Rethinking Urban Mobility

People's behavior during the lockdown period has convinced many policy-makers that our mobility patterns can change for the better. Active mobility like walking and cycling in urban and suburban areas has strongly increased due to the fact that social distancing is feasible by bike or by walking, and we should exploit the momentum and retain the lockdown transport benefits, the argument goes.

Marco Percoco, Director of Bocconi GREEN research center, is one of the 36 members of the Task Force on the Development of Green and Healthy Sustainable Transport Principles at the Transport, Health and Environment Pan European Programme (THE PEP), a joint initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The task force, that met for the first time on 29 May, will develop a set of principles of green and healthy sustainable mobility, which will be proposed for endorsement by member States at THE PEP's Fifth High-level Meeting on Transport, Health and Environment, to be held in Vienna in 2021.

"Since the strictest lockdown measures have been lifted", says Professor Percoco, "congestion has worsened, because people afraid of using crowded public transport drive private cars. Promoting active and sustainable mobility in urban and suburban areas implies infrastructure investments and the transformation of cities, as happened with Amsterdam in the 1970s. There is no shortcut".