Sustainability of passenger transport as a precondition for fulfilling the 4.0 company concept – analysis of trends in the Czech Republic

Strengthening public transport can significantly contribute to transport sustainability, in particular to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This article primarily aims to analyse the long-term trend in the production of carbon dioxide by individual types of transport throughout the Czech Republic and to compare the performance of public passenger transport and passenger car transport. The analysis concludes that the performance of public passenger transport by land in the Czech Republic has not been increasing over a long period; on the contrary, individual transport has been strengthening. There has been an increasing trend in CO2 emissions from transport for a long period. Thus, the development of subsidies in the public transport clearly shows that to fund public passenger transport is in the public interest.


Introduction
Environmental issues, growing urban population and dwindling crude oil reserves are the main reasons why there is more and more talk about transport sustainability. Gumbo and Moyo [1] warn of this problem especially in developing countries. Lefevre, Briand, Pye, et al. [2] state that "the transport sector represents 25% of global CO2 emissions" and further point to the fact that "while a range of options exist to decarbonize the passenger transport sector, the detailed sequencing of actions and resulting transformations over time remain largely unexplained in political debates". The problem of CO2 emissions is compounded by the decline in organic productive areas, especially in cities and on outskirts. This decline is exacerbated by the lack of capacity to sequester CO2 on both the microscale and mesoscale, which results in rising temperatures and reduced air quality within urban boundaries [3]. The above-named authors (Lefevre, Briand, Pye, et al.) [2] indicate that the results across countries correspond with the following theses: • to achieve deep decarbonisation, resolute action for all types of transport is needed, especially for solutions on the demand side; and • deep decarbonisation is compatible with other political priorities, such as meeting the mobility needs at affordable costs; and • strategies should be adapted to the purpose of mobility, to local contexts and national circumstances, with the framework being adapted to other sectors and further developed in the context of future political processes. Stefaniec, Hosseini, Xie, et al. [4] propose to introduce a systematic approach to transport evaluation based on the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability in order to support decision makers (in better evaluation of transport sustainability performance). Sultana, Salon and Cuba [5] also admit that there are inherent trade-offs that may hinder win-win-win strategies across this environmental, economic and social domain. Umar, Ji, Kirikkaleli et al. [6] demonstrate that there is an important cointegration equation between CO2 emissions, innovations, financial development, transport infrastructure and real GDP, on which individual political decisions should be based -for example, to strengthen the performance of public passenger transport and to encourage restrictions on individual transport or to support pooling of drives -more people travel in fewer vehicles [7]. All over the world governments have introduced sustainability programs and policies that lead to a shift from traditional private car-dependent transport systems to the greater use of public transport, cycling and walking [8] or the use of electric three-wheelers [9]. Many research teams [10,11] offer tools for decision-making of local governments in order to assess the global and local sustainability of transport systems, mostly based on multi-criteria decision making. The trend of transport inclusion into a sophisticated system of life is growing stronger in all aspects -in the offer of equal access to public services and job opportunities, in environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources [12]. This article aims to create a time series of data on carbon dioxide production by individual types of transport throughout the Czech Republic, to determine a long-term trend between 2000 and 2018 and to describe the trend. Furthermore, based on the comparison of performance of public passenger transport, a conclusion will be drawn as to whether there are really changes or shifts in favour of public passenger transport and how strong these shifts are. A partial aim is to evaluate the transport output, both by the number of transported persons and by kilometres per person. The last aim is to describe the amount of subsidies provided from the state budget of the Czech Republic, on the basis of which it will be possible to state whether funding and supporting public transport as a whole is in the real interest of the state. To meet the aforementioned aims, statistical data of the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic from individual yearbooks (publicly available) and data of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic are used. Only the data on the land passenger transport are used from the data set on transported persons. Passenger shipping and air travel are excluded from the survey. This procedure is also applied to the analysis of transport output, which will be supplemented by data on the length of lines and roads. MS Excel is used for data processing.

Sustainability in passenger transport -greenhouse gas emissions
European countries have undertaken to meet the commitments of the White Paper, which is the so-called Single European Transport Area Plan, i.e. creating a competitive and resourceefficient transport system. Strengthening public transport can significantly contribute to meeting one of the objectives of the White Paper that reads as follows: "To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% by 2050 compared to 1990" [13, p.3].
In order to determine the trend in the production of greenhouse gases in the Czech Republic, it is necessary to create a time series of carbon dioxide emissions for individual types of transport. Data from the Ministry of the Environment are used for a longer time series (Table  1). It is not possible to compile a sufficiently long time series from the data of the Ministry of Transport, where the data for 2019 are also given. This is due to the fact that in 2019 there was a change in the methodology and only the data for the last five-year period were revised retrospectively. If we compare the data from both sources, the total emissions from transport are the same, but there are noticeable deviations between individual categories. Source: Own processing according to the Ministry of the Environment of the CR, 2020.  It is necessary to realize that the minority proportion of emissions includes not only public passenger transport, but also freight transport and air and water transport. We can derive the trend of emissions in the time series: YEAR 2000 Passenger car transport Public passenger transport by land Other transport  CO2 emissions from the passenger car transport (Figure 4) more or less copy the curve of the total emissions from transport. until 2018. It can be stated from the above that it is really necessary to start motivating the inhabitants to reduce the individual car transport and to strengthen the public transport in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Transport performance in passenger transport, passengers transported
Passenger transport performance is usually expressed in two ways -on the one hand in the number of transported passengers and on the other hand in kilometres per person. The kilometre per person represents the transport of one person over a distance of one kilometre. It is calculated as the product of the transport performance (i.e. the distance a passenger travels on average) and the number of transported persons. The Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic regularly collects data from transport companies and summarises them in yearbooks. One set of the data is the transported persons and kilometres per person (according to the data of the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic, 2020).

Evaluation of transport performance by the number of persons transported
First, the development trend in the number of transported persons is described on the basis of comparing the data from the yearbooks of the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic: Source: Own processing according to the Ministry of Transport of the CR, 2020.
There was a decline in the proportion of passengers transported by the land public transport in the total transport (Table 2). In 2005, this percentage was 57% and by 2019 it dropped to 52%. This decrease was caused by a faster growth in the number of persons transported by the individual car transport. The municipal public transport accounted for the highest percentage in the land public transport, with its stable proportion in public transport remaining at 80%.

Evaluation of transport performance by kilometres per person
The second way to evaluate the transport performance is the method of describing kilometres per person. Based on the statistical data of the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic, the data of registered kilometres per person in the individual types of transport were determined and a time series was created from them:  Source: Own processing according to the Ministry of Transport of the CR, 2020. Table 3 gives an overview of the transport performance in kilometres per person. With this evaluation method of the transport performance, there was a slight increase in the proportion of the land public transport, when in 2005 it accounted for 31% which increased to 33% within a year. This was due to the fact that the average transport distance in the public transport increased from 10.6 km in 2005 to 14.4 km in 2019. This phenomenon is positive, it informs us that people started using the public transport more even for longer journeys. This increase in the average transport distance is evident especially in the railway transport, where the average transport distance increased from 37 km to 56 km. On the contrary, there was a slight decrease in the average transport distance in the individual car transport from 32.2 km to 31 km. The development trend in the transport performance ( Figure 7) clearly shows that there was a slight increase in the public passenger transport throughout the monitoring period. However, there was a relatively steep growth in the performance of passenger car transport since 2013 after a phase of stagnation and decline between 2005 and 2012.

Subsidizing the land public transport from the state budget
The analysis of the public transport use can be supplemented with a time series on the development of subsidies as a state aid. This description provides information on whether it is in the real interest of the state to support public transport as a whole.   (Table 4) are listed only for the period up to 2018 (2019 is not available yet) and only for the line bus and railway transport. The table clearly shows that transport subsidies were growing over time. Between 2010 and 2018 there was an increase in subsidies by 24%. The ratio of railway transport subsidies to total subsidies ranges from 68% to 70%.

Conclusion
At first glance, the analysis clearly shows that the overall performance of the land public transport has not significantly improved since 2005; on the contrary, the use of the individual car transport seems to be strengthening and intensifying. The development trend in the transport performance clearly shows that there was a slight increase in the public passenger transport throughout the monitoring period. However, there was a relatively steep growth in the performance of passenger car transport since 2013 after a phase of stagnation and decline between 2005 and 2012. The total CO2 emissions have not been reduced yet. The growing trend is confirmed by the fact that between 2000 and 2018 CO2 emissions from transport increased by 66%. Given the longer-term efforts and goals to substantially reduce CO2 emissions (which was illustrated with the increasing trend in provided subsidies), this signal is alarming and it would certainly be appropriate to address this topic in more depth -to conduct more detailed research both at the level of individual regions or at the level of individual transport companies and to look for problematic aspects that prevent the land public transport being stronger pushed through at the expense of the individual road transport. Unfortunately, the current situation in connection with the coronavirus pandemic may, on the contrary, exacerbate the transport crisis and further reduce the use of public transport.