Some Solutions to Reduce Emissions from Transport Lie outside Our Cities – Case Study of India

Sudhir Gota

Developing countries are at a crossroads as current decisions and investments in the transport sector are set to lock-in GHG (CO₂) and air pollutant emissions for the next decades. There is reason for concern as sustainable transport policies that incorporate air quality and climate change are being developed and implemented at a slow pace, risking irreversible damage to the environment and people’s welfare. This is further aggravated by the global economic recession, which has lead to economic stimulus packages in developed countries for roads, the automotive industry, and related transport infrastructure. If developing countries follow this lead by prioritizing vehicles instead of people, it is certain that CO₂ emissions, air pollution, congestion, and other transport related problems will worsen.

It has been analyzed that, based on a business-as-usual scenario for motorization in India, the main trends from 2005 to 2025 are:

· The number of total vehicles would grow at 8.70% per year, an increase from 49 million to 246 million between 2005 and 2025.

· CO₂ emissions from road transport would increase at 7.75% per year, which is higher than many other Asian countries, from 203 million tons in 2005 to 905 million tons by 2025. Passenger transport represents 45% and freight transport represents 55% of total CO₂ emissions from road transport in 2005; this ratio would remain approximately the same in 2025.

· PM emissions from road transport would decline until 2025 by 1.88% per year due to the adoption of stricter fuel and vehicle emission standards, while NO_x emissions would increase at a rate of 2.37% per year. However, PM emissions would subsequently rise again due to the continued rapid vehicle growth, especially if emissions standards are not further tightened (Euro IV and above).

· Only about 22% of total CO₂ emissions from land passenger transport in India are attributed to intracity movement in these 29 cities. It is probable that the remaining 78% of CO₂ emissions come from other 498 cities (India has a total of 527 cities with over 100,000 people but limited data are available) and movement of passengers and freight from one city to another (intercity transport).

• If the current city trip mode share is retained, CO₂ emissions would increase 2- or 3-fold between 2008 and 2025, due to a rapid growth in urban population and in the number of trips.
• If the cities are able to increase the current non-motorized transport (NMT) and public transport trip shares by 5% each with a reduction in motorized transport share, the CO₂ emissions in 2008 would reduce by 9.16% and 6.21%.

A simple sketch analysis of intercity transport contribution to India’s total CO₂ emissions from road transport indicates that a 442 km stretch of 4-lane national highway may approximately correspond to the total passenger transport emissions from intracity movement in Bangalore. Similarly, CO₂ emissions from intracity passenger transport in Delhi are comparable to a 772 km stretch of highway.

The high emission from traffic in National Highways needs to be tackled by the government to reduce the environmental impact. The reason for relatively high emissions from national highways is that freight transport dominates the highways (52% of the vehicle mode share) whereas 2- and 3-wheelers are more present on typical urban roads (about 40% of vehicle mode share). Because 2- and 3-wheelers are more fuel efficient and emit less CO2 than larger vehicles, emissions from urban road transport are relatively lower compared to highways. A second reason could be high empty truck movements due to inefficiencies in freight logistics. Nearly 88% of the truck fleet is under unorganized operators.

Key recommendations for government and stakeholders are as follows:

1. Policies and projects should have a stronger focus on making cities livable and accessible for people, rather than on just improving the flow of vehicles in cities, by integrating transport demand management (i.e. reducing the number of trips made and distances traveled), public transport, and non-motorized transport into urban development and transport policies.
2. Policies and projects should aim to reduce CO₂ and air pollutant emissions from the outset, thus creating a low carbon and emission transport system, rather than adding emission mitigating measures to transport policies and projects after they have been designed. Land use and urban planning is critical in influencing transport demand and behavior thereby reducing the emissions thus improving the health.
3. Indian cities are not maximizing the density influence to reduce the emissions. Many cities which are dense are showing high emissions because of insufficient public transport and high influx of private vehicles. Many Transit oriented development initiatives are being taken by city governments, but much remains to be done on land use-transport-environment integration.
4. The National Highways carry a huge amount of traffic. Considering high emissions from road based mode of transportation, the government needs to revise feasibility and environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines to include emission quantification and mitigation measures in the selection of projects.
5. Urgent attention is needed for freight transport, which currently contributes to 55% of road transport CO₂ emissions. Most freight vehicles use diesel fuel which contributes to relatively high PM emissions and black carbon (“soot”), which in addition to being an air pollutant is considered a major contributor to global warming. Both urban transport and freight transport should receive equal attention.

Transport Infrastructure Efficiency

Which kind of transport investments are the most efficient?

Sudhir Gota

This question bothers many policy makers. Answering this question is rather difficult as different projects require different scale of investments which carry variable load and satisfies diverse set of consumers. Also it would be wrong to assume that we can always build different alternatives physically having same bunch of people using it.

Knowing the above limitations, we can still assess efficiency of infrastructure requiring different set of investments – from High Cost such as Metro, to median ranged projects such as BRTS, Roads to low cost projects such as bikelanes and footpaths.

Let’s consider the following projects – Metro, BRTS, Expressway of 4 lane, two lane urban in high income zone, two lane urban in Low income zone, Bikeways and Footpaths and thus using the law of averages to evaluate the construction cost efficiency.

In order to compare efficiency – one needs average capacity and average cost. Let’s make an assumption as detailed in below table.

	Capacity (average person/hour)	Cost (million USD)
1 km of Footpath of 2m wide	2400	0.1
1 km of Bikeways of 3m wide	3000	0.15
1km of two lane urban (Low income)	4500	1
1km of two lane urban (high income)	2600	1
1 km of Expressway of 4 lane	8500	3.5
1 km of BRTS	16000	2
1 km of Metro	60000	35

1. The Metro represented here is a replica of Bangalore Metro being constructed now. Its estimated to cost 35 million USD/Km.

2. BRTS – The BRTS taken above satisfies 8000 pphpd and costs 2 million USD/Km. this represents an average BRTS which is being constructed in many Asian cities.

3. Roads are tricky as they can carry a highly variable set of volume. So let’s assume LOS “B” and and 7% as peak hour volume. Lets also assume that a freight vehicle is equivalent to a vehicle carrying 15 passengers. ( this thumb rule matches with Value of time concept)

a. consider 35000 PCU/Day for Expressway – 4 lane

b. consider 15000 PCU/day for 2 lane urban road

c. Occupancy of 1,2,1.5 and 25 for two, three wheeler, car and Bus

d. Assume 50% mode share of freight in expressway and 9% in urban roads ( data Indian Roads)

e. Assume 55% two wheelers in low income and 55% Cars in high income areas

f. The other mode share epitomizes typical Asian roads ( 6% of vehicles as Bus)

4. Use Passenger Car Units to convert PCU’s into vehicles and then using occupancies break down the vehicles into passengers

5. Consider Bikelanes to carry 3000 cyclists/hour suggesting a dense network as seen in Delhi BRTS costing 0.15 million USD/km

6. Consider footpaths to carry 2400 persons/hour at a speed of 1.2 m/sec indicating LOS B. It may cost approx ) 1million USD/km.

Using the same money as required for constructing 1 km metro, one can on an average construct

1. 18 km of BRTS
2. 10 km of four lane Expressway
3. 35 km of two lane urban road
4. 235 km of Bikeways
5. 350 km of footpaths

Thus normalizing different projects into same investment of say 1 km of metro and thus using the capacities and length, we can calculate efficiencies.

The below graph gives the efficiencies

The low cost projects such as bikeways and footpaths in fact provide best efficiency!!

They are 12 to 14 times more efficient than a system like metro. The above calculations can be made more useful by including operation costs and emissions. But the footpaths and bikelanes would be the winners but they often receive least attention and funding.

HIDDEN EMISSIONS FROM TRANSPORT

Sudhir Gota

Latest news from Mumbai got many people excited about Monorails and its impact on emissions. The news report claimed that on an average the mono rail would save 3500 tons/year/km. This kick started a debate on emissions savings from metro rail projects and its hidden component – construction emissions. The debate pitchforked the main issue of infrastructure construction as a significant component of transport emissions. Experts believe that we do a great disservice to entire emissions argument from transport by not considering such hidden aspects and we need to consider whole emissions argument from transport with a pinch of salt. Researchers like Mikhail Chester have proved that Construction is significant component of total life cycle and should not be neglected.

Gigantic infrastructure projects take ages to plan, get approved, and finally to get implemented in a developing country. Bangalore metro substantiates the above statement. Mass rapid system in Bangalore have been studied from past late 1980’s and it was only until in early 2000’s that some actual planning was initiated. Main construction for approx 40 km of metro was initiated in 2006 and the people would only get a chance to experience the system in the year 2012. By the time metro starts chugging along the Bangalore streets, things would have changed. This argument is in fact more worrisome for elevated roads and isolated flyovers which take two years as an approximate to complete in a city like Bangalore. While the traffic suffers, emission gets multiplied and finally it opens to jam-packed traffic created by land use manipulations by builders anticipating zero congestion.

Massive projects require huge quantities of material, machinery and workers which create many leakages in emission profile. Research coming out from Japan reinforces this argument that expensive metro can in fact accumulate high intensity of emissions during construction. Researchers from Nagoya university have estimated that a station of the Superconducting MAGLEV generates emissions of magnitude 2,430[t-C/station] during construction only. Many researchers in order to to simply the calculations argue that only the emissions generated during material production be considered as a basis. But then, research also suggests that material movement, use, disposal can accrue 42% of production emissions.

The above argument looks minute in nature if we consider emissions quantified from Cairo Subway which shows that construction emissions are equivalent to 28 years of operation emissions !!

This above arguments raises an important related question –

would High speed rails really save emissions?

There has been tremendous push for such massive projects in developing countries in the name of climate change. Do we really need such expensive solutions to “reduce” emissions? Literature suggests that high speed rails emit approx 73 grams/passengerkm during operations. Indian railways preliminary estimates suggest that a High-Speed Rail consumes 0.933 litres of fuel per 100 km travelled, in comparison to the 4.04 litres consumed by an airplane and 5.69 litres consumed by an economy car. But, what remains hidden in the entire argument is fact about construction emission. Experts have suggested that high-speed rail can produce some 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year during construction.

Back of the envelope calculations suggest that a kilometer of high speed rail would cost anything from 10-20 million $/km in developing countries when neglecting land costs. Even if we blindly assume that emissions are being saved by such corridors, can developing countries really afford it?

We need more debate and need to see more numbers as massive construction can really change the game!!