Edinburgh's target of cutting car use by 30 per cent by 2030 'quite a stretch' as figures go in opposite direction
Edinburgh's target of cutting car kilometres by 30 per cent by 2030 is "quite a stretch", transport convener Stephen Jenkinson has admitted after new figures showed car use in the city steadily rising.
The Capital declared earlier this year it was sticking to its aim of reducing car use by nearly a third despite the Scottish Government abandoning its less ambitious target of a 20 per cent cut.
However, latest data shows car kilometres in the city has grown from 2,051 million in 2021, the baseline year, to 2,293m in 2022, 2,338m in 2023 and 2,377m in 2024.
"It makes it quite a stretch target," said Cllr Jenkinson. "2021 was when we were still in the midst of Covid."
But he said he was still determined to do all he could to achieve the target. "I think it's certainly a very admirable goal and one I think we should keep pushing towards."
The figures are produced annually by the Department for Transport and released for all local authorities across the UK.
Cllr Jenkinson said public transport was "one of the key solutions" to reducing car mileage and suggested there were encouraging signs.
"Trams had their busiest August ever during the Festival, so people are choosing to use tram as a means of getting across the city, which is good news; Lothian Buses had an additional one million journeys during the Festival; and Waverley had its busiest day in history in August, so people are using train to get into Edinburgh in a way they haven't done before.
"What we need to do is really encourage all those mass forms of public movement to really drive down those numbers. I'm keen to push public transport as much as possible as a way of achieving this target."
He said he wanted to encourage a change in behaviour, primarily from residents rather than commuters coming into Edinburgh. "I think a lot of the car mileage is short journeys within the city."
And he said he wanted to promote a "public transport first" mindset, so people's first thought when they had to get from one part of the city to another was not which route to drive and where they would park, but how they could get there by bus, tram or a combination and what was the most efficient route.
Asked about the possibility of a congestion charge, he said: "We should consider carefully all the options that are available to us, either at the time or may be available in the future. But what that might look like it's maybe a bit too early to say."
If the city is struggling to reach the 30 per cent reduction in car kilometres, it will also face problems in meeting the council's other key climate target of achieving net zero by 2030, since car emissions are a main contributor to air pollution.
Cllr Jenkinson said: "They are both very stretch targets. It would have been easy when the Scottish Government junked their targets to follow suit, but I felt we were on a journey in Edinburgh that has really been baked in quite hard to the policy decisions we've taken as a city and now is the time to keep pushing rather than giving up.
"So in the time I'm performing this role, I'm going to try and change people's behaviour and mindset to do what I can to deliver on these targets."