2 April 2024

13:30 – 14:15

Amphi 2

Catherine Morency

Catherine Morency is a civil engineer and professor at Polytechnique Montreal. She holds the Mobility Chair on the implementation of sustainability in transportation and the Canada Research Chair on personal mobility, which focuses on the interactions between transportation modes. She is a member of the boards of directors of the Société de transport de Montréal and the Sustainable Mobility Agency of Montreal and appointed member of the Quebec advisory committee on climate change.

Why do we need to reduce the number of private vehicles?

In Quebec, transportation is responsible for some 43% of GHG emissions (around 31% for road transport). In addition to being the activity sector with the highest share of GHGs, emissions from transport are growing fast. This is not independent of the fact that the private vehicle fleet continues to grow. In fact, between 2001 and 2021, the private vehicle fleet grew by 15.4%, while the adult population increased by only 10.4%. Access to private vehicles has never been so important. In a context where the Sustainable Mobility Policy sets out targets for reducing the proportion of trips made by solo car, cutting journey times, reducing gross household expenditure (transport is the 2nd largest item of expenditure after housing), and reducing fatal and injury accidents, it’s hard to see how we can realistically achieve this without tackling the size of the vehicle fleet and its transformation (type of vehicle, light trucks, dimensions, mass) head-on. This conference will provide an overview of various worrying trends, the resulting impacts and possible solutions.