Car use is costing society billions and needs to be drastically reduced by new charging mechanisms, Senedd Members have been told.
Two leading transport academics also said electric vehicles were not the answer in themselves.
Professor Mark Barry, of Cardiff University, and Professor Graham Parkhurst, of the University of the West of England, made the comments during a meeting of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee.
Prof Barry said: “If you focus on decarbonisation, the biggest impact you can have is in the most densely populated areas – getting people out of their cars for those ridiculously short trips of one, two or three miles.
“For me, if there’s going to be any stick, you wave it more vigorously in places like Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and maybe Wrexham.
“Where the alternative to car transport is harder to deliver, in rural areas, then I think any punitive measures need to be very minimal. You have to be fair and considerate about what people’s choices really are.
“We need to start explaining this not as a charge, but as a reduction, a discount to people that they’ve enjoyed subconsciously for 60 years.
“Cars are not free to society. Cars have a cost – £16bn every year in the UK as a result of 170,000 road traffic accidents; 25,000 serious injuries taking up ICU time [in hospitals]; 1,700 deaths – five people are killed on average every day in a road traffic accident; one cyclist every day. You add 20,000-30,000 premature deaths due to poor air quality costing another £4bn a year.
“You then look at new developments built in places where people can only get to by getting in a car.
“These are real costs – they’re not just fictitious things made up. And people need to understand that if you get in a car you have an obligation to take on board some of those costs, rather than dumping on everybody else, as we have done for 50 years.
“That’s a philosophical and political conversation that needs to happen, and people need to be exposed to that reality.
“Then it will make it easier to justify saying, we need to reduce the current discount you enjoy to drive around and enjoy those freedoms – which are not free.
“Once you dig into this, it’s very clear that cars have done an enormous amount of damage to society. Out-of-town developments have also done so much damage – and we’ve carried on. You have to significantly change your relationship with the car.”
Prof Parkhurst said those living in rural Wales should also play their part, despite the difficulties.
The aim should be for people in such communities to drive to the nearest available public transport point and park their cars.
Asked whether improvements needed to be made to public transport networks before cracking down on motorists, Prof Barry said: “The Welsh Government is between a rock and a hard place.
“To properly deliver an integrated public transport network with the capacity to provide choice and options not to use your car, you need to invest a significant amount in our rail infrastructure as well as our bus infrastructure.
“The Welsh Government can’t do all of that at the moment. The other thing that’s very clear, given the fiscal challenges, is how do you create the level of revenue streams to service the kind of capital funding required, and how do you then incentivise people to use that capacity?
“I think it’s unavoidably necessary to think about some pricing mechanisms that can cover those costs, but also properly reflect the costs associated with the use of cars, which for 50 years have been spread among all of us and resulted in decades of bad decisions not just on transport, but on planning.”
Prof Parkhurst said: “I think in setting these targets one has to consider also that the transport sector is becoming increasingly integrated with the rest of the economy.
“In many ways we have an energy problem as much as a transport problem. So if you’re talking about a modal shift, it will depend on the take-up of electric transport solutions, both public and private.
“Do we actually have the green energy to power those vehicles?”
Prof Parkhurst said it would be very expensive to deliver the decarbonisation of transport: “The revenues from passengers will be a relatively small part of that. It’s going to need big decisions by politicians to put money into that or persuade the private sector to engage in that.
“An electric bus costs three, four or five times more than a diesel bus. You simply can’t cover that difference from revenues.
“My biggest concern is the rise of the electric car, with energy coming possibly from somebody’s home PV panel system. In effect, they’re using a vehicle that they regard as completely clean and completely green.
“Public transport really must then decarbonise if it’s going to be able to compete in that psychological battle. If I have an electric car, I might feel I’ve done my decarbonisation – why on Earth should I be using the bus and train again if they’re still supplied by diesel?”
