- As a sector, transportation accounts for 29% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
- An individual switching a single trip per day from car to biking can reduce their carbon footprint by half a metric ton per year.
- About half of the global populations living in urban areas are exposed to air pollution levels 2.5 times greater than the safe standard from the World Health Organization.
- While efficiency improvements are projected by experts to decline by 2035, from 2035 to 2050 those emissions are then expected to increase again as population growth leads to greater overall travel.
Current Problem
Transportation has long been pegged as one of the greatest areas needing sustainability intervention. Left unchecked, traffic congestion continues to pour pollution in into local communities. Collectively, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation continue to grow unchecked, creating climate concerns. Worse yet, the land used up by transportation infrastructure— paving roads and parking lots over natural lands– seems to be accelerating.
While Tesla and others in the electric vehicle space kicked off a revolution in how cars and trucks can be powered, EVs are not the only solution. Two issues include 1) the negative land impact that mining for battery materials requires and 2) the tendency to charge the vehicles from the main power grid that still runs heavy with coal and gas fired power plants, major carbon producers.
While EVs are an improvement over gasoline and diesel-powered cars, we can push even further to truly low carbon and even no carbon transportation solutions. In doing so, we can prevent contributions to climate change, clean up air quality that directly impacts public health, and even make cities and neighborhoods more interconnected and healthy spaces.
Truly sustainable transportation strategies don’t look just at what fuels our existing vehicles, but they question the very nature of how we get around, how often, and why.
Emerging Solutions
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is notorious for being one of the global cities where cars are most coveted, needed, and used, which unfortunately leads to daily interactions with smog, air pollution, frustrating traffic, and many other ills.
Rather than convert all drivers in the city to EVs, some future forward-looking leaders in Los Angeles have embraced what it means to actually reduce carbon emissions. LA’s Green New Deal set targets to increase the percentage of all trips made by low-carbon and no-carbon methods (walking, biking, micro-mobility, or transit) to 35% by 2025, 50% by 2035, and maintain that 50% through 2050.
Specific steps for truly sustainable transportation the city has taken to work towards these goals in a real way include fostering livable/walkable neighborhoods that eliminate the needs for cars, adding dozens of miles of new bike lanes, and mandating future developments that incorporate public transportation considerations to reduce trips completed by car.
California
For the state of California, intrastate travel by both car and plane from different corners of California is one of the key areas of concern for transportation emissions. Trying to eliminate the number of individuals driving or flying between Southern California and Northern California has been an area of focus for many years and one of the driving forces behind the proposed California High Speed Rail project.
By reducing the time and cost it would take to travel across the state, would-be travelers have no reason not to take the train, and in doing so their relative carbon footprint of their trip would reduce greatly to be representative of the ‘low carbon’ goal. This high speed rail project has seen its fair share of delays and hurdles, but if any part of the U.S. is to replicate the European model of sustainable rail travel then it will still be the Golden State.
National
In Oregon, the densely populated Northeastern region is leaning into intercity and intracity public transit systems. The active and outdoorsy nature of the citizens of Oregon have informed the state by going out of their way to fund their Pedestrian and Bicycle Program for safer and more attractive walking and biking as natural transport modes.
Transportation shifting programs are only as effective as citizens can be convinced to use them, so cities, states, and regions must listen to the peoples voices around them most of all.
Global
When it comes to addressing the carbon emissions associated with personal travel, a challenge comes from the fact that the need to travel by car seems baked in by the spread out design of the modern city. If more people had many of their required amenities—work, school, grocery shopping, doctors, etc.—all within a short distance of their home, they would be more likely to utilize readily available emission-free modes like walking or biking or even low-carbon modes like public transit or electric bikes & scooters.
One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Especially in rural areas that are urbanizing and rapidly developing nations where cities can be built up from the ground up, this type of urban planning with sustainable transportation incorporated from the beginning is an unbeatable opportunity to avoid the mistakes of cities past.
Successful examples of global cities making these efforts include bike lanes in Milan and Berlin, playing catchup to Paris’s goal of being 100% cyclable.
