European Mobility Week
Smarter Travel website European Mobility Week
From 16 to 22 September 2009, hundreds of European towns and cities will participate in the eighth edition of European Mobility Week and invite their citizens to a wide range of activities promoting sustainable mobility. The 2009 campaign theme – “Improving City Climates” – underlines the importance of local level efforts to tackle climate change and improve quality of life through the promotion of alternative transport modes to the car such as cycling, walking, and public transport as well as clever car use schemes such car-sharing and car-pooling.
The Government’s Smarter Travel policy is about encouraging people to walk, cycle and use public transport. Our current travel behaviour, which relies heavily on the use of fossil-fuelled private cars, is not only a major source of greenhouse gases. It also affects the “climates” in our towns and cities, which suffer from traffic-generated air and noise pollution, death and injury on the roads, traffic congestion and a lack of public space and social cohesion.
The Department of Transport is funding 9 projects for European mobility week in towns and counties across Ireland (Galway County and City, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Cork City, Roscommon, Cavan, and Sligo) – all projects have the aim of promoting more sustainable and smarter travel, from providing new cycle lanes, to introducing lower speed limits near schools. The Department is also working with the CIE group and the RPA to promote the use of public transport during mobility week.