Decarbonizing urban transport in European cities: four cases show possibly high co-benefits

By Felix Creutzig, Rainer Mühlhoff, J. Römer. 2012

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cities worldwide are increasingly becoming agents of climate change mitigation, while simultaneously aiming for other goals, such as improved accessibility and clean air. Based on stakeholder interviews and data analysis, we assess the current state of urban mobility in the four European cities of Barcelona, Malmö, Sofia and Freiburg. We then provide scenarios of increasingly ambitious policy packages, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from urban transport by up to 80% from 2010 to 2040. We find significant concurrent co-benefits in cleaner air, reduced noise ambience, fewer traffic-related injuries and deaths, more physical activity, less congestion and monetary fuel savings. Our scenarios suggest that non-motorized transport, especially bicycles, can occupy high modal shares, particularly in cities with less than 0.5 million inhabitants. We think that this kind of multi-criteria assessment of social costs and benefits is a useful complement to cost–benefit analysis of climate change mitigation measures.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/60a048d4066cd91cf34b5e81f36ed7aa9ecbe549

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Citations in the corpus

Climate policy co-benefits: a review (2020, background): “Creutzig et al. (2012) estimate 3,500 avoided deaths in the US in a scenario that stretches to 2020.”
Evolving Narratives of Low-Carbon Futures in Transportation (2016, background): “Comparative analyses of place-based urban mitigation scenarios can help to demonstrate behavioral, infrastructure, and landuse contributions for global mitigation efforts (Creutzig et al., 2012) (Figure 2).”
Beyond Technology: Demand-Side Solutions for Climate Change Mitigation (2016, background): “and public transport, along with long-term land use planning (which is most relevant where populations are growing), could realize a 50% reduction in urban transport GHG emissions between 2010 and 2040 in European cities (46).”
External costs of electric vehicles (2016, background): “walking, cycling, and use of public transport means, will be much more effective in improving the quality of life in our cities (Creutzig et al., 2012).”
Health impact assessment of active transportation: A systematic review. (2015, background): “(2014) assessed noise exposure by changes in traffic volume, Creutzig et al. (2012) and Rabl and de Nazelle (2012) used an indirect economic assessment of traffic-related noise exposure, including health costs; relying on a cost function dependent on vehicle-kilometers traveled, mode-type, time of d”
Carbon footprints of cities and other human settlements in the UK (2013, background): “…local decision-making on the CF is limited, but largest in the area of housing and transport, where spatial planning, transport demand and transport supply measures can reduce the demand for energy or materials and associated direct as well as supply chain CO2 emissions (e.g., Creutzig et al 2012).”