Chapter 4: Greening Urban Transportation

State of the World 2007 Home Page

Purchase the PDF for this State of the World 2007 chapter (below), or purchase the entire book.

-Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy

While each city has its own transportation story, the past 30 years have seen an explosion in the growth of cars in cities worldwide. In 1970, there were 200 million cars in the world, but by 2006 this had grown to more than 850 million—and the number is expected to double by 2030. Heavily marketed and the symbol of success for any aspiring person from Boston to Belgrade to Beijing, the car seems unstoppable.

A city needs a variety of transportation and land use options, not just one . Providing a wide range of options can build resilience into an urban area, especially when it faces crises like climate change and the peaking of world oil production, as well as the need to address a wide range of economic and social functions through transportation . On average, urban car travel uses nearly twice as much energy as urban bus travel, 3.7 times more than light rail or tram travel, and 6.6 times more than electric train travel.

In the past, transportation priorities have generally been set by engineers, not the public. Cities need visions for how they can be transformed from car dependence and car saturation to greener modes of transport. And they need political leaders who can overcome the various barriers that prevent these visions from coming true.

Peter Newman is Professor of City Policy and Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, and Jeff Kenworthy is Associate Professor in Sustainable Settlements at the Institute, at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.