Transportation
Transportation
Initial environmental actions were related to national regulations over air quality, water
protection, waste management, and hazardous materials. These national concerns,
particularly in developed economies, were extrapolated as transnational issues
encompassing the world. The process began with the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment in 1972, identifying key environmental principles such as natural
resources conservation, wildlife protection, and pollution control. It culminated in 1987
with the publication of the Brundtland Report, where the term sustainable
development was first formally defined and became mainstream. The concept was
further expanded with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
in 1992, particularly with the setting of Agenda 21, a non-binding action plan for
sustainability principles. After a series of iterations, in 2015, the United Nations General
Assembly issued a resolution labeled Agenda 2030, which defined 17 sustainable
development goals.
Global. Concerned with the long-term stability of the earth’s environment and the
availability of resources to support human activities.
Local. Concerned with localized forms of sustainable systems, which are often related
to urban areas in terms of jobs, housing, and environmental pollution.
2. Sustainable Transportation
Sustainable Transportation
Measures to promote transport sustainability have their limits. Indeed, the built
environment, transport infrastructures, and even modes cannot change quickly enough
to solve the bulk of the problems related to unsustainable transport. Most investments
will remain so for 50 years or more. New investments (in additional or improved
infrastructure) will not represent much more than a few percentage points in reducing
traffic congestion and its negative externalities. The different life spans of transport
modes and infrastructure underline that sustainability cannot be applied in a
synchronized fashion. For instance, replacing most of the automobile fleet with more
efficient vehicles within a decade could be possible. At the same time, replacing road
infrastructure (e.g. pavement) would take about a quarter of a century, and assets such
as planes and containerships have a lifespan of a couple of decades.
While policies, rules, and regulations expect compliance, users instinctively react to
price signals and discard modes that are becoming costly (unsustainable) and find
loopholes. Transportation and sustainability for both passengers and freight must also
contend with mitigation versus adaptation issues:
Full-cost pricing. The full (or partial) recovery of costs related to public investments is
incurred in constructing, maintaining, and operating transport networks. They remove
artificial signals such as subsidies and let users assume the real transportation cost,
including road pricing and pollution (carbon) taxes and fees. Motorists are charged a
floating fee (depending on demand variability in peak and off-peak hours) for using
targeted roads. This can be implemented through various techniques, such as tolls or
licensing fees. Tax and pollution fees would involve the implementation of increased
taxes on vehicle and fuel purchases as well as imposing fees on vehicle owners who
operate at low levels of energy efficiency. Such an approach aims to incentivize users
toward more sustainable mobility choices.
Parking controls. By raising parking prices or reducing the amount of parking space,
such a strategy can deter the use of privately-owned vehicles in areas of highest
demand by raising the price of commuting by car to high-density areas. The expected
result is to encourage (or force) commuters to seek alternatives in mass transit,
ridesharing, or carpooling. They tend to be ineffective for freight distribution since
delivery trucks will infringe regulations for short-duration deliveries (e.g. double parking
for a few minutes).
Trip avoidance. A more direct method of reducing traffic demand, but avoiding trips is a
complex endeavor. It involves strategies where an activity still occurs while its related
mobility is mitigated. This is mostly related to the use of information technologies, which
paradoxically can, at the same time, substitute for and support mobility. For instance, e-
commerce can reduce the number of shopping trips, but this involves substituting
for parcel deliveries. For freight transportation, trip avoidance is mostly the outcome of
changes in sourcing strategies such as nearshoring, where fewer ton-km are generated.
Traffic bans. Through traffic bans, the regulatory institution would exert direct control
over the allowable limit of vehicles in a given urban area or along specific corridors
depending on measures of transport supply-demand functions or arbitrary estimates of
carrying capacity. Many high-density central areas have closed streets to pedestrians to
create public spaces more conducive to commercial and social activities.
Implementing such strategies relies heavily on the existing spatial structure, passengers
and material flows, and transport networks. An expectation is that the demand will shift
towards more carbon neutral modes with better energy performance. In situations
where a fee structure is not effective (e.g. low-income population), constraint-based
strategies can be more suitable than fee-based strategies. Such coercive strategies
would thereby limit the number of vehicles in circulation and, correspondingly, reduce
congestion and air pollution while promoting alternative transport means. Their
fundamental shortfall is they assume that government (planning) entities know solutions
to urban transport problems (such as the appropriate number of parking spaces), which
is not necessarily the case.
In urban areas, the challenge is to expand and improve transportation supply to provide
alternatives to the automobile and trucking. This can be achieved for passengers by
expanding public transit infrastructure, improving existing public transit services, and
making cities friendly to pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles. However, it appears
that vehicle automation could be an even more effective tool by allowing better
utilization of existing vehicle and road assets as well as reducing the number of vehicles
in circulation. The realms of green logistics and city logistics have received renewed
attention as tools to improve the sustainability of freight distribution since the material
needs of economic activities, including end consumers, must be provided for as well.
Sustainability is giving public transit a new impetus since the bulk of its prior rationale
was to mitigate automobile dependency and provide mobility to a large share of the
population. However, this is an extremely difficult challenge considering the prominence
the automobile is achieving worldwide. It must be acknowledged that this prominence is
the outcome of many positive factors favoring the automobile, such as flexibility,
convenience, and relatively low ownership and operating costs. As the average income
of the global population is increasing, the pressure for automobile ownership continues.
Thus, alternatives can be provided if they are cost-effective while fulfilling a niche
demand. They may include:
Energy intensity of vehicles and carbon intensity of fuels. Vehicles are the first
element of the transport supply, where more sustainable improvements can be
implemented. This is the dimension for which the decarbonization of transportation can
lead to the most tangible outcomes. There are many strategies, such as using lighter
materials (e.g. composites) for manufacturing vehicles or more efficient or new engine
technologies. The material intensity of an average vehicle of 1.5 tons remains significant
since steel and plastics can account for 75% of their mass. Because of its complexity
and related supply chains, the automobile is subject to circular economy considerations
where vehicles, parts, and materials could be reused and recycled. Fuels can also be
improved using alternatives such as natural gas, biofuels, electricity, or hydrogen.
Densification and agglomeration. A higher concentration of activities usually leads to
more efficient transportation because of the lesser distances involved. Spatial structures
such as logistics zones or transit-oriented developments can thus result in reduced
vehicle trips. They may also incite using modes more prone to economies of scale
(more passengers or units of cargo per load or surface unit) as cost-effective
alternatives. With market signals related to land cost, densification, and agglomeration
often dictate more efficient and higher-density uses.
Context-appropriate transport. Transportation modes and infrastructure must be
developed and used in the context in which they are the most appropriate. However, the
relevance of specific transportation systems to service-specific contexts is subject to
debate since it is reflective of societal values and priorities. Both public and private
forms of transportation have roles to fulfill. The last decades have seen substantial
growth in individual mobility despite all the efforts to promote public transportation. In
the North American context, promoting public transit has seen limited success.
Therefore, public transportation, being less flexible, should assert a complementary
role. The expansion and development of mass transit systems must make effective use
of urban space by conforming to a number of factors, including urban form, density, and
modal preferences. In doing so, the fleets and networks must ensure a level of flexibility
while ensuring low ridership costs. Comparatively, improving and upgrading existing
public transit services should include improving service coverage and quality and
increasing frequency where and when it is most needed (during peak hours). A similar
observation applies to freight distribution, as a range of modes is available to
accommodate a variety of supply chains. There is not necessarily an ideal setting in
which a mode should be used.
Micromobility. Integrating individual modes of non-motorized transport, such as
walking, electric scooters, and cycling, can provide access to shopping, schools, and
work. The main constraint concerns range and capacity as micromobility is not designed
to accommodate trips of more than 5 km, with most of the trips less than 1 km. Also, for
cities struggling with serious traffic congestion and air pollution, micromobility should be
considered an alternative, or at least complementing, private vehicles while serving as a
crucial link in an integrated public transportation system; its last mile. While cycling and
scooters can be challenging to promote and integrate into urban transportation (e.g.
taxing weather conditions such as winter or excessive heat), there is a clear and unmet
need to better integrate pedestrian movements into sound urban design and
architecture. For freight, non-motorized transport modes are much more limited in
capacity and range.
However, such alternatives contrast with the reality of modal choice towards the
automobile and trucks, particularly in economies experiencing rapid growth. Thus,
sustainable transportation remains elusive since any economic activity, including
transportation, has negative environmental impacts. The matter remains if these
activities are taking place at a level exceeding the environmental and social carrying
capacity. Technological innovation has historically played a paradoxical role in both
exacerbating environmental and sustainability issues and, at the same time, offering
forms of mitigation. The expectation is that in the future, technological innovation in the
transport sector will be more of a sustainability driver than it was in the past. This is why
a share of the attention has shifted toward decarbonizing transportation.
The concept of sustainable transportation has become widely accepted as a goal and
appears in the environmental plans of many governments and corporations. For
instance, the European Union has set the ambitious goal that by 2030, net greenhouse
gas emissions will be reduced by 55% of their 1990 levels. Still, sustainable
transportation remains elusive as it does not offer clear guidelines but mostly a
narrative allowing stakeholders to remain vague in their commitments and endeavors
(also known as “greenwashing”). In the 17 sustainable development goals identified by
the United Nations, transportation was not identified as a distinct sustainability
goal, even if it accounts for about a quarter of global CO2 emissions. Further, these
goals have no stated priority and are subject to interpretation and ideological capture by
advocacy groups. Elite individuals and institutions use the environmental and
sustainability narrative for virtue signaling and the derived social status.
Since the early 2000s, sustainability goals in the transportation sector have been
reframing towards a more tangible strategy focusing on carbon consumption and
emissions. This mainly took shape around the decarbonization of transportation, which
helps articulate the narrative around the role of fossil fuels. The concept does not
undermine the purpose of transportation, which is providing mobility to passengers and
freight, but that the carbon footprint of transportation activities should be reduced. Even
if it focuses on carbon, decarbonization directly impacts other externalities as most air
pollutants are an outcome of the combustion of fossil fuels. To articulate
decarbonization strategies, three scopes of emissions have been proposed:
Scope 1 (Direct emissions). Carbon emissions (and other greenhouse gases such as
nitrogen oxide) are the result of the activities of an organization. This particularly
concerns emissions from vehicles and facilities supporting operations.
Scope 2 (Indirect emissions). Emissions resulting from the generation of fuels and
electricity for operations. Even electricity, which may not generate Scope 1 emissions,
could generate Scope 2 emissions if generated by fossil fuels such as coal and natural
gas.
Scope 3 (Indirect/induced emissions). Emissions resulting from activities upstream
and downstream of the organization. They are the most complex to assess as they are
not under the direct control of an organization generating Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
This includes emissions resulting from business travel by management, the commuting
of employees, waste generation and disposal, the goods and services that an
organization purchases, and the transportation and distribution services used for
procurement and access to markets.
Decarbonizing transportation focuses on three main realms of application:
Related Topics
4.1 – Transportation and Energy
4.3 – The Environmental Footprint of Transportation
3.1 – Transportation and Economic Development
B.15 – Green Logistics
City Logistics
A.20 – Transport and Environmental Management
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