By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels 4:16PM BST 28 Mar 2011
The European Commission on Monday unveiled a “single European transport area” aimed at enforcing “a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers” by 2050.
The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.
Top of the EU’s list to cut climate change emissions is a target of “zero” for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU’s future cities.
Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto “alternative” means of transport.
“That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres,” he said. “Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour.”
The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as a “crazy” restriction on mobility.
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Gee, ya think? And the greens/labor wonder why they just got booted out of power in Australia and why the American public no longer gives a rodents posterior about global warming.
I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile. Why? The automobile actually provides a useful function for people.
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Here’s the plan:
A new European transport plan 
aims to increase mobility and further integrate the EU’s transport networks – while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the bloc’s dependence on imported oil.
Measures to encourage major infrastructure investments, change the way freight moves and people travel would boost economic competitiveness and create jobs.
The plan – with goals to be met by 2050 – focuses on travel within cities and between cities, and on long distance journeys. It includes calls for:
- cities to completely phase out petrol cars
- shifting to rail or water 50% of all passenger and freight road transport currently making intercity journeys of more than 300km
- airlines to increase their use of sustainable low-carbon fuels to 40%
- shipping to cut 40% off its carbon emissions.
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UPDATE: Per my comment above:
I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile. Why? The automobile actually provides a useful function for people.
It seems to mirror the thinking of many:
A MASSIVE wave of public support was last night surging behind the Daily Express’s crusade to liberate Britain from the stranglehold of Brussels.
An exclusive poll conducted on the first day of our crusade showed an astonishing 99 per cent of people agree we should quit the European Union.
In an indication of the strength of public feeling on the issue, the poll saw the biggest ever response to a Daily Express phone survey, with tens of thousands of people swamping our switchboards.
Read more and sign the petition: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/213821/21382199-of-you-say-Get-us-out-of-Europe#ixzz1HztMDhJN
h/t to Fred Berple for the update
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“The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe”
You’re all forgetting climate change, because by 2050 we’ll be living in a tropical, balmy (barmy) paradise and won’t need such flights. Our coral reefs will be florishing, the champagne region of Ilkley moor will be world famous, Britain will be a net exporter of bananas and the streets of London will be paved with solar cells which will power our electric personal transportation units and mag lev shoes.
Balmy and bananas will be our national slogan.
Interesting.
How high do they plan to raise the price of gas? $37.50 per gallon?
What are they trying to do, turn the movie, Atlas Shrugged-Part I into a documentary even before its release in the U.S. on April 15?
If I remember correctly I read somewhere that in many European countries serfs were not allowed to travel outside the area where they lived and worked without permission from the local authorities. (Someone please correct me if I’m wrong).
It looks as if the EU (or the EUSSR as some people say it should be called) want to reintroduce serfdom.
Some of my friends give me funny looks when I start talking about the great wars that were eventually won without firing a shot; Napolean fell short, thanks in large part to the brilliant soldiering of the Duke of Wellington, in imposing his ‘Systeme Napoleanique’ on the UK, the Low Countries and the Iberian Peninsula, but the EU is now carrying out the fulfilment of Napolean’s visions. The climate cancelled his designs on Russia.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was supposed to lead to freedom and democracy for East Europeans; instead, we have former Soviet-era aparatchiks inflicting their totilatarian forms of social control on the Western European nations.
At least the Australians in New South Wales have cried ‘enough!’ and dumped the ALP and its mad Marxist blueprint for impoverishment and social control disguised as environmentalism in the recent elections there. Now all we need is for the citizens of the UK to revolt and throw off the yoke of the EU, Aussie style.
Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring !
The UK government has already said this won’t fly. The chances of getting the French to do this are significantly worse than zero. And I’m sure they won’t be alone. Gallic shrug is the order of the day.
Crosspatch: “How about a “high speed rail” system that uses individual vehicles rather than long trains of cars? ”
——————–
I see where you are coming from on this and it is an improvement over long trains, but it by no means replaces the convenience of the motor car.
I know when I get in my car that it will not have vomit, beer cans, used condoms or any other waste in it before I get in. I know that it will not have been occupied minutes earlier by someone with an easily communicable infections disease. I know that I can get to my car far sooner than I could get to one of these pods, and I know that I would be far more likely to be able to park my car closer to my intended destination than I could one of these pods.
Banning petrol cars from cities would require me to have two cars and an extra garage outside the city. This is less green than just owning one petrol car.
I would not consider owning an electric car, until they are a cheap as a petrol to buy, have a range comparable to a petrol from one charge, and can be charged up in an equivalent amount of time as it takes to fill a petrol tank and when batteries are available and cheap.
As I understand it, it is currently far cheaper to charge an electric car than pay petrol for the equivalent mileage. However this does not take into account the astronomical cost of replacing all the batteries every two or three years. This means that owning an electric is considerably more costly than a petrol at the moment.
There currently is no alternative to running a petrol/diesel/natural gas/LPG car at the moment. I would be delighted if a breakthrough could be made with Hydrogen powered cars, and there are some fascinating and exciting things happening in that field. I just hope that innovations in that area are allowed to continue and are not snubbed out by battery car fanatics.
Cella Energy are pioneering a new hydrogen based fuel which is cheap, environmentally friendly and does not require expensive hydrocarbon use to extract the hydrogen. This artificial petrol consists of tiny nano-beads which contain the hydrogen and so can be poured like conventional petrol and used in conventional petrol engines with a small modification. They could produce this fuel for 19p per litre (approximately 90 cents a gallon).
I would rate this kind of breakthrough as being a far more exciting development of green energy than any technological development of batteries.
This would allow petrol-heads to keep enjoying the roar of a throaty V12, or the scream of a V6 as they drive, whilst being more green than any Prius driver!
Re crosspatch says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Gonna need a lot of windmills.
I’m pretty sure the total ban will actually be either postponed, modified or both. There might for example be a penalty for driving a gas/diesel car in certain areas.
There is about zero possibility of this happening if we have failed to make electric cars a majority by that time. I see this as an promise to car manufacturers that there will be a big market for “greener” products.
Do not like the totalitarian way of pushing the message though.
By the way EU will be forgotten by 2050, I give it a few more years and then the financial catastrophes on the southern side of the mountain ranges is in full swing, resulting in a northern and more loose european union.
just small correction, ‘petrol’ and ‘diesel’ cars
Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars
That is the real story. They will make us so poor that we won’t be able to drive a car, not even to buy one. Only those in power, the masters. It’s like going back to the Middle Ages. But I don’t think we have to wait for so long to see this happen. My calculations are 1 or 2 years
and
Holidays
don’t even think about it.
It is all about power (control) You remember the movie ‘Soylent Green ‘ with Charlton Heston? That is our future!!
Let us use the “free” internet as long as we can to make this not happen.
If you are worried about GHG’s then horses are not a great idea, they fart a lot.
Victorian London was under so much horse crap that when, eventually, the motor car came along people cheered because it meant that the horse crap would go.
This EU idea is typical of the socialist mantra that comes from Brussels. Ill thought out prognostications with unknown consequences which will be worse that the imagined disease. Another system to control the so called voters ( if a vote comes out ‘wrong’ then we will vote again until we get the result we want!)!
I hope this will signal the beginning of the end for this dictatorship, but I doubt it. I can remember an era when so many politicians were so incompetent and stupid [when was that?]. They have become so used to not being challenged that they feel they can do whatever they wish.
Rail? In Britain?
British trains are a national disgrace. The regular fares are outrageous, and the “cheap tickets” are a sham (near impossible to get one when you actually need it.) The policies are draconian, and they’ll happily charge tourists huge penalties for not reading the fine print on the ticket re. which times of day the ticket is invalid, or that you have to present the useless “seat booking stub,” even if there’s no actual seat, otherwise your actual ticket, which has everything printed on it, becomes invalidated, and they charge you full price, which is often a hundred quid or more. If you are a tourist, DO NOT USE UK TRAINS. They don’t deserve your business. Frankly, just don’t come to the UK, period. And did I mention that the outrageous prices are actually already subsidised by the government???
There are long term systemic problems with our trains and it has only been getting more and more expensive. There are already problems with lack of capacity and overcrowding, and the idea that they can just legislate us into relying on the trains is absurd — the existing capacity shortfall won’t be met for a decade, as we await new rolling stock, so god knows when it’ll be increased any further.
Let them legislate that all companies have to allow office staff to work from home over fast broadband. I see no other way to “reduce” travel.
Baa Humbug, that is scarily close to the truth.
Really scary, as in I can clearly hear the words over the airwaves.
on april 1st please publish EU former dictats on bananas and carrots.
“And can someone tell me what kind of jet fuel is “low carbon”? and renewable to boot?”
According to Obama natural gas is a renewable. He said so in hiw speech about Libya. How about that for knowledge. I didn’t know that!!
Wucash says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Ok, petrol and diesel is bad, so lets have cars that get their energy from the power grid. Brilliant idea, however despite the well known foibles of the electric car there’s a huge problem here.
Coal, Gas and Nuclear is apparently bad too. Where are we supposed to get all this energy to run these cars as well as the rest of the country runs on? Power need will be greater in 40 years. Do they really think they can supply enough electricity for everything from bloody wind power?
I suspect this is their way of making sure energy is a lot more expensive than it need be. All them rich Al Gore and EU beurocrat types will be able to afford it, but what about the common man?
They keep going on about our children and granchildren lives in their AGW propaganda, but it looks like they’re the ones threatning next generations’ futures.
—————–
You’ve got to bare in mind that in 40 years time there won’t be much oil left so we really have little choice on the matter anyway.
They’ll still be gas for a few more decades after that though and plenty of coal to put into power stations.
It’s 1910.
Who in 1910 would have predicted WWI let alone WWII
I look in old books for future predictions e.g. 1930’s Popular Mechanics had a future prediction section. None of it ever came to fruition.
The EURO currency will be lucky to survive in the next couple of years let alone the E.U. Commission.
It kind of shows how far detached from reality these people have become. I suppose that is what happens when the people making the laws no longer have electoral oversight. The middle of a recession with huge risks still left in the financial centres and their most pressing priority? Uncosted and untested ways of reducing a tiny proportion of the co2 emissions – without any mechanism of ensuring it does actually reduce co2 emissions.
EU to ban all cars from cities by 2050! Yeah, they lived through the dark ages for hundreds of years in the muck and used horses and buggies and wagons, guess they are going backwards to that. What a bunch of retrograde-humans-acting-on-bad-information setting back human civilization a thousand years.
Meanwhile in the great white north.
I think I got this figured.
First we build enough space ships to transport the entire human populations.
Then we announce the planet is self destructing because of CAGW.
The people who agree get on the Red space ships.
The people who are skeptical get on the Blue space ships.
As the Red space ships blast off to safety, they might look our a part hole and notice all the people filing out of the Blue space ships and waving goodbye whilst laughing themselves silly.
Reply: I’m a little tipsy right now, so I totally understand what “look our a part hole” means. ~ ctm
Apparently the Times of London in 1894 estimated that every street in the city would be nine feet deep in horse manure by 1950.
So they were only out by 100 years.
As a British citizen all I hope for is a Political Party with the will to take us out of this corrupt union.
Why the hell we are letting unelected and unaccountable Communists rule our lives is beyond comprehension.
For [snip] sake their accounts haven’t been signed off for 16 yeas because of all the corrupt dealings, vote UKIP