Most approaches to sustainable transportation involve incremental "greening" changes to the existing auto-dominated transportation-land use-urban form systems and settlement patterns. Often they are no more than minor per-capita VMT reduction programs that will only slightly slow the systematic increase in carbon, thereby NOT contributing to climate change solutions or adaptation. As such, they also do NOT address other planning, livability, economic, and urban design implications of the transportation component for the larger land use system. None of them address the environmental destruction and pollution associated with car manufacturing and end-of-life disposal. A few address operational issues, such as mercury release from brake systems.
However, two recent innovations have transformational potential to drive the innovation required to invent the transportation-land use-urban form systems of an ecologically regenerative/sustainable economy and society: STARS and SMART.
STARS, or the Sustainable Transportation Analysis & Research System, is a LEED-like system anchored in a whole systems, strategic sustainability approach. Review it further here.
SMART, or Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transportation, is a project of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and its Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
SMART recently published an interesting document, CONNECTING AND TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION: A Brief and Practical PRIMER For Implementing Sustainable Door-to-Door Transportation Systems In Communities and Regions World-Wide, that is worth reviewing.
In the first instance, it defines an approach to inventing a sustainable transportation system that has promise. In the second, the substantive ideas developed to date also hold promise. It looks like the right approach and path.
That being said, land use is less articulated, or appears to be, than one might expect. However, this seems to be a generic issue with the transportation literature even though the land use-transportation nexus has been around for 40 years as an important concept more often noted than executed in transportation planning. Yet, defining the goal at the outset--implementing sustainable door-to-door transportation systems in communities and regions world-wide--will drive the required innovation for developing the land use/transportation integration needed for ultimate door-to-door multimodal transportation system success.
The only thing more promising than either program would be a combination: SMART STARS! Both programs give hope that humanity can respond effectively to the sustainability challenge. That hope arises from the innovative capacity they embrace to understand and frame the issue, to formulate bold goals needed to drive that innovation to ultimate success, and to execute on the details--to undertake the detailed problem solving, product/program development and implementation. So review these two programs not only for what they have formulated, but how.