Smart Growth Emerging as GHG Mitigation Strategy
The post-World War II pattern of settlement and land use in the United States is one of the prime causes of the nation's outsized carbon footprint because it makes traveling by car convenient and necessary. To mitigate U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions going forward, new models of growth and development are needed. Planners and environmentalists have argued for decades that growth should be focused in or near existing communities and transit systems. Zoning should be crafted to develop and redevelop neighborhoods into mixed-use areas with housing, jobs, stores and services in close proximity or linked by transit. These "smart growth" strategies produce communities with less congestion, pollution and energy demand for transportation, not to mention leaving intact agricultural and resource lands. As the imperative to mitigate climate change has emerged, so has awareness that smart growth can reduce transport GHGs.
AECOM a major player in Bus Rapid Transit
According to Bob Lepore, director of transportation planning for AECOM North America, an increasingly important part of the firm's worldwide transit and high speed rail business bus rapid transit. BRT is a transit mode in which dedicated lanes and rights of way, signal prioritization and other measures are used to improve mobility and increase ridership. Interest in bus rapid transit is spreading rapidly to many metropolitan areas and cities largely because BRT can be much less expensive than rail transit and can easily be implemented in phases and therefore more quickly than rail transit systems. "In terms of volume of activity if not dollar value, BRT is where a lot of the activity is today," said Lepore. "While there may be six or seven cities today that are focusing on heavy rail extensions and new lines, there are probably 50 to 60 communities that have or are designing or planning to put in BRT lines or integrated systems."
ITS Embraced for its GHG Benefits
Traffic signal optimization is part of a subset of techniques known as intelligent transportation systems, or ITS. Like most other strategies for mitigating transportation, ITS is not specifically a GHG-mitigation strategy but one aimed at improving transportation services. As it is deployed to mitigate congestion, it can provide GHG benefits, at least to the extent that those aren't erased by induced demand. ITS started in the mid-1980s, according to Brad Dennard, vice president of $520-million design, engineering and construction firm PBS&J (Orlando, Fla.). First called advanced transport telematics, then intelligent vehicle highway systems, ITS leverages information technology capabilities with traffic signals and other mechanisms to manage when and where people travel.
Leveraging IT to reduce transportation GHGS
Using information technology to facilitate ridesharing and transit usage appears to be a growing business that can make these low-carbon travel modes more convenient and attractive. "We've see an evolution in the technology," said Aaron Antrim, president of Trillium Transit Solutions (Portland, Ore.). "At first the iPhone could only plan driving trips, now it plans driving, transit and walking trips. ... In the future mobile devices are going to become more and more powerful and useful for finding and comparing travel options." Firms like Avego (Kinsale, Ireland) and Goose Networks (Seattle) are marketing web-enabled ride-matching and commute management programs. There are many regional ridesharing and car/vanpooling websites and services such as San Luis Obispo County's iRideshare.org, Rideshare.com which sells monthly vanpool commuting packages ($139 a month for a 50-mile roundtrip) in the Northeast and Zimride.com which is focused on college students.
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