Yfirskrift evrópsku samgönguvikunnar 2010 sem er frá 16. til 22. september er ’Travel Smarter, Live Better’ mætti þýða "Bætt líf með betri samgöngumáta".
Travel Smarter, Live Better
’Travel Smarter, Live Better’ was selected as the focal theme for European Mobility Week 2010 in recognition of the detrimental effects that current urban transportation trends have on health, both for citizens and for the towns and cities in which they live. The heavy use of motorised vehicles in cities, particularly private cars, creates many health challenges for citizens. These include injuries and fatalities due to road traffi c collisions; respiratory infections and diseases from air pollution; and chronic diseases such as overweight/obesity as well as cardiovascular diseases due to increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
Other risk factors to physical and mental health include phenomena triggered by climate change such as extreme weather events (e.g. fl ooding, storms and heat waves); social isolation and community breakdown triggered by traffi congestion and reduced public space; and noise pollution leading to sleep disturbance and annoyance.
European Mobility Week 2010 therefore aims to get more European citizens living in urban areas to travel ’smarter’ on foot, by bike and by public transport. By choosing these healthier and more sustainable modes of travel over the private car, citizens can positively infl uence their health and wellbeing, and also enhance the environment and quality of life in cities, to help them live better.
The European Mobility Week
The European Mobility Week is an awareness raising campaign aiming at sensibilising citizens to the use of public transport, cycling, walking and at encouraging European cities to promote these modes of transport and to invest in the new necessary infrastructures.
From 16 to 22 September 2010 the Mobility Week is the opportunity for European cities and towns to participate to the most widespread event on sustainable mobility.
The overall aim of the European Mobility Week campaign is to encourage public awareness of the need to act against pollution caused by the increase in motorised traffic in the urban environment. In fact, it is not just a question of fighting atmospheric pollution or noise but also of improving the quality of urban life.
Accordingly, that operation is centred on three types of measures, designed to:
•encourage the use of alternative forms of transport and travel other than private cars,
•raise awareness and inform city-dwellers of what is at stake so far as concerns long-term mobility in towns and the risks connected with pollution,
•show the town in another light thanks in particular to reduced motorised traffic within restricted areas.
It is an opportunity for all the participating cities and towns to show how much environmental issues concern them. The operation will allow them to express themselves on the matter and at the same time give citizens an opportunity to show their support by their interest and involvement, for measures for a better quality of life in the urban environment. Because to offer everyone an alternative means of getting around, necessarily entails rethinking the apportionment of the highways. Therefore, the European Mobility Week is a unique moment in the year when the elected town councillors can test their transport policies and present them to the citizens.
In its 2009’s Action Plan on Urban Mobility, the European Commission presented the European Mobility Week as one of those sustainable mobility campaigns that "play an important role in the creation of a new culture for urban mobility". The Commission will continue to support the campaign and contribute to its further development.
