relocation and an assault on their senses by road, rail and airport projects; and .... economies of eastern Europe, eg Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech ...
( 1
The Global Transport Problem: Same Issues but a Different Place John Whitelegg and Gary Haq
Introduction The global transport problem has now reached crisis proportions. The simplest everyday activities, involving no more than gaining access to work, education, recreation, shopping, friends, relatives and medical services, now consume a significant proportion of natural, financial, environmental and human resources. A useful way of visualizing the depth of the crisis would be to describe the policy that has created the global outcomes discussed in this book. Transport policies are either non-existent or cast in the general context of reducing road traffic congestion, reducing road traffic accidents (RTAs) and increasing levels of economic activity. The global outcomes of transport are normally at odds with these policy objectives and it is informative to undertake a backcasting exercise. What are the policies that would have produced the transport problems we are now dealing with? These policies would include the following: encouraging as many people as possible to make as many journeys as possible by car on the assumption that government will always find the cash to build the roads, tunnels, flyovers and bridges; provicling as much government subsidy and encouragement as possible to carbased transport through loans, grants, road building, cheap fuel and every other expenditure that can be diverted into supporting this system (health care, policing, the courts system); ignoring the enormous advantages of walking and cycling for conferring health benefits, achieving accessibility at low cost and enhancing the aesthetics and ethics of the city; .~ trying to ensure that children get as little exercise as possible and therefore become more unhealthy as a result of being carried everywhere in cars; encouraging as much use as possible of very large cars (ideally up to 2 tonnes in weight) by one person only; encouraging as many cars as possible to fill up the available road space (always in short supply in cities) so that these cars disrupt buses, making them an unattractive option and making life very difficult for pedestrians and cyclists; encouraging as many cars as possible to pollute the air, increase noise levels and kill children;
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The Global Transport Problem: Same Issues but a Different Place 5
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donating as much land as possible to keeping this system going, especially if that ' land is needed for food production; always ensuring that wealthy groups and middle class groups are well looked after, with enough road space, parking and public expenditure; and always ensuring that pedestrians are inconvenienced as much as possible when try_ ing to cross roads, making very sure that cars are never delayed by even a couple of seconds in order to give pedestrians easy road crossing possibilities. No country in the world has a transport policy that even remotely resembles this tenpoint plan. At the same time, every country in the world has achieved all or most of the policy objectives described in this list. The enormous power of the images sold by 'autornobiliry', in combination with the political power of car builders and road builders, has produced a global system of 'auto-dependency' that has transformed the simple everyday experience of making contact with something into a perverse and damaging industry that consumes space, time, resources and people. The scale of the environmental damage caused by autornobility is only surpassed by the damage to human rights. The rights of children to move around freely in most societies have been seriously curbed by the car; millions of people are subjected to harassment, forcible relocation and an assault on their senses by road, rail and airport projects; and the rights of future generations are seriously compromised by the profligate use of fossil fuels and its associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the remainder of this chapter we will set the scene for this Earthscan Reader on World Transport Policy and Practice by giving a brief introduction to the most important themes that are taken up in subsequent chapters. Some of these issues will then be revisited in Chapter 25, where new directions for world transport policy and practice will be outlined. The main themes to be covered are: growth in demand for transport; resource use; GHGs; urban air pollution and noise; health impacts; and RTAs.
Growth in Demand for Road Transport Global passenger car production reached a record 40.9 million vehicles in 2000 (see Figure 1.1) (Worldwatch Institute, 2001). Each one of these passenger cars carries with it an 'ecological rucksack' (ie, consequential waste and resource use) of at least 25 tonnes of discarded material. Each one consumes fossilfuel energy and produces GHG emissions, and each one denies pedestrians and cyclists a fair chance of independent mobility and accessibilityin congested cities. Each vehicle is 'responsible' for the loss of 820 hours of human life (UPI, 1999). The size of the global vehicle fleet has grown significantly over the past 50 years. In 2000 the global passenger fleet was approxi-
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rnately 532 million vehicles (see Figure 1.2). The Heidelberg-based organization Umwelt und Prognose Institut (UPI) has forecast that by 2030 the global car population will be 2.3 billion (UPI, 1995). Of the total global fleet of 40.9 million motor vehicles, 47 per cent were produced in Japan, the USA and Germany. By 2005 Brazil, China and India are forecast to increase their production of passenger cars by 78 per cent, from 2.6 million (2000) to 4.6 million (2005) (Worldwatch Institute, 2001). There arenow 11.5 people per car in the world, but this averagedisguises huge discrepanciesbetween developed and developing countries. In Europe and North America there are 2-3 people per car, and in India and China there are 224 and 279 people per car, respectively.In the USA and Australia the market is increasingly dominated by very large sports utility vehicles (SUVs), which are fuel-greedy and polluting. These vehicles have reduced the overall fuel efficiency of the fleet in these countries, with corresponding increases in GHG emissions. The annual distance travelled by each person on the planet has also been increasing. The average global growth rate of passenger kilometres (pkrn) travelled has been rising by 4.6 per cent each year (see Table 1.1). In 1997, total pkm travelled in the industralized regions roughly equalled total travel in other regions. During the period 1950-1997, total distance travelled in industrialized regions increased fivefold compared to 1950. Developing countries have been also increasing their rate of travel, but on a per capita basis industrialized regions still travel six times further, at 16,645pkm compared to 2,627pkm.
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High rates of growth of car ownership and use are now becoming a common experience in many poorer countties of the world. The number of cars registered in Delhi grew from 1,830,000 in 1990 to 3,300,000 in 1999 0apanese Bank for International Cooperation, 2002). Generally, motor vehicle ownership has increased in line with economic growth. High levels of motorization have been experienced in Asian countries" such as Cambodia, China, the Philippines and South Korea, which have experienced high economic growth rates. As shown in Figure 1.3, despite the growth in global motorization, cities in the developing world are still dependent on public transport and
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Table 1.1 Growth in global passenger kilometres travelled
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Figure 1.2 Global vehicle fleet, 1950 to 2000
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on non-motorized means of transport such as walking and cycling (eg, Tianjin and Marrekech). Globally, the supply of new transport infrastructure has increased steeply in recent years,with international financial institutions playing a key role in funding transportation infrastructure in developing countries. During 1983-1993 most of the loans of the World Bank were directed at intercity transportation such as motorways. In the same period, the Bank lent approximately US$2.5 trillion to urban transport projects throughout the world. Of this total, 60 per cent funded road building and maintenance projects, 17 per cent funded bus and rail systems. 10 per cent funded traffic management and 14 per cent funded technical assistance (IIEe, 1996). Much of this increasehas been in poorer countries where only a small percentage of the population can benefit from major new highway projects. In Calcutta (officially renamed Kolkata from 1 January 2001) the Japanese government-funded flyovershave increasedtraffic volumes and congestion in areas of the city occupied by lower income groups and have involved the relocation of local residents and small local businesses. Other Kolkata road projects, such as the eastern metropolitan bypass, have served to increasethe rate of suburbanization and urban sprawl, with the doubly damaging effect of increasing car use and depriving the city of valuable agricultural lands and wetlands in the east of the city. New highway building is particularly rampant in Australia, which already has one of the highest rates of per capita GHG production in the world. Most Australian cities are building new freeways, tunnels and bridges and are oblivious to the arguments about car dependency and urban sprawl. The Queensland government is spending Aus$2.2 billion each year on major road projects and adding new capacity in areas like Brisbane,which already have many major new highways giving direct accessto the city.
( The Global Transport Problem: Same Issues but a Different Place 9
8 Introduction
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This rate of building and expenditure is adding to the numbers of cats making short distance local trips (50 per cent of all trips by cat in Brisbane are less than 5k.m in length). It also damages the health of children. Similar projects are underway in Melbourne and Sydney, making Australian cities amongst the most unsustainable in the world. Other world hot spots for accelerated road building are the rapidly developing economies of eastern Europe, eg Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic. Transport infrastructure and urban sprawl are inextricably linked. Cities in developing countries are currently undergoing a rapid expansion. The urban area of Santiago grew more than sixfold during the second half of the 20th century, while in 1995 the urban area of Mexico City was 13 times greater than in 1940 (WBCSD, 2001). An increasing dependence on motorization means that more land will have to be set aside for road and transport infrastructure. Kolkara, with its dense urban population, has 6 per cent of its total area devoted to roads. Los Angeles has 60 per cent of its land area devoted to highways. Cities with low densities and urban sprawl are very car-dependent and heavy users of fossil fuel in maintaining their everyday activity patterns. The average distance covered each day per capita in Perth (Western Australia (WA» is 45k.m, whilst in Delft in The Netherlands it is 15km. Global trends are currently moving in the direction of more sprawl. This is very much the case in Australian cities, where auto-dependency is beginning to overtake the USA. Planning systems around the world are increasingly incapable of holding back the tide. Governments are keen to facilitate the development process and do not wish to erect barriers in the way of globalized manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and new housing. For all the differences that exist between cities like Kolkata and Perth (WA), the northward march of Perth's suburbs is almost identical to the eastward march of Kolkata's suburbs (such as Salt Lake City). In both cases, the lowered population densities, highway construction and sprawl add to car use, congestion and pollution. The UK land use planning system recognizes this problem and tries to encourage new, higher density, mixed use communities. This has been largely swamped by the growth of traditional housing estates, which on a greenfield site in the north of England will generate seven new cat trips per dwelling per day. The development of Perth (WA) has carried on apace in spite of the attempts to win more trips over to rail to the north of the city, and in spite of the success of Joondaloup in establishing a mixed use, subregional centre approximately 30km to the north of the Perms central business district (CBD). Urban sprawl is likely to be the main cause of transportation difficulties over the next 20-30 years, and is also very resistant to policy intervention as governments like that of the UK stick to a globalized, privatized and free market development process.
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of the growth in the demand for oil will come from the transport sector, where high rates of growth are expected and the potential for replacing oil with another fuel is limited (lEA, 2001). Some oil analysts'believe that world oil production will reach a peak sometime during this decade and then begin to fall when half of the ultimately recoverable reserve of oil has been consumed (Leech, 2001). Figure 1.4 presents future global oil output. This graph, known as the Hubbert Curve, is based on an ultimate recovery of 750 billion barrels of conventional oil. The graph depicts alternative scenarios of oil production. The 'swing' scenario assumes a price leap when the share of world production from a few Middle East countries reaches 30 per cent. This is expected to curb demand, leading to a plateau of output until the swing countries reach the midpoint of their depletion, when resource constraints force down output at the then depletion rate (Campbell, 1996). When oil production does peak, analyses have suggested that oil production will fall each year by approximately 2.7 per cent, which is equivalent to 2 million barrels of oil a day. The daily production of oil currently stands at 74 million barrels. The International Energy Agency (lEA) predicts that oil reserves will be adequate to meet demand until 2020. After this period unconventional oil, such as oil from tar sands and oil shales, will playa growing role together with renewable energy and new technologies,such as hydrogen-based fuel cells. By 2020 transportation fuels are expected to account for 57 per cent of total world oil consumption. Energy consumption for transportation is expected to increase by 4.8 per cent per year in the developing world. This is compared to an average annual
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Transport consurnes a large amount of energy. Oil is expected to remain the primary source of energy for transport throughout the world. Over the next two decades, most
Figure 1.4 Global oil output 1950-2050
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10 Introduction
The Global Transport Problem: Same Issues but a Different Place
increase of 1.6 per cent in industrialized countries, where transport systems and infrastructure are established and levels of per capita car ownership are expected to reach saturation (lEO, 2001). Rapid growth in transportation energy use is expected to take place in developing Asia, which is expected to increase by 5.1 per cent per year between 1990 and 2020, and the Middle East and Central and South America, at 4.8 and 4.6 per cent per year, respectively (see Figure 1.5). Much of this growth is expected to be in personal car use and freight movement -. UPI (1995) have predicted that the fuel used for cars will increase from 650 million tonnes in the mid-1990s to 1.3 billion tonnes in 2030. The total amount ofGHG emissions from this 2030 car fleet (trucks and aircrafr are excluded) is 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO) equivalent. This is more than enough to seriously disrupt global GHG reduction strategies. When aircrafr and trutks are factored into the analysis, the prospects for GHG reduction look even more remote. A technological system that requires at least 1 tonne of metal and plastics to move one person (weighing less than 100kg) a couple of kilo metres on a journey to work or to buy a litre of milk is grossly inefficient. This is a materials-intensive technology that delivers very small parcels of work done for very large expenditures of materials, energy, effort and cash. The materials intensity of an average modern car has been calculated by UPI (1999) as presented in Table 1.2. All this material has to be extracted from the ground and! or processed from other materials. At every stage in this global system of sourcing, manufacturing and assembly there are transport and energy costs and quantities of waste produced. Each car is responsible for 25 tonnes of waste accumulated throughout this cycle (UPI, 1999). This waste accumulates allover the world and is associated with land contamination and the pollution of surface waterlacquifers.
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