Use of public transport must double to achieve 1.5 ° C

The transition to zero-emission vehicles tops a list of transport-related events at the COP26 conference in Glasgow on Wednesday. A chorus of city officials, labor leaders and policy experts urge climate negotiators not to lose sight of public transportation as a key tool in decarbonizing the transportation sector.

“If national governments don’t back mayors and invest to protect and expand public transportation, then they won’t be able to meet their own carbon targets.”He said in a statement Mark Watts, CEO of C40 Cities, a network of global mayors focused on sustainability.

A new report from C40 Cities and the International Transport Workers Federation highlights this alert, stating that global public transport use must double by 2030 if countries are to meet the 1.5 ° C emissions targets needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

To meet that goal, the organizations are asking for $ 208 billion in annual investments for the nearly 100 cities in the C40 network, which together represent about 25% of global GDP.

The report highlights how electrifying transit fleets, expanding bus and rail infrastructure, and improving system accessibility would not only reduce transportation emissions and air pollution, but also improve quality of life. and economic opportunities, particularly for low-income urban residents.

He estimates that these investments would create 4.6 million new jobs in a sector heavily affected by covid-19. It also features examples of ambitious infrastructure expansions in several C40 member cities, including Austin, Texas, where voters last year approved a $ 7.1 billion plan to add new rail lines, rapid transit buses and all-electric vehicles to the cities. city ​​transit deals.

However, a global change would be extremely challenging, even with billions of additional funding. Most wealthy nations rely too heavily on personal cars, and vehicle emissions are on the rise in many developing nations.

In the United States – historically the world’s largest emitter – continued investment in roads and highways will make it difficult for public transportation to compete as an attractive alternative, said Sebastian Castellanos, research leader for the New Urban Mobility Alliance at the World Resources Institute, a group sustainability research that did not participate in the new report.

In the United States, the $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives last week will provide $ 39 billion for public transportation and $ 66 billion for rail – historic levels of funding – but also US $ 110,000 million for roads and bridges.

“There is a lot of money that is still going to go to road infrastructure, but that is basically the opposite of what we want”Said Castellanos.

To keep large numbers of passengers away from cars, transit has to be more attractive and efficient than private vehicles, Castellanos said. That would likely require drastic changes in land use policies that have promoted car-oriented expansion in cities around the world and ended government subsidies for driving, such as free parking. Some cities such as London and Paris have taken steps to limit driving in their city centers, with varying levels of success.

Those overwhelming challenges help explain why electric vehicles are the centerpiece of many rich nations’ plans to revamp transportation, which currently accounts for around 25% of global CO2 emissions. But many policy experts say that even a rapid transition to zero-emission cars would not prevent catastrophic climate change if vehicle miles are not drastically reduced.