China is the largest car market in the world today. In large cities, the increases in private car ownership and usage are especially rapid, as they generally experience faster economic growth and enjoy higher household disposable incomes than smaller cities and rural areas. This also means many large cities in China experience severe traffic congestion, as well as air pollution and high carbon emissions.
The transport sector accounted for 55% of China’s oil consumption in 2015, almost double what it was in 1990. Transport-related carbon dioxide emissions were estimated at 900 million tons in China in 2016 and are expected to continue to increase as more cars hit the road.
“The Chinese Government is committed to fighting climate change and reducing carbon emission as a fundamental national policy. As a large carbon emitter and energy consumer, the transport sector has to make its contribution. For this reason, we applied for the Global Environment Facility for the Large City Congestion and Carbon Reduction Project. By learning international experience and piloting and demonstrating in selected Chinese cities, we hope to find an urban transport development path that is resource-saving, environmental-friendly and suitable to China’s country context,” said Liu Dong, an official of the Chinese Ministry of Transport.
The project received a grant of US$18.18 million from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in March 2013. Implemented with the World Bank’s support, the project promotes a comprehensive approach and complements implementation of the public transport metropolises program by developing, piloting and demonstrating travel demand management (TDM) strategies and measures, transit-oriented development (TOD), intelligent transport systems (ITS), and advanced public transport systems (APTS).
To establish models as well as to evaluate the impact of various public transport improvements and travel demand management measures across a range of cities, three large cities were selected for pilot demonstration: Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, Chengdu in Sichuan Province, and Harbin in Heilongjiang Province.
Like other big cities in China, these three cities have experienced a rapid increase in car ownership and usage in recent years. By 2017, Suzhou had more than 3 million vehicles, about 300 vehicles per thousand people; Chengdu had 4.7 million vehicles, second only to Beijing; and Harbin had 1.62 million vehicles and counting.
Public transport not only saves travel time but also reduces greenhouse gases and local air pollutant emissions.
“Though the total carbon emissions are still on a rising trend, the three cities have already achieved some emission reduction results compared with the business-as-usual scenario. Reductions have reached 0.95, 1.53 and 0.98 million tons in Suzhou, Chengdu and Harbin respectively,” said Liao Kai, a researcher of the China Academy of Transport Science, who tracked emissions in the three pilot cities for the past four years.
Several international workshops were organized to share views and experience in congestion and carbon emission reduction, including the lessons learned from the project, as part of the TransForm, a knowledge platform jointly developed by the Ministry of Transport and the World Bank to learn and disseminate China’s experience and good practices in transport development and transformation.
Original source: World Bank
Published on 16 November 2018