Transport Poverty on the Agenda
Across the EU, up to 125 million people face difficulties accessing or affording transport. Rising costs, car dependence, and limited alternatives are turning mobility into a growing inequality challenge. The Social Climate Fund offers a chance to respond—if used strategically.
Transport poverty is no longer an emerging issue—actually, it never was. The term may have gained traction only recently at the political level, but the conditions it describes have long been visible and widely felt. An estimated 90 to 125 million citizens in the EU experience some form of it, whether through unaffordable travel costs, a lack of access to essential services, or an absence of viable alternatives to the private car. While its impacts vary across regions and social groups, the consequences are clear: constrained opportunities, economic vulnerability, and diminished participation in society. What is new—and welcome—is the growing political recognition that these persistent mobility barriers are part of a wider structural challenge.
Transport poverty is not primarily the result of individual circumstances. It is the outcome of spatial, infrastructural, and policy decisions taken over decades. Low-density land use patterns, segregated functions, and limited investment in sustainable alternatives have led to widespread car dependence.
This is not just a rural issue. It also affects suburban zones, outer-city neighbourhoods, and even underserved urban areas, where public transport is limited and services are spread out. For many, the car has become a forced condition rather than a choice—one that imposes serious financial stress and often excludes those who cannot drive or afford to keep one. Recent shocks to energy prices have only added pressure, exposing the vulnerability of households locked into fossil fuel-based mobility with no feasible way out.
Shaping the transition with the SCF
Tapping transport card at station, Jorge Elizaquibel
Addressing transport poverty requires more than technical fixes. It calls for a deeper shift in how we define access. More movement does not always mean better access—especially if people are forced to travel long distances just to meet basic needs. Sometimes, the goal is the opposite: to travel less, but reach more.
This is where the Social Climate Fund (SCF) becomes a key instrument. As part of the EU’s broader climate policy package, the SCF aims to support vulnerable households and micro-enterprises as emissions trading is expanded to road transport and buildings. With fossil fuel prices (both for cars and heating) expected to rise under the new EU Emission Trading System (ETS2), the SCF provides EUR 86.7 billion to cushion the impact and to support longer-term change.
But how the fund is used will matter. If it only provides short-term relief—cheaper fuel, small subsidies—it risks reinforcing the very model that has produced inequality in the first place: it may relieve the pressure temporarily, without changing the conditions behind it. Instead, the SCF could be used to support more structural measures, such as investing in better public transport in underserved areas, expanding shared and demand-responsive services where these are not provided, making walking and cycling safe, practical, and inclusive, and reconfiguring access by funding planning that brings key services closer to where people live.
These are not new concepts—many cities and regions are indeed already working along these lines and applying many of these principles to their planning. But moving from isolated pilots to systemic impact takes resources, alignment, and political will. The SCF can help—if local and regional authorities are part of the process. They know where the gaps are, manage much of the network, and are best placed to design solutions that reflect real needs on the ground.
The mobility transition is not only about reducing emissions. It is also about reducing dependency, risk, and exclusion. In the end, transport poverty makes one thing clear: access is not a technical detail, but a social outcome, and it should be a political priority.
Integrating mobility, planning, and equity in Europe
Price board for fuel, Jan von Nebenan
Transport poverty rarely exists in isolation. It is often deeply entangled with housing affordability and spatial
inequality. In many cities, the only housing low-income households can afford is located far from jobs, schools, or health services. In these areas, public transport is limited, active modes are unsafe or impractical, and shared mobility is often absent. As a result, mobility costs increase—eating into already stretched household budgets. What appears affordable in rent quickly becomes unaffordable in fuel.
This relationship is not incidental, but structural. Housing and mobility systems, planned in isolation, produce patterns that reinforce exclusion. The compounded cost of living far from services, without viable transport options, often goes unmeasured. Transport poverty intersects with other forms of vulnerability, linked to income, age, disability, or ethnicity. It increases exposure to shocks, narrows opportunity, and deepens social and spatial disadvantage across generations.
What makes this particularly urgent is not just the scale of the issue—but its invisibility. Transport poverty rarely makes headlines. It does not register as a single crisis. Yet, it accumulates quietly—in daily routines, in financial trade-offs, in time lost and opportunities missed. It becomes visible only when it is too late—when people are forced to choose between travel and essentials. If future frameworks fail to address it, we risk embedding transport poverty into the next generation of housing, climate, and economic strategies.
This is why the upcoming Social Climate Plans and the European Affordable Housing Plan matter. They represent key opportunities to address affordability and access together—to break down silos between land use, energy, and mobility, and to align social equity with economic strategy. As POLIS’ report on transport poverty has shown, these challenges are interlinked. So too must be the solutions. Because this is not only a social concern—it is a competitiveness issue, too. When people cannot access jobs, education, or services efficiently, the entire system underperforms. Local and regional public authorities hold many of the tools to act: they plan, regulate, invest, and deliver on the ground. Transport poverty cannot be allowed to drift in and out of focus. If we are to address it meaningfully, it must be named, understood, and integrated into long-term policy.
A just transition cannot succeed if large segments of the population are priced out or planned out. Europe’s economic resilience and social cohesion depend on places that are connected in an inclusive and affordable manner—not just in principle, but in practice.
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About the author:
Jorge Manso García, Project Officer, POLIS. Manso García focuses on new mobility services, the future of the transport workforce, and urban policy innovation. He contributes to projects like SMAPE, ShareDiMobiHub, SUM, and RESKILLING, exploring how public authorities can adapt to technological change while keeping mobility fair, flexible, and people-focused. He also supports POLIS’ advocacy and strategy work on just mobility systems.
Bus interior, Canva