The Transport Alliance for Clean Air (TACA) is a group of companies and associations from the transport and mobility space that share a common vision for clean air in the EU. Its members are Acciona, CONEBI, Cycling Industry Europe, Decathlon, Micromobility for Europe, Kunak, Ingka IKEA, Inter IKEA, MaaS Alliance, OPUS RSE, Tallano, Transdev, and Uber. T&E helps to coordinate the alliance's policy work.
The alliance says that the private sector should be at the forefront of action to tackle toxic air pollution, by helping authorities to strengthen controls over transport emissions and providing low- and zero-emission technologies, goods, and services.
Although improving, air pollution remains the biggest environmental threat to human health: a silent killer that causes more than 300,000 premature deaths a year in addition to causing various illnesses such as lung cancer, strokes, asthma, and is suspected to damage every organ in the human body. Concentrations of air pollution in Europe are still way above what is considered healthy by the World Health Organization (WHO). 89% of European city dwellers are still breathing dangerous levels of NO2 , and 96% of them are breathing dangerous levels of PM2.5.
With the EU’s new Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD) entering into force, national governments will need to establish “air quality roadmaps” in order to set a pathway to comply with the new European air quality standards for pollutants, including Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). In anticipation of the preparation of these air quality roadmaps, the Transport Alliance for Clean Air commissioned a study to Air Quality Consultants (AQC) to assess what transport interventions would be required in cities in order for them to reach the new European air quality standards for NO2 and PM2.5 in 2030 (respectively 20µg/m³ and 10µg/m³), and the WHO recommended concentrations for these same pollutants in 2040 (respectively 10µg/m³ and 5µg/m³).
Results of the modelling show that both the EU limit values and WHO guidelines for NO2 can be met respectively in 2030 and 2040 under each of the three following scenarios:
However, in order to reach the EU PM2.5 limit values in 2030 and WHO guidelines in 2040, more ambitious transport measures are required that combine the three pathways listed above, including a significant reduction of traffic levels (ranging from 10% to 50%, depending on the city).
These results can be transposed into the following policy recommendations:
