[sustran] Re: Mumbai monorail project looks to reduce CO2 emissions ???

Carlosfelipe Pardo carlosfpardo at gmail.com
Sat Jan 30 03:31:39 JST 2010


Exactly. What I see in the case of mumbai and its monorail is that I 
don't think they will complement that project with either land use 
policies or TDM measures. It happens a lot in developing cities, right? 
In the case of Bogotá, for instance, it was only when TransMilenio was 
developed that car restriction measures were developed, but land use 
policies took almost ten years to catch up. In the current metro 
project, they explicitly state that they do NOT want to complement it 
with a proper parking pricing policy, nor fuel surcharges, nor 
congestion charging, or anything. They say that the metro will be so 
wonderful that car drivers will just flock to the nearest station, which 
is absolutely naïve.

I think that is the key issue: that in order to calculate emissions 
reductions that take into account all those factors, the projects 
themselves must be complemented by many other measures which 
policymakers are not willing to develop. They prefer to just have their 
"big shiny project" but at the same time they want to let cars on their 
own. This, I guess you agree, leads to reduced demands (when compared to 
the projected values) and emissions reductions which are much lower than 
the projected ones.

However, it's good to have this discussion. We should have more case 
studies of these things, especially for developing cities. At this 
point, information is scarce and dubious...

Best regards,

Carlos.

Todd Alexander Litman wrote:
>
> This is an interesting and important discussion. Conventional analysis 
> often greatly underestimates the benefits of high quality public 
> transportation, including emission reductions, by underestimating the 
> vehicle travel reduction impacts. They often assume that a transit 
> passenger-kilometer at best reduces one automobile-vehicle-kilometer.
>
> Research by myself and others indicates that high quality public 
> transportation (high quality rail transit and bus rapid transit) often 
> has a significant leverage effect by affecting local land use patterns 
> and vehicle ownership rates. In particular, rail stations, and to a 
> lesser degree, bus stations, provide a catalyst for transit-oriented 
> development ( www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm45.htm 
> <http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm45.htm> ): compact, mixed-use, walkable 
> neighborhoods where residents tend to own fewer automobiles, drive 
> less, and rely more on alternative modes than would otherwise occur. 
> In a typical situation, each rail transit passenger-kilometers 
> substitutes for 2 to 9 automobile-vehicle-kilometers, resulting in 
> large reductions in per capita congestion delays, road and parking 
> facility costs, consumer costs, traffic accidents, energy consumption 
> and pollution emissions.
>
> The key to achieving these vehicle travel reductions is a combination 
> of high quality public transit (convenient, comfortable, relatively 
> fast, reliable, affordable, safe), with supportive policies (parking 
> pricing or cash out), and integrated land use (maximizing appropriate 
> development within 1/2-kilometer of stations). High quality service 
> requires grade-separated rail/bus routes at least most of the route, 
> and attractive stations. When all of these factors are in place the 
> benefits (including economic returns, energy savings and emission 
> reductions) can be very large. When these factors are taken into 
> account, transit system construction energy consumption and emissions 
> turn out to be tiny compared with long-term savings. Unfortunately, 
> conventional policy and project economic evaluation overlooks these 
> impacts and so significantly undervalues public transit investments.
>
> Below are publications that discuss these impacts and benefits. 
> Although most are based on developed country analysis, I expect that 
> the impacts are even larger in developing country cities where vehicle 
> ownership rates are still relatively low. If such cities fail to 
> invest in high quality public transit, residents will assume that, as 
> they become more affluent they must purchase automobiles, since the 
> only public transit available is inconvenient and uncomfortable. This 
> results in automobile dependency. However, if such cities invest in 
> high quality public transportation, even affluent households will 
> continue to use public transit at least for some trips, and many 
> middle-class households will choose to forego automobile ownership 
> altogether.
>
>     G.B. Arrington, et al. (2008), /Effects of TOD on Housing,
>     Parking, and Travel/, Report 128, Transit Cooperative Research
>     Program (_ www.trb.org/CRP/TCRP/TCRP.asp_
>     <http://www.trb.org/CRP/TCRP/TCRP.asp>).
>     Jeff Kenworthy (2008), “An International Review of The
>     Significance of Rail in Developing More Sustainable Urban
>     Transport Systems in Higher Income Cities,” /World Transport
>     Policy & Practice/, Vol. 14, No. 2 (_ www.eco-logica.co.uk_
>     <http://www.eco-logica.co.uk/pdf/wtpp14.2.pdf>); at
>     _www.eco-logica.co.uk/pdf/wtpp14.2.pdf_
>     <http://www.eco-logica.co.uk/pdf/wtpp14.2.pdf>. 
>     Todd Litman (2004), /Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive
>     Evaluation of Benefits/, VTPI (www.vtpi.org
>     <http://www.vtpi.org/>); at www.vtpi.org/railben.pdf
>     <http://www.vtpi.org/railben.pdf>. 
>     Todd Litman (2005), /Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and
>     Costs/, VTPI (www.vtpi.org <http://www.vtpi.org/>); at
>     www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf <http://www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf>. 
>     John Holtzclaw (2000), /Does A Mile In A Car Equal A Mile On A
>     Train? Exploring Public Transit’s Effectiveness In Reducing
>     Driving/, The Sierra Club, (
>     www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/reducedriving.asp
>     <http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/reducedriving.asp>). 
>     ICF International (2008), /The Broader Connection between Public
>     Transportation, Energy Conservation and Greenhouse Gas Reduction/,
>     American Public Transportation Association (_www.apta.com_
>     <http://www.apta.com/>). 
>
> Best wishes,
> -Todd Litman
>
>
>
>
> At 01:22 AM 29/01/2010, Morten Lange wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is an interesting discussion. Do you have any pointers to 
>> articles that detail how one can arrive at such numbers ?
>>
>> No less interesting and wrought with guestimates would be the number 
>> brutto number referred to in the subject : "Mumbai monorail project 
>> looks to reduce CO2 emissions"
>>
>> I guess one would guestimate how large a proportion of trips with the 
>> monorail are replacing car, bus or scooter trips, and decide on a 
>> probable share of different classes of fuel consumption, find a 
>> weighted average and multiply ?
>>
>> But this would ignore systemic changes, like possibly cleaner air 
>> leading to better health and thus less spent on healthcare or lost in 
>> days from work. Removing that number of cars and buses from traffic 
>> might open up possibilites for reallocating of roadspace from cars to 
>> cyclists, pedestrians and buses, giving further wins. Or could delay 
>> road expansion which would have meant further increases in road 
>> traffic ( in cars ).
>> More transit users will increase mean a growth in the number of 
>> pedestrians which in turn both improves health and improves safety 
>> for pedestrians and cyclists. Which in turn can increase cycling and 
>> walking still further.
>>
>> Is anyone on the list aware of good articles / books on systems 
>> thinking (feedback loops, leverage points etc ) in the evaluation of 
>> car v.s "alternative" transport in cities ?
>>
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Morten
>> --
>> Regards / Kveðja
>> Morten Lange, Reykjavík
>>
>>
>> --- On Fri, 29/1/10, Carlosfelipe Pardo <carlosfpardo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > From: Carlosfelipe Pardo <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: [sustran] Re: Mumbai monorail project looks to reduce CO2 
>> emissions ???
>> > To: "Sudhir" <sudhir at cai-asia.org>
>> > Cc: "Global 'South' Sustainable Transport" 
>> <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
>> > Date: Friday, 29 January, 2010, 0:41
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Yes, I've heard this as well from the energy
>> > expenditure side with some
>> > huge numbers. The argument I know is that some systems have
>> > very high
>> > net energy expenditures during construction which are too
>> > high compared
>> > to the actual emission reductions during operation (as you
>> > also note).
>> > But I've actually read it in rail vs roads discussions
>> > which was a bit
>> > frightening... not sure what to think since numbers for
>> > mass transit
>> > systems are so often misleading and operating companies
>> > never give you
>> > the actual numbers on many issues (for instance, when you
>> > ask about
>> > subsidies, many operating companies state that they
>> > don't have
>> > subsidies when they are 100% aware of them...).
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Carlos.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Sudhir wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi Carlos,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Its around 3500 tons/km/year which is average. Important
>> > thing is as
>> > shown by Mikhail chester - is construction in? it can be
>> > 3-28 years of
>> > operation emissions ( depends on how you measure it)..
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > regards
>> > Sudhir
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 29 January 2010 08:16,
>> > Carlosfelipe Pardo
>> > <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > I
>> > don't get it: 200 tons of CO2 reduction per day with
>> > 300 thousand
>> >
>> > commuters? In what timespan? For background, Delhi metro
>> > estimated 90
>> >
>> > thousand tons reduction between 2004- 2007 ( X pax per
>> > day?) , and
>> >
>> > TransMilenio in Bogotá got 70 thousand tons
>> > reduction for 2008 with 1.6
>> >
>> > million pax per day. Do the numbers come out right for this
>> > Mumbai
>> >
>> > monorail? I'm not good with numbers but somehow the
>> > ones for Mumbai seem
>> >
>> > a bit high... anyone?
>> >
>> >
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Todd Alexander Litman
> Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org <http://www.vtpi.org/>)
> litman at vtpi.org
> Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
> 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
> “Efficiency - Equity - Clarity”
>


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