: Public Transport, Could help Us Save our Health and Cities By Steve Williams September 19 2014 (care2) We’ve all heard the calls to leave the car at home, but now new international research throws extra incentive behind the idea: if we want cities that are less polluted and want to guard the health of future generations, ditching cars for public transport, or better yet cycling and walking, might be the easiest thing we could do. The research, conducted by a team from the University of California and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), suggests that the easiest way to cut traffic air pollution by 2050, which is a main target for UN memberstates, would be for people to swap their daily car commute for using public transport or walking or cycling around cities. In fact, the report says that this would represent the “least pain” for the “most gain” out of mostly any action a city dweller could take. In fact, the researchers found that assuming public transport could take the added strain of this swap, the change could cut carbon dioxide emissions from city transport by as much as 40 percent. The researchers arrived at this figure by taking existing calculations on how we expect trends to develop up until 2050, and then adjusted them to reflect an alternative scenario where city dwellers forego their own cars in favor of public transport or walking and cycling. It’s not only a reduction in emissions that could be a positive result, however. The report also estimates that by 2050, ditching our cars whenever possible could save as much as $100 trillion. The report, called The Global High Shift Scenario, argues that private transport and particularly car use has been one of the main culprits for the rise in CO2 emissions across the globe, particularly in the last few decades. As CO2 is an insulating gas, it is also likely to have had a significant impact on global warming. Furthermore, as the number of city dwellers continues to rise, and will keep rising to some 66 percent of the world’s population by 2050 according to UN estimates, there is the added pressure to ward off respiratory diseases, as well as certain heart conditions, that are frequently linked with air pollution in our cities. Things like asthma and other allergies appear to correlate with rising pollution levels, as do certain cardiac events and, possibly, some cancers. As such, the report argues that focusing on public transport investment is vital because it is only through governments enriching public transport networks that we can tempt people away from their cars. Co-author of the research and ITDP managing director Michael Replogle is quoted as saying that the possible gains from such investment have traditionally been overlooked, but that if we want to ensure a healthy and greener future, this is something we can’t afford to miss. “Transportation, driven by rapid growth in car use, has been the fastest growing source of CO2 in the world,” Replogle is quoted as saying. “While every part of the global economy needs to become greener, cleaning up the traffic jams in the world’s cities offers the least pain and the most gain.” For the most benefit, the report stresses that investing in non-motorized forms of transport, for instance by creating better cycle lanes on our roads, should be a priority. Perhaps more controversially, the report suggests that lawmakers and local governments should consider making it harder for people to have cars in our cities by, for instance, providing fewer parking spaces and parking garages, ensuring that only those who really need to use their own vehicles, such as those people with limited mobility or those with young families, are being catered to. The report also calls on politicians to work with institutions like investment banks to capitalize on the many ways in which city infrastructure can be adapted and improved to better cater to non-motorized forms of transport, including tram rail networks but also simply walking and jogging. Without this action, the report warns that rapid urbanization could mean traffic levels almost doubling by 2050, causing widerscale gridlock problems that by that time won’t be as easy to solve, presumably because population density will limit how much action can then be taken. Fortunately, immediate action doesn’t have to be all that costly. Said Replogle: “Unlike energy strategies that require investment in more costly technologies, this is a set of investments that simply require investing in better public transportation and making streets safe to walk and bike.” This kind of action isn’t just for high-income countries, though. The report argues that developing nations need to embrace this kind of initiative in order to maximize their growth potential because, otherwise, they will run up against problems like air pollution and overcrowding further down the line — the rising superpower of China being a ready example. It could also be argued that by helping developing nations to avoid these issues, it could actually improve their health and spur even faster growth, something that certainly sounds appealing. (Im not sure faster growth is necessarily the bestg thing that all developing nations should seek. Redistribution of wealth and power would be better first and then see if much growth is needed. But the general point about the efficiency of public transport rather than private and making cities safe for walking and cycling are good ones, and good ones that the FG-Lab gang seem not only to have ignored but to have positively worked against in their obsessive attempt to asset strip historical investment for their friends. The determination to sell of bus routes and to introduce the inefficiencies of competition other than on the major trunk routes, will almost inevitably end in waste of fuel and energy and will tend in any case to monopoly, but presumably they hope privately owned monopoly providing dividends to shareholders rather than benefits to passengers. The possibilities of proper road and rail transport co-ordination will disappear with privatisation and stress levels of staff will rise as wage levels fall and demands to create the extra surplus for the shareholder at the expense of workers and passengers starts to bite, with cuts in services. Publicly owned transport systems can be inefficient, if their goals are not clearly defined and understood and if management is schooled in the private profit model rather than the provision of service model. An expansion of public transport privately owned, would be better than a proliferation of private cars, but it would be much less likely to be able to integrate to provide the basis for the sympathetic development of either the cities or the more rural areas. Ed)
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 19:56:46 +0000
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