Transport CSD Agenda Item: CSD-9, 2001; Earth Summit 2002  Input to the Secretary General’s Report on Transport for Sustainable Development
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1. Specific Experiences, Trends Observed and Lessons Learned:

Motorization:
Rapidly increasing motor vehicle use remains the biggest challenge to developing sustainable transportation systems.  Industrial nations, while accounting for less than a fifth of the world’s population, continue to account for about 60 percent of transport-related energy use.  Vehicle ownership rates are still on the increase in all OECD countries. These countries therefore bear a special responsibility for reducing transport-related emissions and energy use.

However, motorization growth rates are presently highest in less industrialized countries (LICs). In the lower income countries of Africa and Asia, rising incomes have led to a sharp increase in motorcycle and paratransit use, at the expense of non-motorized trips.  The rapid deterioration of road safety has led to conditions where, for short trips, more motorized trips are made in very low income countries than in many high income countries, seriously compromising the income of the poor.  Motorcycles and paratransit are generally major contributors to emissions with serious adverse health impacts.

 However, it should also be noted that because of the late growth rates, countries like India will have a car fleet with a low average age and cleaner vehicles within 5 years.

In Latin America, transit customers have traditionally been served by chaotically-operated private bus systems with little input or control from municipal authorities.  The resulting dissatisfaction amongst Latin American transit-users has pushed the region to the highest levels of vehicle ownership in the developing world, 90 cars per 1000 inhabitants.  Further, most of this rapid increase in car ownership is occurring through the purchase of highly-polluting, used vehicles; such vehicles are typically imported from Northern countries.

Land Use:
 Transport is a derived demand. Transport infrastructures and services need to be developed in tandem with specific and enforceable land use regulations that limit urban sprawl and effectively manage urban growth, and low income housing policies which are attentive to the access needs of the poor as well as their shelter needs.  Many Asian (Singapore) and some Latin American cities (Curitiba) have located higher density low income housing in locations with excellent public transit service.  A large number of LIC cities still have a huge proportion of people walking or cycling.  Many European cities have developed land development regulations which prioritize the development of existing brownfield sites in central or transit-accessible locations.  They have also effectively regulated private car access to central cities, making them pedestrian-friendly and boosting their overall attractiveness. They have also placed tight restrictions on big-box retailers that generate excessive motor vehicle trips and hurt existing small businesses.   These measures are becoming increasingly important in developing countries as international retailers are expanding rapidly into emerging markets with weaker development regulation.

 Mixed- and high density land use can play a catalysing role towards sustained economic development.  For example, the busway stations in Curitiba, Brazil are development nodes which act to attract commercial and residential development.  The strategic siting of sustainable transport options improves customer access to shopping, employment, and services while the high-density centres ensure sufficient passenger traffic to maintain cost-effective transit systems.

Transport-related Emissions:
The transport sector represents nearly 30 percent of total emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary contaminant responsible for global climate change.  Further, with rampant vehicle purchases in the developing world, the sector is also the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.  Unfortunately, the sector has been virtually ignored from mitigation activities within the UNFCCC process; to date, zero of the over 150 AIJ mitigation projects developed have been transport related.  The acceptance of transport projects through the GEF is only now beginning, nine years after the inception of the fund.

However, the great attention currently given to the issue of global climate change partly obscures the continued danger of other contaminants.  From the standpoint of human health, reductions in the levels of lead contamination of air and water, reductions in the levels of suspended particulates (TSP), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ground level ozone, carbon monoxide (CO), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)  are even more important.  While lead phase out is well under way in most developing and virtually all developed countries, the levels of TSP, NOx, VOCs, and CO are rising dramatically in many developing country megacities, with serious long term adverse health implications for millions.  An estimated 1.1 billion urban residents worldwide are exposed to particulate or sulphur dioxide levels in excess of World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.  The WHO recently confirmed that the premature mortality from particulate emissions in developed countries such as France or Austria is twice as high as traffic related deaths.

It has also become clear that clean technologies are no panacea to the global emission problem.  In developed countries, promoting emissions-reduction schemes based on hydrogen-fuel cell vehicle technology may be viable, but most technologies still depend on sources of hydrogen which are most likely to also be carbon based.  Solutions, in the near term, remain extremely expensive.  More importantly, the infrastructure necessary to import, store, and distribute hydrogen promises to be extremely expensive.  The costs of conversion to hydrogen are therefore are likely to be prohibitive for most lower and moderate-income countries.  Furthermore, the capacity in developing countries to safely maintain and repair these vehicles is likely to be a long-term process.  Also, the possibility of oligopolistic supply conditions for new technologies are likely to keep costs high in the near term.  Finally, research by the Pembina Institute indicates that life-cycle CO2 emissions from fuel-cell use are over twice as high as such emissions from natural gas use, a cost-effective technology that is available today. Simple modernization of the public transit and motorcycle vehicle fleets with known technologies will have a much greater impact on reducing the level of carbon emissions from the transport system than a short term conversion to a new and untested technology.

Aviation is the mode with the largest emissions increases in the last decades.  Global air passenger traffic already exceeds 2.6 million passenger traffic per year. Air travel is more energy intensive and emits more CO2 per passenger mile than most other form of travel. The competition of short distance air travel with rail travel in Europe is a particularly worrisome trend.  International agreements continue to prevent the taxation of jet fuels, presenting a de facto subsidy to this unsustainable mode.

Traffic Safety:
In 1993, an estimated 885,000 people died in traffic accidents.  In countries like India, as little as 5 percent of those killed are in cars.  Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists remain the most vulnerable road users, and their rights are rarely effectively protected.  The Netherlands recently implemented at laudable policy of holding motorists responsible every time they hit a pedestrian or cyclist. Traffic safety issues are as important for sustainable city policies as vehicle emissions. The health burden of traffic accidents is enormous and in financial terms calculated to be  1-2 percent of city/country GDPs. Environmental and safety issues also have complex interlinkages. Some pollution  reduction policies (e.g. increase in speeds) can result in higher accident rates and some safer vehicles (larger cars) produce more pollutants. Therefore, no sustainable city policy can ignore road safety issues.

There are indirect relationships between sustainable transport options and road safety also. The use of public transport requires two non-motorised trips (walking/bicycling) for each motorised trips. These non-motorised access trips cause more deaths and injuries than the trip by bus or metro. This is why parents do not allow children to use public transport if they can help it. Obviously, unless walking and bicycling is made much more convenient and safer, it would be impossible to promote use of public transport in LIC cities as incomes rise in those locations. Major improvements in road safety are a pre-requisite for success in promotion of  public transport and non-motorised modes.

Public Transport:
Several best practice examples of public transit system improvements that have actually led to a large and sustained increase in ridership are large-scale  high capacity bus systems.  The example of Curitiba, Brazil, introduced in the 1970s, has now been replicated in Quito, Ecuador, and Kunming, China, with similarly dramatic increases in public transit use.  Curitiba's rapid busway system is also an innovative example of South to North technology transfer as the US Federal Transit Administration is currently assisting in the implementation of busway systems in 17 US cities.  Surface rail and busways are preferable alternatives to underground metro systems; surface busway systems cost $1 million to $3 million per kilometre while subway systems range from $90 million to $100 million per kilometre.  In addition they do not result in reductions in use of surface motorised modes.

Nevertheless, public transport remains costly for the urban poor.  Low-income residents in Lima, Peru with an average monthly household income of $150 spend about 2/3 of their income on food and almost the entire other third on indispensable transport fares.  Public sector support for transit services in low income areas and for capital costs is necessary and widely accepted in developed countries.

Non-Motorized Transport:
In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, over 90 percent of trips are still made on foot, and up to 85 percent of ton-kilometres of freight movement are moved by women, mostly by headloading.  In Chinese cities and rural areas, walking and bicycling combined still accounts for more than 50 percent of all trips.  While the use of motor vehicles is rising rapidly, in the population centres of China and India access to private motor vehicles is restricted to less than 10 percent of the population.  And in developed countries where compact, mixed-use settlement structures are still intact, walking and bicycling remain predominant modes, especially for short trips between 3-5 kilometre.

Traffic planning and cost benefit analysis currently ignores non-motorized travel, leading to measures which improve motor vehicle speeds but compromise travel speeds and safety for pedestrians and cyclists.  In developing countries in particular, this bias tends to disproportionately adversely affect lower income groups and women.   It also stimulates motorization for short trips which in some wealthier countries would be made by walking or bicycling.

Gender Aspects:
Mobility needs and access to transport services are strongly gendered.  Within the household, the mobility needs of men are typically prioritised, with male household member having access to the fastest (and hence often most expensive) transport options.  Women typically have much less access to motorized vehicles, and lower-income women, especially those in rural areas, spend a large portion of their day walking and headloading.  Women tend to make more off-peak trips to a greater variety of locations.

Infrastructure Investment-Decision Making:
 Traditional cost benefit analysis for transport infrastructure investments currently do not effectively consider the precautionary principle that avoids plans or projects which present serious risks to the environment, public health, and safety.  Also, project level environmental assessments do not effectively ensure that modal alternatives have been adequately considered.
Most cities in the South continue to invest in capital-intensive infrastructure e.g. flyovers, signal free ring roads, and limited-access roads in the city suited for motorised private transport only. Facilities for public transport, non-motorised transport (bicycles and rickshaws) and pedestrians are created to ensure convenient and efficient movement of cars. In the cost benefit calculations, facilities for non-motorised vehicles and pedestrians are considered an extra cost to the infrastructure investment and ignored or sometimes provided at a limited scale. In the name of ‘infrastructure improvement’ the urban landscape is brutally mutilated and urban poor and marginalised sections of the society are pushed to further hardships by limiting their accessibility and mobility and exposing them to increased traffic hazards.

Pricing Issues:
 Too often governmental policy favours motorization over more sustainable modes due to perverse economic incentives.  Given that vehicle ownership primarily resides in the middle to higher-income brackets, such policies are effectively subsidies for the wealthy.  In developing nations, petrol prices are as low as 20 percent of the global market price.  Parking is often free or subsidized as well.

2. Policy Directions:

Curbing Motorization:
The first priority in the creation of sustainable transport and land use systems should be to create a safe and pleasant environment for anyone wishing to walk, bicycle, take a cycle rickshaw, or any other form of low-cost non-motorized vehicle.  An effective and affordable provision of attractive public transit options is also very important.  Modernization does not necessarily mean motorization, and the overarching goal must be to move people rather than vehicles. This is possible only if people have real choices in selecting the most appropriate mode for a trip without sacrificing convenience, safety or money which could be used more efficiently for other family needs.

The second priority is for governments to focus on managing demand for road space by private motor vehicles, rather than accommodating it.  This is best done through restricting available parking and parking costs to regulate traffic to levels supported by existing infrastructure.   Road pricing, cordon pricing, and other pricing mechanisms have also been used successfully.

Given the more complicated situation in lower income countries, strategies to combat transport-related externalities cannot be based on a simplistic adaptation of high-income, industrialized country solutions. Innovations in less motorized countries need to focus on affordable solutions based on low per capita income societies.  Effective non-motorized alternatives such as providing safe cycling and pedestrian infrastructures or non-motorized vehicle innovations can play a particularly important role here. The traffic patterns experienced in LICs are a new phenomenon which do not have parallels in OECD countries at similar levels of development. Much more work needs to be done to evolve innovative road and vehicle design criteria which are implementable at LIC income levels.

Promoting Sustainable Land Use and Compact Cities:
Urban sprawl, which in turn creates automobile dependency and creates additional travel, can be avoided by actively promoting compact, mixed-use city centres.  Governments should promote downtown revitalization, brown-field redevelopment, accessible low income housing, and improve transit and non-motorized access to retail establishments.
 Large new retail and office establishments outside city centres should have to demonstrate that the traffic they generate does not violate ambient air standards, and does not have an adverse effect on small retailers in the region. Developers should also have to demonstrate that there is no available space closer to the urban centre serving the same purposes.

Reducing Transport-Sector Emissions:
Hydrogen fuel cells should not be a priority for grant funding, especially in less industrialized countries.  The UN CSD should encourage the adoption of global minimum standards for tailpipe emissions, including for those motorcycles and three wheelers.  The global phase-out of leaded gasoline, and the global phase-out of highly polluting two-stroke motorcycle engines should also be agreed to by all governments.  The private sector will have to work with governments to ensure the transition.  Ambient air quality standards based on WHO recommendations should also be agreed to by all governments as a minimum standard.

Effective promotion of non-motorized transport and public transit will also result in directly quantifiable emissions reductions due to mode shifts to more sustainable options.  Modernizing human powered vehicle technologies has been shown to increase their mode share, which should be as legitimate as a recipient of 'clean energy' funding as electric vehicles, hydrogen-fuel cells, and other technologies.

Improving Traffic Safety:
Vehicle design standards should be developed which ensure that the adverse health impact on pedestrians or cyclists struck by the vehicle is minimized by the vehicles design, and the costs of these design modifications should be borne by the motorists rather than the victims. This means the development of standards for safer car, bus and truck fronts and side panels, more visible (for bicyclists and pedestrians) turn indicators, safer designs for locally used vehicles in LICs (e.g. Tuk-tuk, jeepney, three-wheeled scooter taxi, etc)

The bicycle industry should become much more involved in working with governments to improve safety conditions for bicyclists. Guidelines for urban road and intersection designs and traffic calming need to be developed for country specific traffic patterns.
 
Boosting Public Transport:
National and regional governments should cooperate with cities in developing and maintaining urban and suburban rail and exclusive right-of-way bus systems.  Transit stations should also provide secure bicycle parking facilities, especially in suburban areas with lower station densities.

Although privatisation can enhance and effectively diversify public transit options, care needs to be taken to retain adequate public control over transport systems to ensure social and environmental accountability.  Route franchising is one of the preferred options for such public-private partnerships, especially when combined with public service obligations for less profitable but socially important routes and with public subsidies for disadvantaged transit users.

Boosting Non-Motorized Transport:
Governments could be much more supportive of the non-motorized vehicles by removing restrictions to the use of cycle rickshaws and bicycles on major urban roads, and improving safety conditions through traffic calming and bike infrastructure.  Just as highway design standards have been adopted largely for safety reasons, governments should also work toward the development and eventual adoption of design standards for non-motorized passenger use and based ultimately on the road classification system. Governments could also facilitate the emergence of more vibrant human powered vehicle industries through access to special credit facilities, business training, and other small and medium enterprise support.

Government support of car-free zones and car-free days in urban centres can be instrumental in increasing awareness of non-motorized options.  Such initiatives also demonstrate the ease and cost-effectiveness of creating a more liveable urban environment.

The development of national and city-level bicycle masterplans would be another critical element in boosting cycle use, as is done now in Seoul, New York, Bogotá, and many other cities.  In order to be effective, these plans should pro-actively aim at a significant increase of the non-motorized mode share.

Non-motorized transport should also be integrated into all transportation planning, beginning with the collection of basic data on non-motorized travel and non-motorized vehicle ownership in all household surveys and road traffic counts. Such planning activities should be driven by a process of public participation in which transit users, service providers, and local officials all work together to develop sustainable transport solutions.

Increasing Gender-Responsiveness:
 Gender-specific impacts of transport investments and service arrangements need to be studied and considered before project implementation.  Household and traffic surveys should always be collected in a sex-disaggregated manner to facilitate gender analysis.  Gender analysis is part of a general re-orientation of transport planning away from a focus on facilitating the movement of motorized vehicles to a people-centred perspective that starts with an analysis of the basic household mobility needs.

Making Infrastructure Investment-Decision Making More Sustainable:
 Governments should move towards requiring Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) for major transport plans, policies and comprehensive investment projects.  Only at the strategic planning and policy-making level is it possible to still consider modal alternatives.  Once a decision for a highway is made, environmental assessments can only help keep its impact minimal.  However, at the strategic level, an inappropriate highway investment program can still be abandoned in favour or a rail, transit or non-motorized infrastructure investment scheme.  Governments should move to having transport funds rather than road funds and a process of strategic decision-making involving the public should decide the relative priority between modal funding allocations.

Getting the Price Right:
 Decision-makers should eliminate fuel subsidies and charge appropriately for parking and other car-based services.  Charging for access to urban areas through road pricing schemes has been effective in cities such as Singapore in generating revenues and discouraging unnecessary use of single-occupant vehicles.  Municipalities should conduct externality analyses of current transport practices in order to fully understand the public and private costs associated with a car-dominated transport system.  The full health, environmental, and economic costs of transport should be reflected in all prices within the transport system.

For further information or comments please contact the caucus co-coordinators:
Ms. Deike Peters (ITDP)
Mr. Bambang Sustantono (SUSTRAN Secretariat)