Play It Cool

Scott Belcher of Intelligent Transport Society of America (ITSA) tells US Infrastructure about some new strategies to reduce transportation’s environmental impact.

“Emissions from transportation are growing faster than other sectors, representing almost half of the increase in total GHGs between 1990 and 2006”
-Scott Belcher

Transportation contributes about 28 percent of the United States' total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Additionally, emissions from transportation are growing faster than other sectors, representing almost half of the increase in total GHGs between 1990 and 2006. Transportation-related GHG emissions are the result of the interaction of four factors: vehicle fuel efficiency, the carbon content of the fuel burned, the number of miles that vehicles travel, and the operational efficiency experienced during travel.

The Intelligent Transportation Society of America is part of a diverse group of stakeholders including transportation experts, industry leaders, federal agencies, environmental organizations and other non-governmental organizations that commissioned Moving Cooler: Transportation Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emission. Good environmental policy must be driven by good data, and Moving Cooler helps fill the void by providing much needed data on transportation solutions and their positive impact on climate change.

As transportation and climate legislation is being developed in Congress, this report will help inform the debate. Many of the conclusions and assumptions in the report can and will be debated. This is the norm with studies like this. Nevertheless, Moving Cooler is a good first step. Much more work needs to be done, particularly in light of recent Intelligent Transportation System deployments that are demonstrating significant efficiency gains not necessarily reflected in this study. These and other improvements will doubtless hallmark the next generation of studies whose way has been paved by Moving Cooler's foray into the conversation.

The Moving Cooler report is unique in providing information about the potential contribution of transportation actions to reduce the amount of vehicle travel that occurs by encouraging the use of less fuel-intensive means of transportation or by reducing the amount of fuel consumed during travel via transportation system improvements.

As best as can be determined, Moving Cooler is the first-ever comprehensive analysis of transportation efficiency and its relationship to GHG emission reductions and consumer savings. The report analyzes the effectiveness and cost of almost 50 scalable transportation strategies, both alone and combined, to reduce GHG emissions. Strategies were first assessed individually, and then combined into 'bundles' that illustrate the potential cumulative effects that could be achieved. Finally, these bundles were examined using an economy-wide pricing overlay that analyzes the effect of fuel tax and carbon pricing and other nationwide pricing measures.

The good news is that Moving Cooler finds that behavioral and operational strategies, combined with technology and fuel strategies, enable the transportation sector to achieve significant levels of GHG emission reductions. The key driver behind many of these solutions is the use of Intelligent Transportation Systems that make our infrastructure smarter and more efficient, while providing real-time information on traffic conditions, transit options and other transportation services. These Intelligent Transportation System technologies and services provide the 21st century tools we need to actively manage our transportation network to reduce congestion, optimize existing capacity, facilitate mode choice, and improve system efficiencies.

In addition to making a contribution to reducing GHG emissions, Intelligent Transportation Systems contribute to expanded travel options, reduced congestion, greater accessibility, improvements in the livability of urban areas, improved equity, improved environmental quality, enhanced public health and improved safety.

Many of the strategies that are estimated to be most effective at reducing GHG emissions are only made possible because of Intelligent Transportation Systems, including:

• Eco-driving which is only effective when combined with GPS-enabled navigational systems and real-time information;
• Congestion pricing, vehicle miles traveled user fees, and other road charging systems that depend on Intelligent Transportation System technologies; and
• Expansion of transit systems and rail lines which can only realize optimal efficiency when combined with Intelligent Transportation System solutions such as transit signal priority, automated vehicle location, computer-aided scheduling and dispatch, real-time transit and multimodal traveler information, mobility management systems – particularly for the elderly and disabled – 'smart cards' and payment systems.

ITS America looks forward to the pursuit of widespread deployment of smart technologies and to continue improving the emissions data associated with Intelligent Transportation Systems and other transportation efficiency measures. If your company or organization has real-world data on emissions reductions and other environmental benefits of ITS that you would be willing to share, we would be thrilled to provide this data to policymakers who are working to pass transportation and climate change legislation.

Scott Belcher is President and CEO of the Intelligent Transport Society of America. For more information go to www.itsa.org.

All wrapped up

Most strategies to reduce transportation GHGs would typically be implemented as part of a package of transportation activities. To test the combined impact of strategies, Moving Cooler developed six illustrative bundles or groups of strategies and estimated the total GHG reductions that might be achieved through an integrated set of actions. Each bundle was designed to bring together strategies that emphasize a common action plan:

• The Near-Term/ Early Results Bundle focuses on strategies that could be implemented broadly before 2015 and that could result in early GHG reduction benefits. The near-term bundle gets the largest percentage - 11 percent - of GHG reductions between 2010 and 2020. Examples of the variety of strategies that can be implemented relatively quickly include increased transit services, ecodriving programs, and truck stop electrification.
• The Long-Term/ Maximum Results Bundle focuses on maximizing efforts to reduce GHG emissions without regard to cost, scale, or time frame of the implementation. This all-out bundle includes most of the Moving Cooler strategies assessed for this study: both near-term strategies, as well as infrastructure investment to expand transportation services, pricing measures (such as tolls and congestion pricing), operational improvements, and freight strategies. The maximum effort/long-term bundle also achieved the same 11 percent reduction by 2020, but at a much higher cost.
• Land Use/ Transit/Non-motorized Transportation Bundle emphasizes the interaction of urban area-focused strategies that increase density and encourage travelers to shift to more energy efficient modes, with shorter average trip lengths and increased walking and biking, which would eliminate some vehicle trips.
• The System and Driver Efficiency Bundle focuses on strategies that improve multimodal system efficiency by adding capacity, removing bottlenecks, reducing congestion, and improving traffic flow.
• The Facility Pricing Bundle focuses on local and regional pricing and incentive strategies such as tolls, congestion pricing and parking fees that will induce changes in travel behavior by changing the cost of travel. These strategies also could be coupled with service expansion.
• The Low Cost Bundle focuses on achieving GHG emission reductions through the deployment of strategies that are more cost-effective.