Transport, Climate And Autonomy : Why Technology Will Not Solve the Problems – And What May

Transport raises three specific types of issues to a greater extent than other areas of public policy. First it is particularly closely connected to technology. Technologies of movement characterize all forms of transport, from ‘low-tech’ walking to ‘high-tech’ automated vehicles. Second the transport sector is a particularly significant contributor to damaging climate change. Third the cultural association between transport, travel and personal autonomy is particularly close and long-established. Since the mid-20th century (earlier in the US) car-based, individualized travel has increasingly been equated with personal autonomy. It is widely assumed in public debates and policy-making in relation to transport that technological innovation (reducing emissions from fossil fuels, replacing fossil fuels by electricity to power vehicles etc) will reduce the climate impact of transport sufficiently. This assumption supports the judgement that personal autonomy need not be de-coupled from car-based travel. This paper challenges the assumption and the judgement. It will first show that technological innovation will not reduce the climate impact of transport sufficiently if current, car-centred travel patterns continue (see e.g. Wiggins 2020). This first argument establishes a rationale for a significant reduction in car-based travel. The need to reduce car-based travel could be used as an argument for prioritising car use reduction above autonomy considerations. The paper argues however that a prioritisation of this kind is politically risky as it may lead to the kind of populist questioning of the legitimacy of liberal democracy seen in response to ‘x-minute’ neighbourhood proposals (see Lange 2025). It argues that prioritizing car use reduction above autonomy considerations also does not philosophically engage with the association between car-based travel and personal autonomy. Instead the paper retains the focus on, and the high value attributed to, personal autonomy in liberalism (see for example Christman and Anderson 2005). It accepts that in transport systems as currently configured driving a car offers significant opportunities for exercising autonomous agency. It then shows however that those not able or permitted to drive and those in whose life plans (see Rawls 1999) driving does not feature (but who may be coerced into driving) have fewer and lower quality autonomy opportunities. Transport-related autonomy opportunities are currently inequitably distributed in favour of driving. The paper makes the case for a more equitable distribution of transport-related autonomy opportunities and argues that such a redistribution also has real potential for reducing climate emissions from transport to the necessary extent. In the final section the paper responds to a potential objection to such a redistribution of transport-related autonomy opportunities – that it illegitimately sacrifices autonomy opportunities for drivers for the sake of autonomy opportunities for non-drivers. The paper responds to this objection by arguing that achieving a sufficientarian transport-related autonomy threshold should be a policy priority because it makes a significant contribution to the empirical conditions necessary for everyone to exercise autonomous agency in a meaningful way, both as an individual and as a citizen. The paper concludes by linking these empirical conditions to the Kantian idea of equitable freedom.