Potentials for Sustainable Transportation in Cities to Alleviate Climate Change Impacts

Abstract

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is an important social goal to mitigate climate change. A common mitigation paradigm is to consider strategy "wedges" that can be applied to different activities to achieve desired GHG reductions. In this policy analysis piece, we consider a wide range of possible strategies to reduce light-duty vehicle GHG emissions, including fuel and vehicle options, low carbon and renewable power, travel demand management and land use changes. We conclude that no one strategy will be sufficient to meet GHG emissions reduction goals to avoid climate change. However, many of these changes have positive combinatorial effects, so the best strategy is to pursue combinations of transportation GHG reduction strategies to meet reduction goals. Agencies need to broaden their agendas to incorporate such combination in their planning.

The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions

“…Though electric cars may replace internal combustion vehicles and shrink the carbon footprint of the automobile, the car-based transport model itself still allows for low-density rural housing developments (Muller 2004), which are associated with twice the emissions per capita of high-density housing (Norman et al 2006) as well as greater consumption and energy use (Ala-Mantila et al 2014, Shammin et al 2010). A car-free lifestyle reduces traffic congestion and petroleum dependence (Mashayekh et al 2012) and avoids the environmental toxicity issues surrounding electric vehicle production (Hawkins et al 2013), making it advantageous even in an era of low-emission vehicles. Lastly, until the emissions associated with desired services are reduced to zero, population will continue to be a multiplier of emissions (Waggoner and Ausubel 2002).…”

Decarbonizing urban transport in European cities: four cases show possibly high co-benefits

“…Providing a more technical argument Creutzig and He (2009), systematically explored how increased public transit deployment increases the effectiveness of a congestion charge by modulating the demand elasticity. Similarly Mashayekh et al (2011), demonstrate the need for a combination of policies to decarbonize road transport. In our study, we indicate that urban transport is an arena where policy packages are better suited than single policies to achieve climate change mitigation.…”

Communicating Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Efforts in American Cities

“…Cities can also incentivize or even mandate the introduction of cleaner technologies and processes for use in privately-owned buildings (e.g., home and business energy standards). Local governments reduce emissions from transportation by investing in low-carbon infrastructure such as mass transit (e.g., light rail or electric buses), cycle lanes, and electric vehicle charging stations [19]. Turning next to adaptation policies, cities, experiencing the impacts of climate change, already engage in a variety of adaptive policies [20,21], including the construction of sea walls and new storm water drainage systems [22], increasing tree cover to address increased heat, and building storm, hurricane, or forest-fire resistant infrastructure [23].…”