19. How can the transport system be shaped to minimise its environmental impact, while ensuring its effective integration with wider systems such as energy and the built environment?
Background
DfT’s ARI identifies 40 broad research questions that reflect areas of strategic importance to the department, where further insight and collaboration could enhance our evidence base, challenge assumptions and strengthen future decision-making. The ARI is organised around four complementary themes, and this question sits within the Delivering Green and Healthy Transport theme.
Transport has a significant influence on environmental outcomes and public health, shaping greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, noise, physical activity and the resilience of communities to climate change. Decisions about how transport systems are planned, operated and used therefore play a critical role in tackling climate change, protecting the natural environment and supporting healthier lives.
This theme recognises that environmental sustainability and health outcomes are closely linked, and that transport interventions can deliver multiple benefits when these objectives are considered together. Cleaner vehicles and fuels, safer and more attractive streets, and shifts towards walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport can reduce environmental harm while improving physical and mental health, including through improved safety outcomes. At the same time, transport has negative effects on safety, air pollution, noise, inactivity and climate risks which we aim to reduce.
Transport’s environmental and health impacts are shaped by interactions with wider systems, including energy, the built environment, nature and public health. Understanding these interactions is essential to addressing long term challenges such as decarbonisation, climate adaptation, air pollution and health inequalities, and to ensuring that transport interventions deliver lasting benefits across different places and population groups.
Delivering green and healthy transport requires action across multiple timescales and levers, from technological change and infrastructure investment to behaviour, service design and spatial planning. The ARIs therefore seek research that deepens our understanding of how transport can reduce environmental harms and support better health outcomes.
Next steps
If you have research relevant to this topic, are planning work in this area, or would like to discuss potential collaboration, please get in touch. For our monitoring and evaluation purposes, we are also keen to hear if the ARI has informed or influenced your research.
To get in touch and report the use, please fill in the form https://submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/264718/dft-areas-of-research-interest-ari/
Link to DfT ARI: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dft-areas-of-research-interest/areas-of-research-interest-2026
Topics
Related UKRI funded projects
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ICF: Healthy Low-Carbon Transport Hub (HLTH)
Accelerated transport decarbonisation is essential for the UK to meet CO2e emissions requirements. Measures adopted must maximise physical/mental health co-benefits, but this has not been the case historically. Replacing...
Funded by: MRC
Lead research organisation: University of Southampton
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on maximizing health co-benefits of transport decarbonisation measures and integrating health considerations into the Paris Climate Agreement.
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Sustainable Transport Evidence and modelling Paradigms: Cohort Household Analysis to support New Goals in Engineering design (STEP-CHANGE)
There is an accepted need to promote step changes towards more sustainable urban environments, notably in transport and travel, which we will focus on. While many model-based desk-studies have aimed to simulate such envi...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: University of Birmingham
Why might this be relevant?
The project aims to provide evidence on the impact of major transport interventions on behavior and infrastructure effectiveness, supporting the goal of sustainable urban environments.
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MEthods and Tools for Assessing the Health Impacts of Transport: modelling study (METAHIT)
Globally and locally how people and goods move around is important for public health. Transport causes ill-health through road traffic injuries, noise, and air pollution, but is an opportunity for benefiting health throu...
Funded by: MRC
Lead research organisation: University of Cambridge
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on assessing the health impacts of transport, including active travel, air pollution, and road traffic injuries, aligning with the question's emphasis on minimizing environmental impact and promoting healthier lives.