Measuring the sustainability of car fleets, an important task in developing transport policy, can be accomplished with an appropriate set of indicators. We applied the Process Analysis Method of sustainability assessment to generate an indicator set in a systematic and transparent way, that is consistent with a declared definition of a sustainable transport system. Our method identifies stakeholder groups, the full range of impacts across the environmental, economic and human / social domains of sustainability, and those who generate and receive those impacts. Car users are shown by the analysis to have dual roles, both as individual makers of decisions and as beneficiaries / sufferers of the impacts resulting from communal choice. Thus car users, through their experience of service quality, are a potential force for system change. Our method addresses many of the well-known flaws in measuring transport sustainability. The indicator set created is independent of national characteristics and will be useful to transport policy practitioners and sustainable mobility researchers globally.
We have analysed the impact on human health of emissions produced by the UK car fleet in the years 1995 and 2005. Calculations were based on reported measurements of pollutant concentration, literature values of exposure response coefficients and data for mortality and morbidity. A share was attributed to the car fleet based on emissions data. Although the total distance driven in the UK increased by 16% over this period to 460 billion km, there was a significant fall in engine emissions as increasingly stringent regulations (EURO standards) were introduced. As a result there was a decrease of some 25% in the number of deaths attributable to car-related air pollution -down to 5589 in 2005. The estimated number of years of life lost at 65 000 (England and Wales) in 2005, was about half that caused by road accidents involving cars in the same year. We report further calculations which show the effect of car-related pollution on hospital admissions. Our method is straightforward, providing acceptable estimates for health impacts on the predominantly urban population of the UK. There remains a need for more work, particularly cohort studies of morbidity, to establish the long-term effects of air pollution.
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