Dr. Elisabeth Windisch:

I will just repeat the question. The Chairman touched on the topic of small vehicles, how their use could be encouraged and what the issues were more generally in that regard. More specifically, he expressed an interest in e-bikes. There are two issues with the use of smaller vehicles. The first is that people tend to buy one, two or maybe three personal mobility means. One of these is often a private car, which serves all needs. To think about holiday trips in summer, people may want to take a lot of baggage and their children. Families therefore obviously need to buy big cars, but they also use this car to go to work and for all kinds of other trips where more efficient mobility means would be better and more efficient to use. To encourage the right use of the vehicle, we would have to move away from the model of owning one's own car and making use of it all the time. As I said in my statement, policy would be required to encourage a shift towards an ecosystem of shared use of vehicles, which would encourage people to use the right size of vehicles at all times rather than always falling back on this one-size-fits-all option, which for many people actually only perfectly fits for the purposes of holidays.

There is a second issue with regard to the topic of size of vehicles. The Chairman will have noticed that, over the past 30 or 40 years, the size of passenger cars has significantly increased while the number of people the vehicle can carry has not. In the mid-1970s, an average passenger car weighed approximately 1 tonne while the average passenger car in the European Union today weighs approximately 1.5 tonnes. This results in these vehicles being much less efficient and using much more petrol, thereby creating more emissions. An argument often made in this context is that these weight increases were necessary to achieve benefits in safety and convenience, through sound systems and whatnot. However, this argument is not really valid if we think about it. While there are improved safety systems, the very fact that the cars are heavier creates a system that is much less safe for everyone else. If we were to drive this argument forward, very soon everybody would be driving around the city in a tank, which is obviously not an efficient way of getting around.

Pressing this issue on is a bit more tricky because tackling it is not really in the remit of Irish authorities. Rather, it is something that must happen at EU level. We are all aware of super emissions standards for cars, trucks and vehicles in general. There is an inherent problem in these standards in that, while they aim to reduce CO2 emissions on a per kilometre basis, they are dependent on the weight of the vehicles themselves. There is, therefore, no real incentive for manufacturers to reduce the weight of the vehicles, making them more efficient overall. In this respect, I can point the Chairman to several studies the International Transport Forum, ITF, has carried out with specific regard to heavier vehicles. This is an essential issue. It is also an issue with regard to the uptake of electric vehicles because such vehicles are also much more efficient when they are smaller and lighter.

With regard to electric bikes and how they could be encouraged in urban and even non-urban environments, there is a growing trend globally and internationally. E-bikes have been introduced to shared vehicle fleets and this has also encouraged many private persons to take them up. They can see the benefits and that they can cover longer distances. This is a very positive trend because the use of such bikes replaces many commuter trips. Such journeys are definitely more efficient than trips in private cars. E-bikes are obviously not perfect, unlike proper active mobility, such as walking or biking without electrical assistance. They also require additional infrastructure. This is not to say that e-bikes should not be encouraged; quite the opposite. They should be encouraged because the benefits will certainly outweigh everything else.

With the introduction of innovative shared services and mobility means, policymakers must make sure that the right people are attracted. We do not want to attract people who would otherwise use mass public transport as this would likely result in increased emissions. This will depend on a very local context, on the city and on whether the public mass transit system is fuelled by electricity or fossil fuels. Specific comparisons must be made to ascertain whether it would be beneficial but generally measures to encourage-----