Toward Sustainable Transport: Conventional and Disruptive Approaches in the U.S. Context

ABSTRACT As a crosscutting element of human activity, transportation is an appropriate arena for pursuing sustainability. Conventional transportation in the U.S., based largely on private autos, is untenable in the long run for reasons of congestion, energy consumption, safety, and environmental and human health. To date, response to a growing sustainability movement has been largely incremental. Proactive tools focusing on environmental, economic and social impacts of transportation have the potential to disrupt the status quo, and provide an opening for sustainable practices. Focusing on surface passenger travel, this discussion paper considers four sectors in which transportation-relevant policies or programs are conceived and delivered, orders them roughly along a continuum from conventional to disruptive, and assesses their potential for moving the U.S. toward a more sustainable future. Questions are posed about conventional vs. disruptive, and incremental vs. large-scale, changes.