Development Banks Announce "Game Changer" for Sustainable Transport at Rio+20
Source: EMBARQ
The world’s largest multi-lateral development banks — led by the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and others — committed to provide more than $175 billion over 10 years to support sustainable transport in developing countries.
The announcement was made at the UN Sustainable Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20) by the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, CAF- Development Bank of Latin America, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, and the World Bank.
Following is a statement from EMBARQ’s director, Holger Dalkmann:
«This is a game changer for sustainable transport. It will ensure that hundreds of millions of people will have cleaner air, less congested roads, and safer transportation.
Ten years ago transportation wasn’t even in the discussion; now it’s a major outcome from the world’s preeminent conference on sustainable development.
Banks are putting their money where it matters — on streets built for people, not just cars. The world’s population is expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050, with more than half living in Asia, mostly in urban areas. At the same time, the rate of vehicle ownership is predicted to skyrocket from around 800 million cars a decade ago to around 2 billion in 2030. These two mega-trends are coming together to create an environment where people must compete for financial, institutional, and physical resources. In response, we need better urban designs; more sustainable transportation modes, like walking, biking and mass transit; and improvements in existing vehicle and fuel technology.
This investment is not just about improving the way people move from point A to point B; it’s also about providing access and mobility for the poor and improving road safety, not to mention reducing transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. Transport is no small piece of the climate change pie: the sector represents approximately one-quarter of global CO2 emissions.
Today’s announcement will no doubt encourage other decision-makers, especially national governments, to consider financing transport projects based on social and environmental benefits. It will push sustainability into the core of urban development.
At the same time, we need to make sure that the money gets invested into the right kind of projects, and that there are sound mechanisms to measure its impact. This will require full transparency and independent monitoring.
Countries often invest in transportation and infrastructure, but much of that goes into highways. We need to be smarter about where money flows, whether that means creating vibrant public spaces, providing safer infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, or building high-tech, low-cost transit systems. Doing this would be a paradigm shift in the way we finance the growth of sustainable cities, similar to what the Asian Development Bank has done with its Sustainable Transport Initiative, a lending and technical assistance program for transport projects in Asia and the Pacific that emphasizes inclusive economic and environmentally sustainable growth.
EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute’s center for sustainable transport, is a founding member of the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport, which helped to catalyze this new financial commitment by the banks.
Years from now, we may look back at Rio+20 as the moment when transport was pushed to the top of the sustainability agenda.”
¿Comments? ¿Opinions? ¿Similar News? Send them to us!
Tweet
Walk the line: station context, corridor type and bus rapid transit walk access in Jinan, China
This paper examines BRT station walk access patterns in rapidly urbanizing China and the relationship between bus rapid transit (BRT) station context and corridor type and the distance people will walk to access the system (i.e., catchment area). We hypothesize that certain contextual built environment features and station and right-of-way configurations will increase the walk-access catchment area; that is, that urban design influences users’ willingness to walk to BRT. We base our analysis on 1233 user surveys, conducted at 19 BRT stations along three existing (as of summer 2009) BRT corridors in the city of Jinan. Ordinary least squares regression is applied to estimate the relationship between walk access distances and aggregate station- and corridor-area characteristics, controlling for individual- and trip-specific attributes. The results suggest that people walk farther to BRT stations when the walking environment has certain features (median transit-way station location, shaded corridors, busy and interesting). Trip and trip maker characteristics play a relatively minor role in defining BRT walk access distance. Implications include the need for flexible transit station catchment area definitions in identifying transit-oriented development opportunities and estimating system demand.
