Opportunities to Address Transportation-based GHGs Abound
December 16, 2011
Today half of the world’s population live in cities, therefore transportation in and around cities, especially during people’s daily commute to work and back, can have a significant environmental impact. Jean Mercier, one of the leading scholars of environmental policy in Canada, and professor at the University of Laval spoke at the University of Toronto recently about upstream and downstream policy instruments for sustainable transportation. The transportation sector accounts for approximately 28% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which makes it one of the largest contributors to climate change, second only to electricity generation.
To address transportation in cities, Mercier defines upstream policy instruments as the state of a city before it decides on creating sustainable transportation. For example, cities in Europe, that were built long before automobiles were around tend to be rather dense with most of the buildings 6 to 7 stories high, consisting of multiple family homes, and the streets within the city are narrow. Whereas most North American cities (Los Angeles being a prime example) were built with the automobile in mind.
Downstream policy instruments are the tools for creating sustainable transportation that governments can employ. These include legislation, city planning for new construction and exerting influence on affordability. For example, in the 1950s Singapore was a poor city-state and had a high amount of motorization. It’s leaders explicitly set out to reverse their situation; they restrained vehicle ownership by installing expensive registration fees, road tolls and parking fees. They invested heavily in public transit, and they controlled land use development. Today Singapore is affluent and has one of the best transit systems in the world.
Historically, Canada’s major cities; Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, are “moderately successful cities”, according to Mercier, citing that Toronto was the first Canadian city to build a subway in 1954. However, today Toronto has the longest average commute time compared to 19 major cities worldwide according to a study by the Toronto Board of Trade, reported on by The Toronto Star. The portion of Toronto-area residents travelling in cars to get to work is extremely high compared to other major cities. And with the municipal government recently removing the vehicle registration tax, and planning on increasing the user cost of public transit, while simultaneously decreasing public transit services, it looks like transportation in Toronto is going to get much worse before it gets better.
Many opportunities are available for cities to improve transportation to address climate change and concurrently make financial gains in productivity. As the Star article referenced above notes, in Toronto gridlock costs $5 billion in productivity losses. Extending the public transit service areas, hours, and frequency of trips, subsidizing user fares, and adding road tolls or congestion pricing, are all ways that cities can encourage more energy efficient means of transportation.
Blog Post by ZACL Intern Cyndi Whaley