1.4: Goal for a sustainable mobility on Texel

The future system and the current sub-system do contrast. As it was mentioned above, the predictions show that the number of tourists going to Texel will keep growing. At the moment, the island gets considerably packed during the summer and it is noticed by the difficulty of finding car parking lots. Having more cars in the island increases noise, fumes and visual pollution making it seem less attractive to visitors and affecting the liveability of the local inhabitants.

The main challenge that Texel faces in the mobility is how to keep exploding tourism without affecting the natural surroundings and the quality of life of the local people. The right direction seems to be to encourage the visitors leave their cars behind in the mainland and to use more sustainable vehicles within the island. But how to do that without decreasing the easy reachability of the island? A new sustainable mobility system in Texel not only will contribute to decrease the impact of the cars in its environment but also will help to bring a new kind of tourism that will have a better interaction with the local people.

It is smart to set the main goals. Under the principles of sustainability and the environmental ethics,  a smart mobility system should contribute in the improvement of these problems: Minimize carbon emissions, improve demand-side energy efficiency, improve the renewables, and reduce the impact created on the natural landscape by mobility sector. After the information about the mobility on Texel, the following research question is made:

How can Texel get an isolated transport system powered by local energy sources?

Hereby we need to look at future plans and changes in the mobility system in the Netherlands and on Texel. Hereby the various actors has to be taken into account. Certainly, the design challenge for the mobility system on Texel is to provide a viable alternative to the car and this is what is going to be studied in the following chapters.