Making the urban transport system environment friendly

Green transportation reduces people’s dependency on conventional fuel use in their vehicles and ultimately decreases in pollution level in terms of greenhouse gas emissions

The importance of greening the transport system is very crucial in the present developmental aspects since transportation is an integral part of our daily lives irrespective of the age and class. Moreover, the woes of the conventional transportation system are a very vibrant issue for the developing countries, especially for a rapidly growing city like Dhaka. The system comes along with a broad range of sustainability issues, including environmental sustainability (global warming, degradation, fossil fuel burning and emissions); social sustainability (human satisfaction, road safety and health - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual); and economic stability (cost and benefit over environmental and social violations). In fact, the transport sector is responsible for 23% of the global greenhouse gas emission with over 90% of all road transportation depending on fossil fuel. Therefore, road transportation holds up a lion share in contributing to the total greenhouse gas emissions. The projection of this trend is to be increased in the future if we aren’t enough conscious about our policies and strategies on the green initiatives towards sustainable transportation.
So, how can we stand for the situation in the context of our urbanization? What should we do to address the components of our urban transport systems? As we are going through a new development paradigm, thus our urban transport system should now be aligned with some specific goals and targets of the UN framed sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the progressive situation of the urban transportation is still found to be poor in the developing countries compared to the developed countries. Even our city development is being revamped, but all the interlinked agendas are not focused in the development in a parallel way to perform with the sustainable solutions. It desires an integrated response in the development process between several stakeholder groups- more importantly among the beneficiaries (citizens), policy makers, policy implementers, researchers/experts and the donors. Our experiences show that many technical solutions might be testified, which are very useful in developed cities, but they cannot be suitable for our cities in the context of poor road infrastructure, technology, people’s needs, capital intensive nature and the overall the good governing system. In case of different approaches towards greening the transport system for the developing cities, research shows that we have to review more non-technical solutions than the technical solutions. Here we can briefly elaborate these two dimensions of transport development in the greening process.
1. Non-technical review- behavioral or attitudinal changes must be characterized by increasing walking space, cycling and the preferred transit mood. For environment friendly cities, these are the vital issues that contribute to the composites of a green transport system. The methodological approaches to work for a green travel style is to incorporate the mood of walking, cycling and transit which make up four strategies mainly: changing the pattern of land use in promoting the space for walking and cycling, giving priority to the public transport, restricting car buying and using, and implementing rules and regulations through good governance. It is true that we have seen already some good policies and strategies on these reviews, but more investigation can be highlighted to assess our limitations and solve the problem by setting up priorities. Some policy making themes can be drawn to the restriction of private cars to carry out students/teachers to their academic institutions, facilitating group transport facilities for schools/institutions, family restrictions to own more than one car, parking management in order to reduce car use frequently, facilitating public transport and availability to all classes of citizens, scheduling public transport considering school or institutional opening and ending time, promoting dynamic road infrastructure including all modern facilities etc. An example in the following the issue is, Vienna, Austria reduced car share of trips between 1993 and 2014, from 40% to 27%, where we are increasing our dependency on the cars. Another glowing example is Vancouver in Canada, when the city decreased vehicle kilometer driven per person from 2007 level of 27% as they are increased their awareness and practices in walking, cycling and public transit. The key to the success of has been a harmonized package of common understanding in reinforcing land-use policies and public transport issues that have made the car use slower, less convenient and more costly.
2. Technical review- For recent years, environmental friendly public transit relies on a green transportation system, e.g. green buses, bikes, taxies, trains etc. However, new green technologies are being successful in operations in the developed countries, rather than the developing countries. Green transportation reduces people’s dependency on conventional fuel use in their vehicles and ultimately decreases in pollution level in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but it deserves most modern technologies for manufacturing several types of vehicles. After all, buses and taxies release the same exhaust gases as other vehicles, so they are still being considered towards the innovation of green technologies. However, in the idea of green technologies, public transportation should get more priority for further extension in innovations. The increased use of public transportation must get a proper direction on the road to create less air and noise pollution. But we still have lots of things that can be done. Here some forms of public transportation that may go green and become environmentally friendly technologies in our urbanization context include- 1) electric vehicles, such as electric trains, bikes, buses can be promoted (but the electricity must come from renewable resources), 2) introducing multiple occupant vehicles, 3) introducing hybrid bus, taxies, commuter vehicles etc, 4) developing road infrastructure including bus bay, footpath, underpass, overpass etc. 5) introducing large capacity of public transport (big buses, metro, double Decker etc), 6) introducing auto traffic signals and central monitoring systems for maintaining traffic rules and regulations, 7) reducing traffic congestions through different initiatives ( shifting or restructuring of political rallies, events, exhibition, VIP offices, VIP movements and VIP protocol etc). For example, the location of Bangladesh Prime Minister’s office often makes huge traffic congestions almost every day in a week and as consequences, the situation causes sufferings to millions and wastes their precious time and efforts. In fact, such experiences evoke the sustainability violations underlying mental and environmental hazard importantly.       
However, following the overview of both technical and non-technical parts of transportation, sustainable transportation can be ensured where the greening of transportation can act as leverage in the present sustainability transition period. The Green vigorously drives for accelerating the policy making and implementation of a sustainable transport system. We have indeed many challenges to achieve this, but for the improvement we should take our positions in a coordinated way to a wide range of politicians, stakeholder groups, researchers and transport planners. To summarize the issue, we definitely need to restructure and prioritize our transport network that includes walking, cycling, and public transport facilities. Every single step can push us unanimously to identify the improvement of our present situation within a multi-staged and long term process requiring political deals, compromises and coalition-building among multi stakeholder groups. 

The writer is a Senior Research Associate and Sustainability professional at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division [email protected]; [email protected] 

Making the urban transport system environment friendly

Green transportation reduces peoples dependency on conventional fuel use in their vehicles and ultimately decreases in pollution level in terms of greenhouse gas emissions

The importance of greening the transport system is very crucial in the present developmental aspects since transportation is an integral part of our daily lives irrespective of the age and class. Moreover, the woes of the conventional transportation system are a very vibrant issue for the developing countries, especially for a rapidly growing city like Dhaka. The system comes along with a broad range of sustainability issues, including environmental sustainability (global warming, degradation, fossil fuel burning and emissions); social sustainability (human satisfaction, road safety and health - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual); and economic stability (cost and benefit over environmental and social violations). In fact, the transport sector is responsible for 23% of the global greenhouse gas emission with over 90% of all road transportation depending on fossil fuel. Therefore, road transportation holds up a lion share in contributing to the total greenhouse gas emissions. The projection of this trend is to be increased in the future if we arent enough conscious about our policies and strategies on the green initiatives towards sustainable transportation. So, how can we stand for the situation in the context of our urbanization? What should we do to address the components of our urban transport systems? As we are going through a new development paradigm, thus our urban transport system should now be aligned with some specific goals and targets of the UN framed sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the progressive situation of the urban transportation is still found to be poor in the developing countries compared to the developed countries. Even our city development is being revamped, but all the interlinked agendas are not focused in the development in a parallel way to perform with the sustainable solutions. It desires an integrated response in the development process between several stakeholder groups- more importantly among the beneficiaries (citizens), policy makers, policy implementers, researchers/experts and the donors. Our experiences show that many technical solutions might be testified, which are very useful in developed cities, but they cannot be suitable for our cities in the context of poor road infrastructure, technology, peoples needs, capital intensive nature and the overall the good governing system. In case of different approaches towards greening the transport system for the developing cities, research shows that we have to review more non-technical solutions than the technical solutions. Here we can briefly elaborate these two dimensions of transport development in the greening process. 1. Non-technical review- behavioral or attitudinal changes must be characterized by increasing walking space, cycling and the preferred transit mood. For environment friendly cities, these are the vital issues that contribute to the composites of a green transport system. The methodological approaches to work for a green travel style is to incorporate the mood of walking, cycling and transit which make up four strategies mainly: changing the pattern of land use in promoting the space for walking and cycling, giving priority to the public transport, restricting car buying and using, and implementing rules and regulations through good governance. It is true that we have seen already some good policies and strategies on these reviews, but more investigation can be highlighted to assess our limitations and solve the problem by setting up priorities. Some policy making themes can be drawn to the restriction of private cars to carry out students/teachers to their academic institutions, facilitating group transport facilities for schools/institutions, family restrictions to own more than one car, parking management in order to reduce car use frequently, facilitating public transport and availability to all classes of citizens, scheduling public transport considering school or institutional opening and ending time, promoting dynamic road infrastructure including all modern facilities etc. An example in the following the issue is, Vienna, Austria reduced car share of trips between 1993 and 2014, from 40% to 27%, where we are increasing our dependency on the cars. Another glowing example is Vancouver in Canada, when the city decreased vehicle kilometer driven per person from 2007 level of 27% as they are increased their awareness and practices in walking, cycling and public transit. The key to the success of has been a harmonized package of common understanding in reinforcing land-use policies and public transport issues that have made the car use slower, less convenient and more costly. 2. Technical review- For recent years, environmental friendly public transit relies on a green transportation system, e.g. green buses, bikes, taxies, trains etc. However, new green technologies are being successful in operations in the developed countries, rather than the developing countries. Green transportation reduces peoples dependency on conventional fuel use in their vehicles and ultimately decreases in pollution level in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but it deserves most modern technologies for manufacturing several types of vehicles. After all, buses and taxies release the same exhaust gases as other vehicles, so they are still being considered towards the innovation of green technologies. However, in the idea of green technologies, public transportation should get more priority for further extension in innovations. The increased use of public transportation must get a proper direction on the road to create less air and noise pollution. But we still have lots of things that can be done. Here some forms of public transportation that may go green and become environmentally friendly technologies in our urbanization context include- 1) electric vehicles, such as electric trains, bikes, buses can be promoted (but the electricity must come from renewable resources), 2) introducing multiple occupant vehicles, 3) introducing hybrid bus, taxies, commuter vehicles etc, 4) developing road infrastructure including bus bay, footpath, underpass, overpass etc. 5) introducing large capacity of public transport (big buses, metro, double Decker etc), 6) introducing auto traffic signals and central monitoring systems for maintaining traffic rules and regulations, 7) reducing traffic congestions through different initiatives ( shifting or restructuring of political rallies, events, exhibition, VIP offices, VIP movements and VIP protocol etc). For example, the location of Bangladesh Prime Ministers office often makes huge traffic congestions almost every day in a week and as consequences, the situation causes sufferings to millions and wastes their precious time and efforts. In fact, such experiences evoke the sustainability violations underlying mental and environmental hazard importantly. However, following the overview of both technical and non-technical parts of transportation, sustainable transportation can be ensured where the greening of transportation can act as leverage in the present sustainability transition period. The Green vigorously drives for accelerating the policy making and implementation of a sustainable transport system. We have indeed many challenges to achieve this, but for the improvement we should take our positions in a coordinated way to a wide range of politicians, stakeholder groups, researchers and transport planners. To summarize the issue, we definitely need to restructure and prioritize our transport network that includes walking, cycling, and public transport facilities. Every single step can push us unanimously to identify the improvement of our present situation within a multi-staged and long term process requiring political deals, compromises and coalition-building among multi stakeholder groups. The writer is a Senior Research Associate and Sustainability professional at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division [email protected]; [email protected]