest in the long term survival of our transport systems.

“It could also help people better understand the context of, and respond to, national transport proposals, such as HS2. Hence, that proposal only works if it doesn’t increase demand, or reduce efficiency, which mean the eventual solution must not be a 'high speed' system, but rather a 'modal shift, increasing capacity' system”, said Kenning.

Minimise demand

The first step – reducing demand – is about minimising the need to travel in the first place. This means planning communities and networks in such a way that the need for long journeys is reduced, along with the need for the more polluting motorised modes of transports that become more necessary with increased journey distance. Kenning concedes that conventional mechanical engineering may struggle with the 'demand reduction' step, and it is thus even more important that the voices of transition engineers are heard.

Enable modal shift

Once a framework is in place that reduces the overall need to travel, decision makers should turn to projects that enable modal shift to more sustainable transport. This approach favours transport schemes that prioritise rail over short-haul flight, cycling and walking over car journeys over 5 km. IMeche suggests a switch of all road freight to rail, for example, would result in a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions. Only once these steps have been taken and their options exhausted, should efforts towards reducing in-system deficiencies be prioritised. This means working to get better outputs from the same input through considerations of fuels and energy sources through the existing Energy Hierarchy.

Increase capacity

Then, and only then, should capacity increases be sought and actions taken to ensure maximum efficiency and sustainability in expansion projects, with IMeche’s Energy Environment and Sustainability group warning that this type of action is likely to induce new journeys and erode gains made in the first step of the hierarchy.

According to IMeche, adoption of the hierarchy can have benefits, including boons to the economy (IMeche estimates that encouraging cycling could bring Britain a dividend of £3 bn), businesses and the manufacturing sector,  as well as to individual choice and wider community wellbeing.

Ethical insurance

The ETA has been voted as ethical in Britain for the second year running by the Good Shopping Guide.

Beating household-name insurance companies such as John Lewis and the Co-op, the ETA earned an ethical company index score of 89.

The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Twenty six years on, it continues to offer cycle insurance, travel insurance and breakdown cover while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all it does.

The Good Shopping Guide each year examines the companies behind the brands - both big and small. In some cases apparently ethical insurance brands score much lower than you might expect because the holding company is involved in less ethical practices.