There are now more than 270 million registered cars, trucks and buses on the roads of the United States. That’s about 1 for every U.S. resident over the age of 15. Transportation is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in this country, accounting for his 15% of global emissions. So changing the way we travel is an important part of our efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
People and governments have recently taken some encouraging and concrete steps in this direction with projects related to transportation and urban planning. provides a basic blueprint forhere Scientific American Let’s look at three examples, from simple to high-tech.
bike bus
In 2021, children in Barcelona will begin commuting to school by bicycle with the help of adult volunteers from a group called A. bike bus, Or “bike bus”. According to Reuters, an estimated 700 people took part in the city’s cycle bus route in the 2020-2021 school year. The following year, 14 more routes were added to Barcelona. Other cities are jumping on the bike bandwagon, with a similar convoy popping up in Hamburg, Germany. Glasgow, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boulder, Koro., Chicago, Brooklyn, New York, Arlington, VirginiaPortland, Oregon.
Having more children bike to school than in fossil fuel-fueled school buses or cars could be a small step towards reducing transport-related emissions.
Some researchers say that more bicycling not only reduces emissions, but may also help reduce climate anxiety in children. Carly Trott, a social psychologist at the University of Cincinnati, says that small daily actions like biking and planting his community garden can help young people feel less anxious about climate change and more empowered to fight it. says.
Trott has studied the effects of such activities on 10- to 12-year-olds. She was frustrated by the lack of existing research on how climate change psychologically affects young children. “The idea is that they actually have these psychological benefits by doing some of the things that they do,” she says. It made sense because you’re developing a , which can be limited the younger you are.”
open street
Due to the lack of safe indoor gathering places during the COVID pandemic, many cities around the world have launched “open street” programs. Also known as “slow streets,” “safe streets,” or “shared streets,” the idea involves restricting vehicular traffic and making the city “pedestrianized” so that more people can walk safely. and to be able to ride a bicycle. In 2022, these programs have launched or expanded in cities such as New York City, Boston, Bristol, England, Montreal and Shanghai.
Epidemiologists from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the University of Leeds in the UK have found that limiting private cars in urban centers could reduce premature mortality by improving air quality and increasing opportunities for physical activity. concluded that it is possible. Researchers from the Institute of Urban Transport India also claim that pedestrianization can also reduce noise pollution and fuel consumption for city dwellers.
In 2021, Javier Borge Holthofer, Research Director of the Interdisciplinary Internet Institute at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain, was inspired by the growth of Open Street programs and decided to research how to optimize them. He and his colleagues used so-called network analysis. This is the process of examining how different people and things relate to and interact with each other. Researchers used this technique to measure the connectivity of a city’s sidewalk network and identify where the city could improve the sidewalk network while maintaining vehicle mobility.
They found that by pedestrianizing major streets with wide sidewalks, New York City and Paris could connect more sidewalks without requiring drivers to travel too far. Similar interventions in Boston and Montreal would have a greater impact on travel times, but they suggest more research is needed on how the idea works in different cities.
Some cities have scaled back these programs as pandemic restrictions ease. So its future is still uncertain.“There is this kind of uneven attitude,” he says Borge-Holthoefer. “Some cities are returning to the old style of urbanism, [but] Some of them really realize they can make a very positive difference. ”
Electric car
Sales of electric vehicles is another transportation sector that has made great strides.
According to EV-Volumes, a database of such sales, in the first half of 2022 there will be 62% more electric vehicles and EVs than in the first half of 2021, despite a drop in overall vehicle sales due to the pandemic. A plug-in hybrid vehicle was sold. In the United States, if the Environmental Protection Agency passes recently proposed rules on car pollution, electric car purchases could account for his 67% of domestic car sales by 2032.
Switching to electric vehicles would not only reduce global warming emissions from the transport sector, but also produce by burning fossil fuels, which are harmful to human health and disproportionately affect people of color and poor communities. It also reduces other air pollutants that affect it. David Wooley, Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Even if we don’t care much about the climate, most people want better air quality for public health.”
Switching all countries’ fleets to electric vehicles creates potential problems, such as the potential shortage of lithium needed to make car batteries. In addition, electric vehicles are as clean as the electrical system that draws their power. For example, in areas where coal is still the primary fuel for power plants, these vehicles may not improve greenhouse gas emissions.
However, some of the problems that mass electric vehicle adoption could pose could be resolved. Scaling up renewable energy is one of the key factors. The US’ bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2022 is putting more money into boosting the country’s battery recycling capacity, which could mitigate potential lithium shortages, Wooley said. increase.
Woolley co-authored the April 2021 UC Berkeley report on transportation exploring how the United States will get 90% of its energy from clean sources by 2035. Electric or other zero carbon fuel.
