The future of transportation discussed at TEDxHelvetia

Prof. Vincent Kaufmann shared his talk with Virginie Raisson, director of Lépac, an independent research lab based near Paris, specialised in geopolitics, international relations, and foresight. Virginie Raisson solicited the audience to give their opinion on different proposals to solve environmental and energy issues. Her aim was to measure how ready we are to adapt our current way of life to deal with urgent matters such as pollution, energy shortage or traffic congestion. Commenting on the answers, Prof. Vincent Kaufmann insisted in particular on the importance of coherent policy to build good citizenship. “If a public authority chooses only to develop the tram network without dealing with access to this network, it won’t work. A coherent universe is needed to raise community awareness and citizenship”, explained Vincent Kaufmann.

Coherent policies yes, but are the end users coherent? Professor at KTH, Stockholm and Director of the Centre for Transport Studies, Jonas Eliasson gave a very visual talk on the cost of congestion. “A huge range of solutions to reduce traffic congestion have been tried in many different cities but none of them seems to work”, regretted the expert. “Complex problems can be solved by incentivizing people and not by planning down to the last detail.” He gave the example of the city of Stockholm that reduced the number of cars on the roads during peak periods by 20% substantially reducing congestion, simply by bringing in a small congestion charge. Jonas Eliasson concluded: “Don’t tell people how to adapt. Nudge them!”

TEDxHelvetia also provided the opportunity for TraCE to invite industrial partners from the car industry including PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault and Green Motion. Guests of the conference were given the chance to experience first-hand a large variety of the latest electric and hybrid transport technologies on the market today. Both PSA and Renault are supporting research projects at TraCE analysing public acceptance of electric and alternative cars, how today’s car market will evolve in the coming years (PSA) and what will be the market shares for electric cars (Renault).