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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DrChaos – The dead dinosaur theory is obsolete even among the biotic origin camp, current theory is that biotic oil was formed from plankton in warms, shallow seas. This means that oil has been forming for a lot longer (since ~3.5Gya), and has continued since the end of the Mesozoic (~ 65 Mya).
Alfred, you are repeating nonsense. London is a city and it has a number of transport systems, not just the one you state it can have. I can choose to use the excellent bus service, I can choose to take the bus to an Underground station to go into the City or to other destinations, or I can walk to our suburban above-ground railway station to access the same or another wide list of destinations. I could walk, run or cycle. Or use my 200 horsepower car with leather armchairs. Or call a cab, which we do to travel to and from Heathrow.
I lived for decades in rural New Zealand. Cars were absolutely essential to go anywhere for us there – too far to walk, no bus service off the main roads with the exception of School buses that only school children could ride on and we were at least 20 miles from a railway.
“I can choose to use the excellent bus service… Underground…”
Yes, and the last time I travelled on the “excellent?” Tube it was jam packed and was stalled in a tunnel for 20 minutes. And if everyone else decided to travel the same way, the system would break down. So cars are, at present, essential to personal transportation in London.
When you say cars were “absolutely essential” in rural New Zealand, I can believe it. But here we’re talking about urban transportation, which accounts for maybe 90% of automobile use.
What I am saying is that the automobile as it exists today is a highly inefficient, very expensive means of getting one or two people around a city at an average of about eight miles an hour, and it has horrendous environmental costs. I don’t see how that can be disputed.
But if everybody likes spending half their working day earning the money to buy and operate an automobile then I guess that’s what deluded humanity will continue to do!
Alfred, the only transport system in London I described as excellent is the bus service. You have serious reading comprehension problems and you are an anti-car troll, so I won’t respond to your contrary nonsense again.