The Environmental Effects of Public Transport

Public Transportation allows for cars to be removed from the road. This lowers gas emissions and traffic congestions. The state of New Jersey released Getting to Work: Reconnecting Jobs with Transit. This initiative, as suggested by its title, attempts to relocate new jobs into areas with higher public transportation accessibility. The initiative cites the use of public transportation as being a means of reducing traffic congestion, providing an economic boost to the areas of job relocation, and most importantly, contributing to a green environment by reducing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions.

A 2002 study by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute found that public transportation in the U.S uses approximately half the fuel required by cars, SUV’s and light trucks. In addition, the study noted that “private vehicles emit about 95 percent more carbon monoxide, 92 percent more volatile organic compounds and about twice as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide than public vehicles for every passenger mile traveled”.

A representative from Modern Railways magazine is quoted in saying, “Studies have shown that there is a strong inverse correlation between urban population density and energy consumption per capita, and that public transport could play a key role in increasing urban population densities, and thus reduce travel distances and fossil fuel consumption.”

Mexico City, An Environmental Case-Study

Air pollution is considered one of the most serious and pressing problems in Mexico City. With more than 20 million people living in an area slightly larger than the Chicago region, exhaust from approximately 3.5 million personal vehicles and thousands of buses accounts for 80 percent of the region’s air pollution. Although the Mexican government has reduced smog by closing factories, removing old cars from the roads, and modernizing aging buses, car use in Mexico City has doubled in the last seven years. Reducing traffic in Mexico City is an important priority for improving the city’s overall public health. Until recently, approximately 80 percent of Mexico City’s population traveled throughout the city using the extensive subway system, light rail service, and bus network. Still, drivers spent an average of two and a half hours stuck in traffic daily. Along one of the city’s most congested arterials, Insurgentes Avenue, about 250 private buses — with 150 different owners — operated alongside the street’s 100 public buses. Coordination among the owners was impossible, and the traffic on Insurgentes was borderline intolerable.

In 2005, as a key component of the Mexican government’s Air Quality Program and Green Plan, the mayor entered into a public-private partnership to launch the city’s first bus rapid transit (BRT) system, known as the Metrobús. The city invested less than $34 million in infrastructure and buses, while private investors spent approximately $20 million to purchase new, and retrofit existing, buses with modern BRT technology. The city oversees planning, explores expansion potential, and coordinates services while the private sector – a unified company encompassing many of the old system’s bus operators – manages the system’s operations and maintenance services. The Metrobús runs along the median with prepaid boarding, smart card technology, low floor buses, and designated stations. Moving more than 320,000 passengers per day through the heart of Mexico City, the Metrobús is known as the subway on wheels.

BRT in Mexico City improved mobility in the corridor by 50 percent and encouraged a 5 percent shift to public transportation from private vehicles. The system has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 47,000 tons every year. The success of BRT in Mexico City has the mayor planning an additional 124 miles, installing nine more BRT corridors, and moving as many as 1.7 million daily passengers making it one of the world’s largest BRT systems.