[sustran] Smart Oil Spill Policy Response - VTPI News Special Edition

[Todd Alexander Litman]

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             Smart Oil Spill Policy Response
              VTPI NEWS Special Edition
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         Victoria Transport Policy Institute
            "Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
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                      June 2010
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The Victoria Transport Policy Institute (VTPI) is an independent 
research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to 
transportation problems. The VTPI website (http://www.vtpi.org ) has 
many resources addressing a wide range of transport policy and 
planning issues. VTPI also provides consulting services.
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The Deep Water Horizon catastrophic oil spill is the latest in a 
series of problems that result from transportation system 
inefficiency. This special Newsletter highlights some of VTPI's 
research on oil consumption external costs and smart transportation 
energy conservation strategies.


Sacrificing Pelicans To Petroleum Gods: Deep Water Horizon Spill 
Forces Energy Policy Rethink (http://www.planetizen.com/node/44891 ).
"Many ancient religions required animal sacrifice to satisfy their 
gods' desires. We now sacrifice pelicans, marine mammals and sea 
turtles to satisfy our desire for cheap oil." This new Planetizen 
blog discusses the roots of catastrophic oil spills, the costs to 
society of resource inefficient transportation systems, and 
implications for transport energy policy.


Resource Consumption External Costs (http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0512.pdf )
This newly revised chapter from our report Transportation Cost and 
Benefit Analysis (http://www.vtpi.org/tca ) provides detailed 
analysis of the full external costs of resource (mainly petroleum) 
consumption, and therefore the full benefits of energy conservation 
policies. These externalities include macroeconomic costs of 
importing petroleum, military costs of maintaining access to foreign 
petroleum resources, environmental costs of producing, processing and 
distributing fuel, and various subsidies. It includes recent 
estimates of oil spill environmental costs, and a new section that 
discusses implications of these costs for optimal energy policy and pricing.


"Smart Transportation Emission Reduction Strategies" 
(http://www.vtpi.org/ster.pdf )
This report investigates the optimal (best overall, taking into 
account all benefits and costs) transportation emission reduction 
strategies. Current evaluation methods tend to undervalue mobility 
management (also called Transportation Demand Management or TDM) 
strategies that increase transport system efficiency by changing 
travel behavior, due to biases that include (1) ignorance about these 
strategies; (2) failure to consider co-benefits; (3) failure to 
consider rebound effects of increased fuel economy; (4) belief that 
mobility management impacts are difficult to predict; (5) belief that 
mobility management programs are difficult to implement; and (6) 
belief that vehicle travel reductions harm consumers and the economy. 
More comprehensive and objective analysis tends to rank mobility 
management strategies among the most cost-effective emission 
reduction options. This report describes ways to correct current 
planning bias so mobility management solutions can be implemented to 
the degree optimal.


"Win-Win Transportation Emission Reduction Strategies" 
(http://www.vtpi.org/wwclimate.pdf )
Win-Win Transportation Solutions are cost-effective, technically 
feasible market reforms that solve transportation problems by 
improving mobility options and removing market distortions that cause 
excessive motor vehicle travel. They provide many economic, social 
and environmental benefits. If implemented to the degree economically 
justified, Win-Win Solutions could achieve the transport component of 
Kyoto emission reduction targets while helping to address problems 
such as traffic congestion, accidents and inadequate mobility for 
non-drivers, and supporting economic development. This paper 
discusses the Win-Win concept and describes various Win-Win strategies.


"Fuel Taxes" (http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm17.htm )
This chapter of our Online TDM Encyclopedia (http://www.vtpi.org/tdm 
) discusses various reasons to increase fuel taxes, fuel price 
impacts on travel and energy consumption, and fuel tax increase 
implementation strategies.




Sincerely,
Todd Alexander Litman
Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
litman at vtpi.org
Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
"Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"