URBAN TRANSPORT ENERGY CONSUMPTION Belgrade Case Study

More than half of the global population now lives in towns and cities. At the sametime, transport has become the highest single energy-consuming human activity.Hence, one of the major topics today is the reduction of urban transport demandand of energy consumption in cities. In this article we focused on the whole packageof instruments that can reduce energy consumption and transport demand in Belgrade,a city that is currently at a major crossroad. Belgrade can prevent a dramaticincrease in energy consumption and CO2 emissions (and mitigate the negativelocal environmental effects of traffic congestion, traffic accidents, and airpollution), only if it: (1) implements a more decisive strategy to limit private vehiclesuse while its level of car passenger km travelled is still relatively low, (2) doesnot try to solve its transport problems only by trying to build urban road infrastructure(bridges and ring roads), and (3) if it continues to provide priority movementfor buses (a dominant form of public transport), while (4) at the same time developingurban rail systems (metro or light raid transit) with exclusive tracks, immune tothe traffic congestion on urban streets.