Coach cars: a low carbon transport mode On October 20th 2011, the 7th European Bus and Coach Forum took place in Kortrijk, Belgium, organised by the International Road transport Union (IRU). The subject of this conference was sustainable transport. Huib van Essen gave the key-note speech of this conference and also contributed a paper. He pointed out that coach transport is relatively environmently friendly, compared to other modes of transport, but that it does not receive much attention from policy makers. In the 2011 White Paper on Transport from the European Commission, coach and bus transport are hardly mentioned, while the CO2 emissions of a journey by coach is as low as the same journey by electric intercity train. The paper also discusses options for further greening bus & coach transport as well as policy strategies for increasing the share of these collective passenger transport modes.