Abstract
Transportation—the movement of people and goods—is the lifeblood of a city. Inadequate transport systems constrain a city’s economy and vitality. But making a city too dependent on motorized transport can cause a host of other problems: traffic jams and deadly accidents, debilitating air pollution, and the loss of valuable land to streets, highways, and parking lots. Car- and truckcentered transportation systems run the risk of becoming like clogged arteries: they are bad not only for the vitality and attractiveness of cities, but also for urban residents’ health, local environmental quality, and the global climate.
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Notes
- 1.
Rachael Nealer, David Reichmuth, and Don Anair, Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave (Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, November 2015).
- 2.
Figure 11–1 from Todd Litman, Analysis of Public Policies That Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Urban Sprawl, paper commissioned by LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science, on behalf of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate for the New Climate Economy Cities Program (Victoria, BC: Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 2015).
- 3.
Stephen M. Wheeler, “Built Landscapes of Metropolitan Regions: An International Typology,” Journal of the American Planning Association 81, no. 3 (2015): 167–90.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Philipp Rode et al., Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form, NCE Cities Paper 03 (London: LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 2014); density data and Figure 11–2 from Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy, The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities Are Moving Away from Car-Based Planning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015).
- 7.
Luis Zamorano and Erika Kulpa, “People-Oriented Cities: Mixed-Use Development Creates Social and Economic Benefits,” World Resources Institute blog, July 23, 2014; Luis Zamorano, “The Perfect Storm: One Country’s History of Urban Sprawl,” TheCityFix.com, March 5, 2014.
- 8.
Joan Clos, “A New Paradigm for Urban Planning,” Climate Leader Papers, May 24, 2012, www.climateaction programme.org/climate-leader-papers/a_new_paradigm_for_urban_planning; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Tech-nischeZusammenarbeit (GTZ), “Informal Public Transit. Recommended Reading and Links,” June 2010, www.sutp.org/component/phocadownload/category/85-rl-ipt?download=145:rl-ipt-en; Robert Cervero, “Informal Transit: Learning from the Developing World,” Access Magazine (Spring 2001).
- 9.
Michael Kimmelman, “Express Bus Service Shows Promise in New York,” New York Times, July 19, 2015; Seth Freed Wessler, Filling the Gaps: COMMUTE and the Fight for Transit Equity in New York City (Oakland, CA: Applied Research Center, 2010); Robert Hickey et al., Losing Ground. The Struggle of Moderate-Income Households to Afford the Rising Costs of Housing and Transportation (Washington, DC and Chicago: Center for Housing Policy and Center for Neighborhood Technology, October 2012).
- 10.
Juan Miguel Velásquez, “How to Orient Cities for People, Not Cars,” GreenBiz.com, March 25, 2015; Heshuang Zeng, “On the Move: Limiting Car Usage in Industrialized Economies,” TheCityFix.com, November 6, 2013; Heshuang Zeng, “On the Move: Reducing Car Usage and Ownership in China, Latin America, and Other Developing Economies,” TheCityFix.com, November 7, 2013; ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability, Mexico City’s Green Plan: EcoMobility in Motion, ICLEI Case Studies 120 (Bonn: November 2010); Lulu Xue, “4 Lessons from Beijing and Shanghai Show How China’s Cities Can Curb Car Congestion,” World Resources Institute blog, April 19, 2015; “Urban Access Regulation in Europe,” http://urbanaccessregulations.eu; 226 cities from Dario Hidalgo, “Sustainable Mobility Trends Around the World,” Embarq, March 10, 2014, www.slideshare.net/EMBARQNetwork/embarq-trends-2014-dario-hidalgo; London from “Streetwise,” The Economist, September 5, 2015. Box 11–1 from International Association of Public Transport (UITP), “3 Really Simple Steps: How to Reduce Congestion and Pollution, Generate Revenue and Overhaul Your City,” May 19, 2014, www.uitp.org/news/3-steps-milan, and from ICLEI, Milan, Italy. The Ecopass Pollution Charge and Area C Congestion Charge – Comparing Experiences with Cordon Pricing over Time, ICLEI Case Studies 157 (Bonn: July 2013).
- 11.
Kanika Jindal, “In Photos: Bhopal Becomes India’s Fifth City to Join the Car-Free Raahgiri Movement,” TheCityFix.com, October 8, 2014; Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), “ITDP Welcomes Clayton Lane as New CEO,” October 5, 2015, https://www.itdp.org/itdp-welcomes-clayton-lane-as-new-ceo/; Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik, “Oslo Aims to Make City Center Car-free Within Four Years,” Reuters, October 19, 2015.
- 12.
Susan A. Shaheen and Adam P. Cohen, “Growth in Worldwide Carsharing. An International Comparison,” in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1992 (Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, 2007), 81–89.
- 13.
Ibid.; Navigant Research, “Carsharing Programs,” https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/carsharing-programs; Statista, “Number of Vehicles in the Global Car Sharing Market from 2006 to 2014 (in 1,000),” www.statista.com/statistics/415322/car-sharing-number-of-vehicles-worlwide/; Statista, “Number of Car Sharing Users Worldwide from 2006 to 2014 (millions),” www.statista.com/statistics/415636/car-sharing-number-of-users-worldwide/; Navigant Research, “Carsharing Services Will Surpass 12 Million Members Worldwide by 2020,” press release (Boulder, CO: August 22, 2013).
- 14.
Heshuang Zeng, “On the Move: Car-Sharing Scales Up,” TheCityFix.com, December 18, 2013; ITDP, “ITDP Welcomes Clayton Lane as New CEO.”
- 15.
Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC), “SUMC to Help Lead $1.6 Million Low-Income Carsharing Pilot in LA, July 24, 2015, http://sharedusemobilitycenter.org/news/sumc-to-help-lead-1-6-million-low-income-carsharing-pilot-in-la/.
- 16.
Zeng, “On the Move: Car-Sharing Scales Up”; Andrew Nusca, “Enterprise Acquires PhillyCarShare,” ZDNet.com, August 9, 2011.
- 17.
Zeng, “On the Move: Car-Sharing Scales Up.”
- 18.
Simone Pathe, “Uber the Unfair? Are Ride-sharing Firms Exploiting Deregulation?,” PBS Newshour, October 2, 2014; Avi Asher-Schapiro, “Against Sharing,” Jacobin, September 19, 2014; Liz Alderman, “Uber’s French Resistance,” New York Times, June 3, 2015; Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy, “German Court Bans Uber Service Nationwide,” New York Times, September 2, 2014; Steven Hill, Raw Deal. How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015); Mark Scott, “BlaBlaCar, a Ride-Sharing Start-Up in Europe, Looks to Expand Its Map,” New York Times, July 2, 2014.
- 19.
ICLEI, Bremen, Germany. A Role Model for Car-Sharing Is Targeting 20,000 Users by 2020, ICLEI Case Studies 159 (Bonn: August 2013). Euro to U.S. dollar conversions reflect average exchange rate for 2015 (January to mid-November).
- 20.
Figure of 718 excludes airport shuttles, commuter/mainline rail lines, entertainment parks, and funiculars. Another 92 “heritage tram” and “other” systems are not included in the total. Information appears to be current as of early 2013. Light Rail Transit Association, “A World of Trams and Urban Transit,” www.lrta.org/world/worldind.html.
- 21.
UITP, Statistics Brief. World Metro Figures (Brussels: October 2014); Mircea Steriu, Statistics Manager, UITP, Brussels, personal communication with author, August 31, 2015; 2014 and 2015 from Wikipedia, “List of Metro Systems,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems, viewed October 6, 2015. Figure 11–3 based on these two sources.
- 22.
UITP, Statistics Brief. World Metro Figures; Wikipedia, “List of Metro Systems.”
- 23.
“New Subway (Metro) Systems Cost Nearly 9 Times as Much as Light Rail,” Light Rail Now, February 13, 2014, https://lightrailnow.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/new-subway-metro-systems-cost-nearly-9-times-as-much-as-light-rail/. Table ;11–1; adapted from Cledan Mandri-Perrott with Iain Menzies, Private Sector Participation in Light-Rail-Light Metro Transit Initiatives (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010).
- 24.
ITDP, “What is BRT?” https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/the-bus-rapid-transit-standard/what-is-brt/.
- 25.
Aileen Carrigan et al., Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of BRT Systems. Bus Rapid Transit Case Studies from Around the World (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute and EMBARQ, December 2013).
- 26.
Global BRT Data website, brtdata.org. Figure 11–4 from Ibid.
- 27.
Table 11–2 from Ibid; C40 Cities and Arup, Climate Action in Megacities. C40 Cities Baseline and Opportunities. Volume 2.0 (New York: February 2014).
- 28.
Bogotá from Carrigan et al., Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of BRT Systems; Buenos Aires from ITDP, “Five City Transport Transformations That May Surprise You,” May 18, 2015, https://www.itdp.org/five-city-transport-transformations-that-may-surprise-you/; Francesca Perry, “Everyone Praises Green Copenhagen. But What If Your City Has 20m People?,” The Guardian (U.K.), April 2, 2015; Mexico City from Stephanie Valgañón and Geovana Royacelli, “Movilidad: la enfermedad y el remedio,” CiudadanosENRED.com, May 5, 2014.
- 29.
Global BRT Data website.
- 30.
ITDP, “Five City Transport Transformations That May Surprise You”; UN-Habitat, International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning. Towards a Compendium of Inspiring Practices (Nairobi: April 2015), 23.
- 31.
Johannesburg from Andy Gouldson et al., Accelerating Low-Carbon Development in the World’s Cities, New Climate Economy Working Paper (Washington, DC: Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, 2015); Ibidun Adelekan, “A Simple Approach to BRT in Lagos, Nigeria,” in Mark Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling: Urban Resource Flows and the Governance of Infrastructure Transitions. Case Studies from Selected Cities (Paris: United Nations Environment Programme, 2013), 45–48.
- 32.
Box 11–2 from ITDP, “The BRT Standard,” https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/the-bus-rapid-transit-standard/, and from ITDP, Best Practice in National Support for Urban Transportation. Part 1: Evaluating Country Performance in Meeting the Transit Needs of Urban Populations (New York: 2014).
- 33.
ITDP, Best Practice in National Support for Urban Transportation.
- 34.
Stefanie Swanepoel, “The Climate Action Plan of Portland, Oregon,” in Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling, 58–61; road closures from “Streetwise,” The Economist.
- 35.
ICLEI, Freiburg, Germany. Cycling 2020 – A Concept Fit for the Future, ICLEI Case Studies 156 (Bonn: July 2013); Sven Eberlein, “Universal Principles for Creating a Sustainable City,” Planetizen.com, August 11, 2011; Gabriela Weber de Morais, “Citizens Contributing to Urban Sustainability in Vauban, Germany,” in Swilling et al., City-Level Decoupling, 19–21.
- 36.
ICLEI, Freiburg, Germany; Weber de Morais, “Citizens Contributing to Urban Sustainability in Vauban, Germany.”
- 37.
Christian Tang Jensen, “Making Politicians Invest in Bicycle Infrastructure,” Cycling Embassy of Denmark, June 30, 2015, www.cycling-embassy.dk/2015/06/30/making-politicians-invest-in-bicycle-infrastructure/; “In Almost Every European Country, Bikes Are Outselling New Cars,” National Public Radio, October 24, 2013.
- 38.
Justin Gerdes, “Copenhagen’s Ambitious Push to be Carbon Neutral by 2025,” Yale Environment 360, April 11, 2013; ICLEI, Münster, Germany. Cycling and Public Transport: The Way Forward, ICLEI Case Studies 158 (Bonn: August 2013); “Ten Cycling Cities to Discover in Europe,” Huffington Post UK, July 20, 2015.
- 39.
The Copenhagenize Index, http://copenhagenize.eu/index/index.html; Priscila Pacheco, Luísa Zottis, and Sergio Trentini, “How Two Community Groups Are Successfully Fostering Bike Culture in Brazil,” TheCityFix.com, August 26, 2015; Luísa Zottis, “Using Bikes to Improve Mobility in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas,” TheCityFix.com, August 19, 2015.
- 40.
ICLEI, Bogotá, Colombia. Building a Plan to Transform Non-Motorized Transport in Bogotá, ICLEI Case Studies 165 (Bonn: August 2013); Buenos Aires from Perry, “Everyone Praises Green Copenhagen. But What If Your City Has 20m People?” and from ITDP, “Five City Transport Transformations That May Surprise You”; ICLEI, Mexico City’s Green Plan: EcoMobility in Motion.
- 41.
Peter Midgley, “On the Move: The Swift, Global Expansion of Bicycle-sharing Schemes,” TheCityFix.com, December 4, 2013; 2014 data from Susan A. Shaheen et al., Public Bikesharing in North America During a Period of Rapid Expansion: Understanding Business Models, Industry Trends and User Impacts (San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, October 2015); U.S. cities from SUMC, “5 Bike Sharing Trends to Watch This Summer,” EcoWatch.com, July 7, 2015.
- 42.
C40 Cities and Arup, Climate Action in Megacities.
- 43.
Best-performance cities from Colin Hughes, “Building Towards Better Bike-sharing Systems,” TheCityFix.com, February 26, 2014; smartphone apps from “Streetwise,” The Economist; innovations from Midgley, “On the Move: The Swift, Global Expansion of Bicycle-sharing Schemes” and from SUMC, “5 Bike Sharing Trends to Watch This Summer”; Josh Cohen, “Birmingham’s New Bike-Share Will Have Electric-Assist Bicycles,” NextCity.org, May 4, 2015.
- 44.
SUMC, “5 Bike Sharing Trends to Watch This Summer.”
- 45.
Sustainable Transport Awards, “Winners,” http://staward.org/winners.
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Renner, M. (2016). Supporting Sustainable Transportation. In: State of the World. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-756-8_15
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