Clean Cars vs Less Traffic: How Much Do They Cut Pollution from Cars? – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 28th February 2025, 10:12 pm

Clean cars vs less traffic: How much do they cut pollution from cars?

Greenhouse gas emissions from road transport in the EU-27 have increased by 23% between 1990 and 2022, while in the same period the total from all sectors has decreased by 29%. Additional measures are needed to bring greenhouse gas emissions from road traffic in line with the agreed European targets and with international agreements to limit climate change. What works?

Effective measures to reduce car traffic and the related pollution are:

a. Concentrating homes and businesses in cities and towns. New houses are set to add 10% to the Dutch housing stock. If these were built in existing cities, car mobility will be about 3% lower than if they are spread out. This is because, on average, city dwellers drive less, while access to jobs and facilities is still better because everything is closer.

b. Less motorway expansion. By not expanding motorway capacity, there will be about 3% less car traffic in 2030 than with planned expansions in the Netherlands.

c. Redesigning cities for a healthy and pleasant living environment. This will reduce the amount of space available for cars and lead to several percentage points less car mobility nationally. Residents of Dutch large cities have reduced car travel per person by a quarter since the turn of the century.

d. Better and cheaper public transport. If this attracts 50% more passengers, it reduces car use by 1–2%.

Taken together, these measures will reduce car mobility by about 10% and thus also the pollution from cars. These estimates are explained in my recent article “Better public transport does not reduce car emissions.”

Switching to electric cars has a bigger impact: greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 60–70%. This includes the production of the car, including the batteries. The remaining emissions come mainly from the materials used, such as steel, aluminium and plastics. Measures to green these materials will further reduce the environmental impact of the car. Reversing the trend towards bigger and heavier cars also reduces the remaining environmental impact.

Contrary to most official projections, I do not expect higher costs for car driving to have a significant impact on future car use. This is because driving is so cheap — or could be made cheaper by buying a cheaper car — that the maximum time people are willing to spend on mobility now limits the volume of car traffic. For further information, see my paper The transport-urbanisation dialectic.

First published on T&E website. By Arie Bleijenberg, President, T&E.