Transport is the only sector that has not yet contributed to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. To understand why sustainable transport has not been developed yet, Oliver Schwedes highlights the special features of the transport sector and describes the political conditions for a successful change in transport development. He makes clear that technical innovations alone will not be enough; rather, transport policy must be practised as social policy.

Oliver Schwedes, born in 1967, holds the Chair for Integrated Transport Planning at Technische Universität Berlin. He studied political science, sociology and philosophy in Marburg, Berlin and Edinburgh before obtaining his doctorate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He subsequently worked in the mobility project group at the Berlin Social Science Center. Since then, he has been analysing people's mobility behaviour and the political economy of urban and transport development.