We inform city councils about benefits, poll residents to understand values, advocate for policy reform and educate. A Ekos poll we commissioned found 75 per cent of drivers support Toronto bike lanes! Metro Vancouver is growing and so is its transit system. TransLink is consulting the public on how to make the investments sustainable and fair.
How does the region deal with congestion? Making transit accessible for all? The arrival of autonomous vehicles and ride hailing? Share your ideas! Our report, Breaking Gridlock , helped shape the B. The federal and B. More dense neighbourhoods are associated with lower energy use and travelling shorter distances by car.
People who live in walkable neighbourhoods are 39 per cent less likely to have diabetes than those in car-dependent areas. Pollution in the fuels can be reduced during production, transportation or combustion stages. Canada is developing a clean fuel standard.
It will require fuel producers, distributors and importers to reduce the amount of carbon pollution in fuels. Energy modelling regarding how Canada can meet its emission targets by shows the need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels from 74 per cent today to 25 per cent or less.
This standard is one way for Canada to reduce carbon pollution. To protect against environmental damage from expanding biofuels, a clean fuel standard must include:. Photo: Green Energy Futures via Flickr. Cities and regions like Metro Vancouver can change their built environments and use smart growth policies to reduce their carbon emissions.
But how effective are these policies in reducing emissions from personal transportation when they occur alongside senior government policies promoting energy efficiency and fuel switching? New technologies, like self-driving or autonomous vehicles, will be game-changers as they arrive on our streets.
This report looks at how new mobility could affect greenhouse gas emissions in Metro Vancouver. Strategies that reduce carbon emissions and improve well-being for AV introduction are highlighted. Cities around the world have been using mobility or road pricing to successfully tackle traffic congestion. But the climate emergency also demands urgent action. This report evaluates whether mobility pricing can help reduce transportation emissions and traffic congestion while ushering in a better quality of life.
What can we help you find? Sorry, but your search returned no results. Try searching with different keywords. Sustainable transportation We work with governments, stakeholders and people to get Canada moving with affordable, dependable, low-carbon transportation options. Why is transportation important? With your help we can get there. Ian Bruce, Deputy Executive Director.
Building a sustainable transportation network for Canada. Canada is ready for an electric vehicle boom Most electric cars in Canada will be powered by clean electricity. Further, the decision-making and regulatory apparatus of many governments have been captured by special interests, implying that environmental policy is influenced by groups representing contradictory perspectives.
The question remains as if expectations can be placed on entities that seek to optimize positive perception governments or on entities that seek to optimize efficiency and profit corporations and individuals. Further, consumer behavior is a key factor in achieving sustainability as it influences the provision and the delivery of goods.
It could thus be argued that the private sector is more likely to achieve sustainability than the public sector, particularly since the benefits are apparent. This complex relationship underlines the respective roles of regulations and innovations in achieving a higher level of sustainability. Societies do not contribute to environmental problems at the same level.
Sustainability can be thus expressed at two spatial levels:. Since a growing share of the global population is urbanized, sustainability has increasingly focused on urban areas. Major cities require a vast array of supporting infrastructures, including energy, water, sewers, and transport. A key to urban sustainability issues is linked with the provision and maintenance of a wide range of urban infrastructure.
Every city has specific infrastructure and environmental problems. For instance, many cities in developing economies have chronic deficiencies in providing the most basic infrastructure, while their environmental conditions are deteriorating due to congestion and motorization. Infrastructures can be publicly or privately owned.
Public infrastructures have the advantage of being available to a larger share of the population at a low cost commonly free of access. Still, they are expensive for the government to maintain subsidies. Private infrastructures tend to service a smaller share of the population, at the choice of the infrastructure provider, but are usually financially profitable.
As income levels increase, some infrastructure problems are solved while some environmental problems are created. For instance, an increase in income is linked to better sanitation and water provision, but at the expense of more significant waste generation and carbon dioxide emissions.
Global sustainability remains influenced by the paradox of a declining environmental impact per capita of several factors, such as energy consumption and carbon emissions and growth in the net consumption.
Transportation, as a core component supporting the interactions and the development of socio-economic systems, has also been the object of much consideration to what extent it is sustainable. Sustainable development applied to transport systems requires the promotion of linkages between environmental protection, economic efficiency, and social progress.
Under the environmental dimension, the objective consists in understanding the reciprocal influences of the physical environment and the practices of the industry and that environmental issues are addressed by all aspects of the transport industry. Under the economic dimension, the objective consists of orienting progress in the sense of economic efficiency. Transport must be cost-effective and capable of adapting to changing demands.
Under the social dimension, the objective consists in upgrading standards of living and quality of life. A utomobile dependence is a situation that is often related to an unsustainable urban environment. However, such an observation is at odds with the mobility choice and preferences of the global population, where the automobile is rapidly adopted when income levels reach a certain threshold.
Other transport alternatives commonly do not measure up to the convenience of the automobile. Automobile dependency is thus the outcome of market forces expressed as consumer preferences and national manufacturing policies.
Private and flexible forms of transportation, such as the automobile, are thus fundamental to urban mobility and should not be discarded as options for the sake of ideological perspectives about what should sustainability implies. This adds up to the ongoing technological improvement in the engine and drive technology, which has reduced vehicle emissions. This contradicts the bias observed in the transport community towards an emphasis on public transit and non-motorized transportation as the dominant, if not sole, strategy towards sustainable transportation.
Yet, almost all public transit systems are financially unsustainable , imposing burdens on the society that are accepted because they provide accessibility to all socioeconomic groups. Freight transportation must also be considered in this process, considering the substantial growth of raw materials and goods traded in a global economy.
Freight transportation relies much more on environmentally sound modes such as rail and maritime transport. Measures to promote transport sustainability have their limits.
Indeed, the built environment, transport infrastructures, and even modes cannot change quickly enough to solve the bulk of the problems related to unsustainable transport. Most of the investment that is already in place will remain so for 50 years or more. New investments in additional or improved infrastructure will not represent much more than a few percentage points changes in reducing traffic congestion and its negative externalities.
The different life spans of transport modes and infrastructure underline that sustainability cannot be applied in a synchronized fashion. For instance, it could be possible to replace most of the automobile fleet with more efficient vehicles within a decade. At the same time, road infrastructure e. While policies, rules, and regulations expect compliance, users tend to instinctively react to price signals and discard modes that are becoming costly unsustainable and find loopholes.
Transportation and sustainability for both passengers and freight must also contend with mitigation versus adaptation issues:. There is a wide range of environmental sustainability responses, with different local, national, and international regulations. This involves a variety of costs in transport operations that must be built into the price of providing transport facilities and services. Environmental sustainability represents a growing area of responsibility for transport services providers, inciting them to acquire expertise in environmental management.
The most important challenge is implementing environmentally sustainable transport within competitive market structures leaning on coping with changes in transport demand while improving transport supply. To effectively mitigate the adverse impacts of current transportation systems, strategies can be devised to manage reduce transport demand for passengers and freight as wells as to redistribute this demand in space or in time outside peak hours when possible.
Profitable, affordable, and unsubsidized transportation is a good indicator of its sustainability. Increasing transport costs and the pressure to subsidize them can be interpreted as signals that they may be unsustainable.
There are several interrelated ways in which transportation systems can adapt to cope with transport demand and reach a better level of sustainability:. The implementation of such strategies relies heavily on the existing spatial structure, passengers and material flows, and transport networks.
An expectation is that the demand will shift towards modes that are more carbon neutral and having a better energy performance. In situations where a fee structure is not effective e. Such coercive strategies would thereby impose a limit on the number of vehicles in circulation and, correspondingly, reduce congestion and air pollution while promoting alternative transport means. Their fundamental shortfall is they assume that government planning entities know solutions to urban transport problems such as the appropriate number of parking spaces , which is not necessarily the case.
While the implementation of demand-oriented policies and mechanisms are an important component in promoting sustainable transport, these measures can be more effective if coupled with transport supply improvements.
Transportation infrastructure should be expanded to accommodate rapidly growing transport demands. As long as the global urban population continues to grow, particularly in developing economies, there are pressures to expand urban transport infrastructures and the infrastructure supporting global trade. In urban areas, the challenge is to expand and improve transportation supply so that the automobile and trucking can have alternatives.
For passengers , this can be achieved by expanding public transit infrastructure, improving existing public transit services, and making cities friendly to pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles. However, it appears that vehicle automation could be an even more effective tool by allowing better utilization of existing vehicle and road assets as well as reducing the number of vehicles in circulation.
The realms of green logistics and city logistics have received renewed attention as tools to improve the sustainability of freight distribution since the material needs of economic activities, including end consumers, must be provided for as well.
Sustainability is giving public transit a new impetus since the bulk of its prior rationale was to mitigate automobile dependency and provide mobility to a large share of the population. This is, however, an extremely difficult challenge considering the prominence that the automobile is achieving worldwide. It must be acknowledged that this prominence is the outcome of many positive factors favoring the automobile, such as flexibility, convenience, and relatively low ownership and operating costs.
As the average income of the global population is increasing, the pressure for automobile ownership continues. Thus, alternatives can be provided if they prove to be cost-effective while fulfilling a niche demand. They may include:. However, such alternatives contrast with the reality of modal choice towards the automobile and trucks, particularly economies experiencing rapid growth.
Thus, sustainable transportation remains elusive since any economic activity, including transportation, has negative environmental impacts. The matter remains if these activities are taking place at a level exceeding the environmental and social carrying capacity.
Technological innovation has historically played a paradoxical role of both exacerbating environmental and sustainability issues and, at the same time, offering forms of mitigation. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainableSust We recognize that transportation and mobility are central to the sustainable development of small island developing States.
Sustainable transportation can enhance economic growth, promote trade opportunities and improve accessibility. Sustainable, reliable and safe transportation achieves better integration of the economy while respecting the environment. We also recognize the importance of the efficient movement of people and goods in fostering full engagement in local, regional and global markets and the potential for sustainable transportation to improve social equity, health, the resilience of cities, urban-rural linkages and the productivity of rural areas of small island developing States.
We note that transportation and mobility are central to sustainable development. Sustainable transportation can enhance economic growth and improve accessibility. Sustainable transport achieves better integration of the economy while respecting the environment. We recognize the importance of the efficient movement of people and goods, and access to environmentally sound, safe and affordable transportation as a means to improve social equity, health, resilience of cities, urban-rural linkages and productivity of rural areas.
In this regard, we take into account road safety as part of our efforts to achieve sustainable development. We support the development of sustainable transport systems, including energy efficient multi-modal transport systems, notably public mass transportation systems, clean fuels and vehicles, as well as improved transportation systems in rural areas.
We recognize the need to promote an integrated approach to policymaking at the national, regional and local levels for transport services and systems to promote sustainable development.
We also recognize that the special development needs of landlocked and transit developing countries need to be taken into account while establishing sustainable transit transport systems. We acknowledge the need for international support to developing countries in this regard. The Commission reiterates the continuing relevance and importance of all the principles agreed in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, in particular the principle that, in view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities, as set out in principle 7, and emphasizes that: a Financial resources and mechanisms play a key role in the implementation of Agenda In general, the financing for the implementation of Agenda 21 will come from a country?
For developing countries, official development assistance is a main source of external funding, and substantial new and additional funding for sustainable development and the implementation of Agenda 21 will be required. Hence, all financial commitments of Agenda 21, particularly those contained in chapter 33, and the provisions with regard to new and additional resources that are both adequate and predictable need to be urgently fulfilled.
Renewed efforts are essential to ensure that all sources of funding contribute to economic growth, social development and environmental protection in the context of sustainable development and the implementation of Agenda 21; b There is a need for favourable access to and transfer of environmentally sound technologies, in particular to developing countries, through supportive measures that promote technology cooperation and that should enable transfer of necessary technological know-how as well as building up of economic, technical and managerial capabilities for the efficient use and further development of transferred technology.
Technology cooperation involves joint efforts by enterprises and Governments, both suppliers of technology and its recipients. Therefore, such cooperation entails an iterative process, involving government, the private sector and research and development facilities, to ensure the best possible results from transfer of technology.
Successful long-term partnerships in technology cooperation necessarily require continuing systematic training and capacity-building at all levels over an extended period of time.
0コメント