CO2 and air pollutant emissions can be greatly reduced by improving cities’ transportation systems, but accurately measuring these reductions can be a challenge.
As transportation demand continues to rise at unprecedented rates, the need to compare alternative transport policies and their impacts on both CO2 emissions and local air pollution is becoming more and more critical. However, the challenge of quantifying these impacts has often hindered transparent and well-informed decision making.
To help address this barrier, EMBARQ/WRI has just released a new publication entitled “Measuring the Invisible: Quantifying Emissions Reductions from Transport Solutions”. The new report is composed of a series of case studies that examine how three developing country cities (Queretaro, Mexico, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Hanoi, Vietnam) can quantify emissions reductions from transport interventions. Importantly, we found that in each case, there is a large potential to reduce transport-related CO2 and air pollutant emissions at the city level through implementation of smarter transportation policy.
We hope that this research contributes to efforts to develop reliable and cost-effective approaches for estimating greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions from various transport interventions.
Rhys Thom and I recently visited Mexico City where we met with two researchers at UNAM - Mexico’s National University - who are doing some fascinating research. Robyn Hudson, a charismatic professor, originally from Australia who has been living in Mexico City for quite some time, and her colleague Marco Guarneros, a fellow biomedical researcher, conducted a study comparing the ability of Mexico City’s residents to detect certain smells, with the ability of people living in a Tlaxcala, a neighboring town. Mexico City and Tlaxcala are similar in many respects - they share a similar culture and climate, situated high in the mountains of Mexico. But there is one crucial difference: Mexico City has much higher levels of air pollution.
When compared to their neighbors, people living in Mexico City need higher concentrations of a smell in order to identify it, a clear indication that their sense of smell is deteriorating. Read the rest of this entry »
An unusual calm on Bogota’s streets. Photo by Pattoncito from Flickr.
On Thursday, February 7 Bogotá held its 8th annual car-free day during which 14% of the population left their private cars at home and walked, cycled, and took mass transit to get around Colombia’s capital city. The car-free day is a bold effort to give people the chance of experiencing how nice the city could be without the 1.2 million private vehicles that ply Bogota’s streets every day. Following Bogota’s lead the car-free movement is spreading throughout the world, but still, this Andean city is the only one of its size that actually enforces its efforts, slapping $118 fines on any vehicle breaking the ban.
The Colombian newspaper EL TIEMPO reported a 45% reduction in carbon monoxide, an improvement attribute to the absence of private cars. This reduction, while important, was overshadowed by a 42% increase in particulate matter. Particulate matter is inorganic particles caused by diesel engines, brake and tire friction, wood burning factories using heavy fuels and coal, and forms indirectly in the air from SOx and NOX. Particulate matter has serious effects on the human respiratory system, and is especially harmful to children, the elderly and people with breathing problems. It is also one of the leading causes of bronchitis and asthma. At typical concentrations, particulate matter has approximately the same impact on human health as carbon monoxide. However, per equal mass emitted, it has between a 10 times (if its from brakes and tire friction) and 1000 times (if its from diesel engines and SOx) greater impact on human health than carbon monoxide.
For Bogotá, the really important question is whether the particulate matter which increased during car-free day was from brakes and tires or from diesel engines. If it was from breaks and tires then it will be removed quickly from the atmosphere, and we could argue unequivocally that car-free day improved human health. However, if it’s from diesel engines and Sox - as it is believed to be in the case of Bogota - then the increase in particulate matter may have outweighed the benefits from reduced levels of carbon monoxide. Read the rest of this entry »
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