Public Transport in Times of Individualization

Public transport is recognized by policy makers as a main tool in the combat against greenhouse gas emissions, and a key factor in sustainable urban development. Yet in Stockholm, the European Green Capital of 2010, systems for private transport are given a significant portion of space and funding in policy making and regional development plans. A recent prognosis shows that by 2050 Sweden will be far from reaching its zero-emission climate target for road traffic, given hitherto decided measures. This implies a gap between the rhetoric and set targets, and the physical plans made to reach these targets.

This paper is focused upon transport policy strategies for facing and responding to climate change in second modernity, and how modernization pressures are reconciled with sustainable development in policy for urban transport. As a major driver for policy changes, the second modernity has resulted in a step further towards individualization and a step back for the collective planning of the first modernity. How do the second modernity and sustainable development relate to each other and how do they affect urban transport policy? An assumption is that the mechanisms of the second modernity encourage “light” private, flexibility-enhancing solutions over those heavier collective solutions laden with distributive justice that the 1987 Brundtland Report promotes, making weak sustainability or ecological modernization more attractive as a policy direction.

I will relate Stockholm’s urban transport policy to the regional development plan, to consider how policy relates to modernization and how well the theory of second modernity can explain the gaps between targets and prognosis for emissions. My hypothesis is that ecological modernization is a way to reconcile modernization and sustainable development, and that a bias towards modernization results in gaps between sustainability targets and the effects of plans made.