Beyond Electric Vehicles: Why Mode Shift Is Key to Net Zero Transport

Key Takeaways

• Governments are falling behind on net zero targets, and public support is eroding as energy prices rise.
• Land transport remains a major carbon contributor, yet progress on decarbonisation is slow and expensive.
• Current strategies rely too heavily on electrification, which is proving slow and costly.
• EVs create massive electricity demand, driving up energy prices and making the broader net-zero transition harder.
• Electric vehicles don't solve congestion, safety, health, or equity issues that car dependency creates.
• Mode shift, which involves more people walking, cycling, and using public transport, offers a faster and cheaper path to emissions reduction.
• Proven policies like school streets, parking reform, low-traffic neighbourhoods, and public transport priority deliver results.
• Mode shift interventions are significantly cheaper than EV subsidies and deliver multiple co-benefits beyond carbon reduction.
• The main barriers are coordination challenges and political management.
• A comprehensive strategy combining electrification with ambitious mode shift policies can accelerate net zero while improving livability and affordability.

What next?

Is your net-zero transport strategy overly reliant on electrification and underpowered in mode shift?

Introduction

The net-zero transition is in trouble. Governments worldwide are falling behind on their climate commitments, and public support is eroding as people face higher energy bills and mounting costs. Rather than accelerating decarbonisation, many governments are now spending billions subsidising energy prices just to maintain political support.

Nowhere is this failure more evident, or more avoidable, than in land transport.

Transport accounts for a significant share of global carbon emissions; yet progress on decarbonisation has been painfully slow. Worse, the way governments are approaching the problem is actively undermining the broader net-zero transition. According to the IMF, fossil fuel subsidies exceeded USD 7 trillion in 2022. Add in hidden subsidies, such as free parking, and the scale of misallocated resources becomes staggering.

The root cause? An over-reliance on a single strategy: electrification.

Don't get this wrong, electric vehicles are part of the solution, and the transition to EVs must continue. But governments have essentially bet everything on one approach: keep transport patterns exactly as they are, just swap petrol engines for batteries.

This strategy faces numerous significant problems, including sluggish adoption rates, increased infrastructure costs, equity concerns, and continued congestion. Most critically, the massive electricity demand from EVs is making the energy transition harder and more expensive for everyone.

There's a better way – one that's faster, cheaper, and delivers multiple benefits beyond carbon reduction. It's called mode shift, and it's the missing piece in government transport strategies.

This blog examines why the current electrification-focused approach is falling short and how a broader strategy, incorporating significant mode shift, could accelerate the transition to net zero while making it more affordable and politically sustainable.

Government Land Transport Policies Towards Net Zero

When it comes to decarbonising land transport, governments have overwhelmingly chosen one path: electrification. Electric cars, electric buses, electric trucks, the strategy is simple in concept. Keep our transport systems exactly as they are, just replace internal combustion engines with batteries.

The appeal is obvious. This approach promises minimal disruption to how people live and travel. No need to rethink urban design, no battles over road space, no challenges to car dependency. Just a straightforward technology swap.

In theory, it's elegant. In practice, it's proving to be slow, expensive, and counterproductive.

The Problems with an Electrification-Only Strategy

The challenges with this approach are mounting:

Speed and Scale Issues

The transition is taking far too long. Despite incentives and targets, the rate of EV adoption isn't keeping pace with net-zero timelines. Early adopters, those most eager and able to switch, have largely done so. Reaching the broader market might prove much harder. Meanwhile, governments continue investing heavily in new and wider roads, infrastructure designed for decades of continued car use that locks in high-emission patterns.

The Energy System Crunch

Electric vehicles are making the broader energy transition significantly harder. The electricity demand from mass EV adoption is enormous, requiring vast new generation capacity and grid infrastructure. This drives up energy prices for everyone and diverts investment from other decarbonisation priorities. Rather than easing the path to net zero, EVs are creating an energy crunch that's fuelling public resistance to climate action.

The Problems EVs Don't Solve

Electric vehicles still create many of the same problems as petrol cars. They worsen congestion by inducing additional demand. When driving becomes cheaper per kilometre, people drive more. They perpetuate car-dependent development patterns that lock households into high transport costs. They generate significant pollution from tyre and brake wear, even without tailpipe emissions. Being heavier than conventional vehicles, they pose greater safety risks to pedestrians and cyclists. And fundamentally, they do nothing to address the health crisis of sedentary lifestyles that car dependency creates.

Financial Pressures

The economics are increasingly problematic. Governments are spending billions on EV purchase incentives and charging infrastructure. Meanwhile, the shift away from fuel taxes is creating massive holes in transport budgets at precisely the time when maintenance backlogs are growing. EVs require different road surfaces and more frequent repairs due to their weight, adding to infrastructure costs.

Economic and Industrial Concerns

Western governments face growing anxiety about their automotive industries as many traditional manufacturers struggle with the EV transition. This is leading to protectionist policies and conflicting priorities that slow the overall shift. In countries like Australia, requirements to "buy local" and test vehicle suitability in each jurisdiction are delaying zero-emission bus rollouts by years.

The Equity Problem

This is fundamentally an unjust transition. Subsidies flow to relatively wealthy households who can afford new EVs, while doing nothing for car-dependent, lower-income households still paying high fuel costs. The benefits accrue to those already advantaged, while the costs, in higher energy prices and taxes, are borne by everyone.

Political and Public Resistance

Perhaps most critically, many people simply don't want to switch. Range anxiety, charging concerns, upfront costs, and attachment to conventional vehicles all create resistance. As governments push harder with mandates and phase-out dates, this resistance could grow, feeding a broader backlash against climate policies.

None of this means electrification is wrong or should stop. The transition to EVs must continue and accelerate. But as a sole strategy for transport decarbonisation, it's clearly insufficient.

We need to move beyond being a one-trick pony and embrace a broader, more effective approach to net-zero transport.

Broadening Our Approach To Net Zero

The solution to faster, cheaper transport decarbonisation isn't a secret. It's well-established, proven in cities worldwide, and supported by decades of research: mode shift.

Mode shift means getting more trips made by walking, cycling, and public transport instead of private cars. It's not about banning cars or forcing people out of their vehicles. It's about giving people genuine alternatives and making sustainable modes the easiest, most attractive option for more trips.

The Untapped Potential

The potential for mode shift is enormous. Analysis across numerous cities shows that a significant proportion of car trips, often 30-50%, are short enough to be easily walked, cycled, or made by public transport if the infrastructure and service quality were there.

When cities invest properly in walking, cycling, and public transport infrastructure and make driving less attractive, the results are dramatic. Mode share for sustainable transport can increase by double-digit percentages within just a few years, delivering immediate carbon reductions without waiting for vehicle fleet turnover.

The Magic Bullet We're Not Using

There is one policy that would transform this picture overnight: comprehensive road user charging. Price driving to reflect its true costs, congestion, pollution, infrastructure wear, carbon emissions, and suddenly, sustainable modes become far more competitive. The revenue generated could fund world-class public transport and active travel infrastructure.

Yet despite its effectiveness, road user charging remains politically toxic. Only Iceland (population 400,000) has implemented it nationally, and just a handful of cities have congestion charges, usually covering only small central areas. The political barriers have proven too difficult to overcome at scale.

That might change in the future as EV adoption erodes fuel tax revenues and forces governments to find new funding mechanisms. But we can't wait for that political shift. We need to act now with policies that are both effective and politically viable.

Proven Policies That Work

Fortunately, there's a wide range of interventions that have demonstrated strong results and, when implemented well, enjoy public support:

School Travel Programmes – Supporting children to walk and cycle to school through walking and cycling buses, school streets (timed road closures), and safer routes. These programmes can reduce school-run car trips significantly, improve children's health, and ease peak congestion.

Parking Reform – Eliminating minimum parking requirements that force excessive parking construction, introducing maximum parking limits in well-connected areas, and ending free parking that subsidises driving. Cities that have reformed parking policies see significant increases in sustainable transport use.

Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods – Creating residential areas with filtered permeability where through-traffic is restricted while maintaining access. Combined with 20mph/30km/h speed limits, these make walking and cycling safe and attractive. Evidence from cities like Ghent, Paris, and London shows strong increases in active travel and high resident satisfaction.

E-bike Support – Providing purchase grants, loan schemes, or lending libraries for e-bikes and cargo bikes. E-bikes dramatically extend the practical range of cycling, making it viable for longer trips, hilly terrain, and carrying children or cargo. Uptake rates in cities with strong e-bike support have been remarkable.

Public Transport Priority – Dedicated bus lanes, traffic signal priority, and high-frequency service make public transport competitive with driving. When buses aren't stuck in traffic, reliability improves, journey times fall, and ridership increases substantially.

Land Use Intensification – Moving away from car-dependent, single-family suburbs toward denser, mixed-use development. When shops, services, jobs, and homes are closer together, walking and cycling become viable for far more trips. This also supports viable public transport by increasing catchment populations.

Travel Demand Management – Workplace parking levies, travel plans and other TDM measures can reduce overall car use and shift trips to sustainable modes.

Car Sharing Services – Supporting car clubs and shared mobility services reduces the need for private car ownership while maintaining access to vehicles when needed. Studies show that each shared car replaces 8-13 private vehicles.

The Economic Advantage

The compelling case for these policies extends beyond carbon reduction. They're significantly cheaper than subsidising mass EV adoption and more car infrastructure. Most mode shift interventions have benefit-cost ratios far exceeding those of road projects or EV subsidies.

Better still, they deliver multiple co-benefits: reduced congestion, lower household transport costs, improved public health, enhanced road safety, better air quality, increased property values, and more vibrant, liveable communities. While EVs only address carbon emissions, mode shift solves multiple problems simultaneously.

The Implementation Challenge

There are two significant obstacles to widespread mode shift:

Coordination Complexity – Transport policy typically focuses on single interventions. Mode shift requires pulling multiple levers simultaneously: infrastructure, pricing, land use, behaviour change, and service quality. Transport agencies aren't structured or skilled for this integrated approach.

The good news? When it comes to transport policy, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Implementing multiple complementary policies creates synergies that amplify each intervention's effectiveness. Safe cycling infrastructure works better when combined with traffic calming. Public transport improvements deliver more when paired with parking reform. Every additional lever you pull makes the others work better.

Political Management – Implemented poorly, these policies can generate fierce community opposition. Changes to street space, parking, and traffic patterns affect daily routines and can feel threatening. Without well-thought-out engagement, co-design, and communication, even beneficial projects can spark backlash.

But implemented well, these policies build strong public support. Cities like Paris, Barcelona and Ghent have shown how to do this successfully. Future blogs will explore these examples and the lessons they offer for making mode shift politically viable.

The Path Forward

Mode shift isn't a radical experiment. It's a proven approach that's delivering results in forward-thinking cities worldwide. The question is whether governments will broaden their net-zero strategies to fully embrace it alongside electrification.

The alternative, continuing down the electrification-only path, means slower progress, higher costs, continued public resistance, and ultimately, a higher risk of missing net zero targets altogether.

Conclusion

The transition to net zero in transport doesn't have to be this hard or this expensive.

While electrification of vehicles remains important and should continue, governments are making a critical mistake by putting nearly all their eggs in one basket. An EV-only strategy is too slow, too costly, and is actually making the broader energy transition more difficult by driving up electricity demand and prices.

The solution is right in front of us. Mode shift – getting more people walking, cycling, and using public transport offers a faster, cheaper path to reducing transport emissions. Better yet, it delivers multiple benefits beyond carbon reduction: less congestion, lower household costs, healthier populations, safer streets, and more liveable cities.

We already know what works. From school streets to parking reforms, from low-traffic neighbourhoods to prioritised bus lanes, cities around the world have proven these interventions are effective. They're also significantly cheaper than subsidising EVs and building out massive new electricity infrastructure.

Governments need to move beyond single-lever thinking and implement comprehensive packages of mode shift policies alongside electrification. When done well, these policies are politically viable and publicly supported.

Policy makers face a dilemma: Do you want to make the net-zero transition harder and more expensive than it needs to be, or do you want to choose an alternative path, one that's faster, cheaper, and makes people's lives better in the process?

The choice seems obvious. It's time to broaden our approach.

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