Abstract:In recent years, bike-sharing has experienced rapid development; however, controversies about the externalities of bike-sharing programs have arisen as well. While bike-sharing programs have impacts on traffic, the environment, and public health, the social impacts, the management, and sustainable development of bike-sharing has also been of interest. The debate regards whether there are externalities, as well as whether and how such externalities can be determined. Based on the rapidly diffused bike-sharing in China, this paper quantitatively explores bike-sharing externalities. Specifically, this paper estimates the impacts of bike-sharing on the economy, energy use, the environment, and public health. The empirical results show that bike-sharing programs have significant positive externalities. The bike-sharing systems can provide urban residents with a convenient and time-saving travel mode. We find that the bike-sharing dramatically decreases traffic, reduces energy consumption, decreasing harmful gas emissions, improves public health generally, and promotes economic growth. This study contributes to a better comprehension of the externalities of bike-sharing and provides empirical evidence of the impacts of bike-sharing. Findings suggest that bike-sharing can play a critical role in the process of urban transportation development and provide information useful for urban transportation policies.

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Air pollution has become a serious challenge in China. Emissions from motor vehicles have been found to be one main sources of air pollution. Although the Chinese government has undertaken numerous green policies to mitigate harmful emissions from road transport sector, it is still uncertain for both policy makers and researchers to know whether the policies are effective in the short and long terms. We propose a new concept of "pollution rebound effect" (PRE) to estimate the effectiveness of green traffic policies. We estimate direct air PRE as a measure of the effectiveness of the policies of reducing air pollution from the transport sector based on time-series data from the period 1986-2014. We find that the short-term direct air PRE is −0.4105, and the corresponding long-run PRE is −0.246. The negative results indicate that the direct air PRE does not exist in the road passenger transport sector in China, both in the short term and in the long term during the period 1986-2014. This implies that the Chinese green transport policies are effective in terms of harmful emissions reduction in the transport sector. This research, to the best of our knowledge, is the first attempt to quantify the effectiveness of the green transport policies in the transitional period that China is currently undergoing.

Abstract:Air pollution has been a serious challenge for human sustainable development. Researches show that emissions from the transport sector have been found to be a main source of air pollution in cities. Governments have implemented numerous green traffic policies to mitigate harmful emissions. However, the problem as to whether the green traffic policies are effective, and the extent to which the policies affect air quality remain unknown. This paper is the first attempt to apply a difference-in-difference method to investigate how a specific green traffic policy (in our case, the green traffic pilot cities program) affects air quality. The estimates show that the pilot program is associated with consistent reductions in annual concentration of pollutants. In pilot cities of China, the annual concentration of SO 2 , NO 2 and PM 10 decrease by 10.71 percent, 11.26 percent and 9.85 percent, respectively, after the implementation of the green traffic pilot cities program. The results show that the green traffic pilot has a noticeable improvement on air quality of the pilot cities, implying that government intervention has a positive influence on pollution prevention in the transport sector. Moreover, the green traffic system construction can be popularized in other cities to mitigate air pollution.