Chapter 6
Personal and Other Transportation
In 2009, building on an idea that then mayor Gérald Tremblay learned from the mayor of Paris, Montreal created a new bikeshare program, BIXI. The city’s parking authority started a private, nonprofit company to build the BIXI bicycles and operate the program. The BIXI bikes (a hybrid of BIcycle and taXI) are designed for heavy use and abuse. Seeing Montreal’s success, other cities bought BIXI bikes to use in their bikeshare programs, helping to grow this manufacturing industry in Montreal. The bikeshare program is popular with residents of Montreal: last year, nearly six million bikeshare trips were made. A hit song has even been written about it, “The Bixi Anthem,” by hip hop band Da Gryptions.
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Do an internet image search of “traffic” or “traffic jams” or “congestion” and you’ll find images of traffic congestion from almost every major city in the world. You’ll see images from Nairobi. Shanghai. Hong Kong. Delhi. And Los Angeles, of course. Images of massive traffic jams in Los Angeles, with its famous congestion on famous highways such as the 405.
This congestion has a variety of causes, but the heart of it is that many cities have been allowed to grow in a spread-out way (urban sprawl) around a transportation system based on the private automobile. As spread-out communities are not built to the densities that support effective and affordable public transit, traveling by car becomes the only real choice for people. Add to this commercial transportation, and the result is a transportation system that does not effectively meet the mobility needs of millions of people, particularly in rush hour.
Interesting work is happening in many automobile-dependent cities to address this challenge. Much of that work – such as municipal policies to encourage future development along transit lines (known as transit-oriented development) – is long term and beyond the scope of this book, which attempts to demonstrate measures being taken now that can be replicated quickly to dramatically reduce emissions. But the scale of the challenge also reveals an opportunity: gas- and diesel-burning cars and trucks produce exhaust, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas emissions (and other air pollution), but changes being made in cities around the world help to meaningfully reduce such emissions – today.
Cities with excellent public transport systems have a smaller climate footprint. The environmental impact of a dense city (as opposed to a spread-out one) is lesser, on a per-person basis, and economically, dense cities are more efficient and productive. People are drawn to such cities by the prospect of a better job, a better life. Ensuring that public transport is easy and convenient for all residents is a crucial part of city building, and powering it by clean electricity can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Zero-emission – and comprehensive – public transportation systems are an essential part of the immediate solution for reducing emissions from the transportation system. Dense cities that favor good public transit are also often cities where it is easy to walk, cycle, or use other forms of active transportation. But in the short term, as they improve public transit, many cities need to address how to both reduce personal-vehicle use and how to help citizens make the switch to zero-emission vehicles. At the same time, city governments own or control significant fleets of vehicles themselves. This chapter will show what cities are doing today to address emissions from vehicles and fleets – measures that can be rapidly adopted globally.
Congestion Charging, Low-Emission Zones, and a Comprehensive Approach to Clean Transportation
Question: What can cities do to address emissions from transportation, in a world where many of the policy and regulatory controls – such as the standards to which motor vehicles must be built – are held by federal and other governments? Answer: Cities have a significant ability to influence the adoption of clean transportation systems by using the regulatory powers they do have, by showing leadership in their own fleet operations, and by using the bully pulpit of the mayor. Cities can favor active transportation over the car; they can make low-emission vehicles the preferred choice through smart regulatory and other interventions, and they can use business-licensing requirements creatively to ensure that low-emission vehicles become the norm. Some of these steps require political courage, but there are multiple examples of policies that have initially been bitterly contested becoming popular because they work – and because people want to live in less congested cities with clean air.
London
Cities need to address transportation systems for reasons well beyond climate change, but their efforts can also significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In thinking about transportation, a city needs to consider the decisions that its citizens make every day about how to get to their destinations. To build a low-emission city, emission-free forms of getting around should be the default choice, and for that to happen, those choices must be easy, convenient, affordable, and enjoyable.
For nearly a century, city planning in many places has focused on the car. As a result, making zero-emission transportation the standard requires a rethinking of how infrastructure is designed, how the rules for the use of the road are established, and of how (and by whom) public space is used. Not surprisingly, this rethinking of transportation policies in major cities has been at times controversial. But some cities, concerned about pollution, congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions, have taken bold steps – steps that were controversial at the time of proposal but which have most often proved highly popular once implemented, when residents see the benefits of easier, cleaner transportation choices.
London, England, is a historic city, nearly two thousand years old. It has an excellent public transit network, but by the year 2000 the combination of its narrow streets, dense historical core, and high rates of personal-vehicle use had resulted in major congestion. In addition to traffic problems, this congestion greatly affected air quality, and – of course – caused greenhouse gas emissions.
It has been estimated that thousands of London residents die every year due to air pollution, and that air pollution, including that from vehicular exhaust, is associated with increased rates of asthma, reduced lung capacity, mental health problems, dementia, strokes, and other major health conditions. Children are particularly vulnerable, and in London, hundreds of schools are situated in areas that exceed legal and safe air-pollution levels. This has a considerable social and economic toll on the city.
To address these mobility and public health issues, London undertook years of painstaking research and sought reports from working groups. The research conclusively showed that a charge on vehicles would dramatically reduce the traffic entering the central city – thereby reducing emissions and improving air quality. This idea – known as “congestion charging” – was introduced in 2003 by Mayor Ken Livingstone. At the time, according to the BBC, it was the “biggest congestion charge scheme ever undertaken by a capital city.”
A congestion charge is a daily fee charged to vehicles that drive into or park in congestion-zones during regular business hours. In London, cameras are used to capture license plate numbers throughout the congestion zone, and charges are paid online or through an automatic-payment system. The current daily charge is ₤11.50 (about US$15) and the zone covers central London – the area within the London inner ring road. Buses, standard taxis, service vehicles, and motorcycles are exempt from congestion charging, and discounts are available for residents and persons with disabilities. Ultra-low-emissions vehicles also qualify for discounts.
Studies have shown that congestion charging reduced the number of cars entering the zone during business hours. In the first year of congestion charging, there were a third fewer cars and minicabs on the streets during business hours. It was estimated that half of the diverted trips by car were switched to trips by bus, which reinforced one of the critical actions taken by Mayor Livingstone at inception. He dramatically increased bus service at exactly the same time as the start of the congestion charge – thereby facilitating transportation choices for those affected. Taxis also saw a significant increase in ridership. And travel delays caused by congestion fell by 30 per cent.
Initially, the congestion-charge proposal was extremely unpopular. Mayor Livingstone withstood significant public challenge, including from his Conservative opponent in the 2004 election, who said that the charge wouldn’t work and vowed to cancel both it and any fines for nonpayment. That stance was supported by the Conservative Party and by some sectors of the business community, who claimed that the charges would hurt business. Tony Blair, the Labour prime minister, urged London members of the party to vote against the congestion charge. A legal challenge was brought against it by Westminster City Council on the basis that it breached the human rights of residents, would drive pollution to areas outside the zone, and cut people off from essential services. The case was unsuccessful.
Strategic planning – as London did by increasing alternative transportation options when it introduced the congestion charge – is critical when facilitating a major shift in behaviors and perspectives. Source: cheekylorns/iStockphoto.com.
The critics were wrong. The charge worked. Traffic congestion plummeted. Business was more successful, not less. And Ken Livingstone was reelected.
“Retail sales in central London are far outperforming those in the rest of the country. The West End theater trade is strong. Tourism is growing strongly. Congestion charging has achieved exactly what it was designed to do – not cut the number of journeys but shift them from private cars to public transport. It has cut congestion, and cut environmental damage, with the economy continuing to boom.”
– Mayor Ken Livingstone (London), 2007
The Conservatives, unfortunately from the perspective of climate action, maintained their position, and Boris Johnson, who defeated Ken Livingstone in 2008, repealed an extension of the zone and prevented rate increases. As a result, congestion has slowly increased in London, eventually reaching pre-2003 levels. Johnson did support, however, the implementation of a low-emission zone (LEZ) to help combat air pollution from transportation sources. The zone covers most of Greater London and operates all day, every day. LEZ charges apply to older diesel heavy vehicles: transport trucks, coaches, utility vehicles, and the like. Designed to incentivize better route planning, upgrades, and fleet renewal, the charges are significant: ₤300 (approximately US$385) per day in 2020 on top of any other congestion and emission-zone charges. Applicable vehicles can sometimes be fitted with filters or adapted to use less-polluting fuel to avoid paying the charges, but the emissions standards were designed from inception to become stricter over time. Some businesses have reorganized their fleets to reduce deliveries and to use only new vehicles within London, and in some cases, businesses have chosen to retire their older vehicles early to avoid the charges. The result: fewer emissions from the dirtiest vehicles within Greater London.
Under the leadership of the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, London has continued its progress. To reach zero emissions, reduce pollution, and alleviate gridlock the mayor’s office has developed a comprehensive transportation strategy with clear goals. By 2050, all vehicles in the city will be zero emission, including personal vehicles, taxis, and buses. By 2041, 80 per cent of trips within the city will be walking, biking, or public transit. Zero-emission zones, places where no fossil fuel powered cars are allowed, will expand from the central city to the entirety of London by 2050.
In 2019, building on the work of Mayor Livingstone and on the LEZ supported by his predecessor, Mayor Kahn introduced the ultra-low-emission zone (ULEZ) – a measure explicitly designed to address air quality and climate change. The ULEZ currently shares a boundary with the congestion zone but applies at all times. The daily charge of ₤12.50 (about US$16) applies to all emitting vehicles that enter central London and is in addition to the congestion charges. Ultra-low-emission vehicles are exempt: fully electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, some regular hybrids, hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles. Discounts are also available for taxis, residents, and persons with disabilities. These charges replace a series of pollution charges and discounts for greener vehicles that started as early as 2013. In 2021, the ULEZ is due to expand its coverage area to include much of Greater London.
I was in London the day of the launch. It was fascinating to see the media reporting on the concept. They had the predictable interviews with drivers who did not want to pay – but for the other side of the story, the BBC went to an elementary school in central London. It interviewed teachers, parents, and students. The air quality was so bad that the school had to supply asthma inhalers to students – the broadcast showed film of the rack used to store those inhalers. This angle to the story was not by accident – Mayor Kahn’s team had done months of painstaking research and work into health and air-quality issues. The ULEZ was created as a solution to the real problem of air quality impacting the health of children and other residents, and they had ensured that the facts about the health impacts of poor air quality were well known. In this context, the launch of the zone was highly successful and the controversy limited, particularly compared to that surrounding Mayor Livingstone’s original congestion charge.
London’s buses are not exempt from LEZ and ULEZ charges. Although operated privately, buses are owned publicly. The city currently has a fleet of more than 200 electric buses in use in the ULEZ zone, along with more than 3,500 hybrid buses, 10 hydrogen-fuel-cell buses and new diesels that generate fewer emissions. Even the iconic double-decker buses are being replaced with hybrid, electric, or hydrogen versions. Starting in 2020, all new single-deck buses will be zero emissions, and by 2037 the entire bus fleet will be zero emission.
These measures are working. In 2017, London emitted enough pollution in the first five days of the year to breach its annual air pollution limits. In 2018, it took less than a month. But in 2019, when the ULEZ was fully operational, it took seven months. There is more to do, but the dramatic improvement in air quality shows the effectiveness of using regulatory authority and fees to encourage clean transportation choices. From the perspective of climate change, when air pollution from transportation is reduced, carbon pollution also drops because the pollution comes from the same source – the burning of fossil fuels.
Although controversial and politicized at commencement, the congestion charge and the subsequent ULEZ have proven to be popular and enduring. The congestion charge – aided by significant expansion of public transport – actually lowered congestion, and the ULEZ is cleaning the heavily polluted air. London’s example shows clearly that as people experience the benefits of climate action firsthand and have an opportunity to adapt, they are supportive – and, in fact, they may be just as unwilling to lose the mobility and health benefits of these actions. Madrid is an interesting example of a political backlash against both congestion fees and their removal.
Madrid
Madrid, Spain – another centuries-old European capital with serious air quality and congestion issues – introduced an LEZ in its city center in 2018. High-emission vehicles were banned from the affected areas, with fines of up to €90 (about US$97) for noncompliance. Exemptions were provided for those who lived in the city center, but eventually all vehicles driving in the zone were to be required to be low-emission. In the meantime, the city was focusing on providing better public transportation and enabling walking and cycling.
The LEZ worked. Just six months after its implementation, air-pollution levels in the affected areas were at their lowest levels since 2010. Carbon-dioxide emissions were also significantly lower.
As in London, the LEZ in Madrid was controversial at inception. Certain drivers and car owners protested bitterly. Their complaints led to a movement to abolish the fees, and in the 2019 election José Luis Martínez-Almeida was elected as mayor on a platform that included abolishing the LEZ. On taking office he honored his promise. But what happened next was unexpected, certainly to the new mayor.
On June 29, 2019, during a scorching heat wave and just two days before the LEZ was to be dismantled, thousands of Madrid residents took to the streets. They used their voice to demand that the mayor reinstate the ban on polluting vehicles in the city center. “I want to breathe free” and “Defending the population from pollution” were some of the messages from the protesters. In addition, a petition calling for Madrid to keep its LEZ was signed by more than 220,000 people, a significant number out of the city’s population of about six million. The message was clear: residents are willing to fight to preserve cleaner air and pedestrian-friendly streets.
As promised, and led by the new mayor, Madrid city center was opened to all vehicles on July 1, 2019. Air pollution in affected areas soared according to environmental groups. But the story did not end there. The residents also fought in the courts, and on July 5, 2019, a court ordered that the LEZ be reinstated. The judge specifically ruled that “the health of Madrid” trumps “the right to travel by car.”
The fight in Madrid is revealing of the challenge of bold climate action. It is easy for politicians (typically but not always right wing) to fight actions that benefit health and our planet when the action threatens people’s convenience. But people know that our health and climate-sustaining systems must take priority, and they will support strong and effective climate action. From a transportation perspective, we individually have choices in how we get around but we also have to take collective action to ensure that our air is fit to breathe and that our greenhouse gas emissions are sustainable.
Making Active Transportation a Priority
Paris
In addition to ensuring that the vehicles entering a city center are cleaner, we can create more and better spaces for active transportation – that powered by people. Our feet, our bikes, and even our skateboards and scooters are better choices for our health and better for our climate. But in many cities the infrastructure has been built for the car – not for people. Still, there are examples of effective efforts to change this. Paris, for example, has been making a concerted effort to make active transportation an easy choice for its citizens.
Like London, Paris has a clear plan and has outlined the needed steps to become carbon neutral by 2050. The studies supporting its plan showed that in 2014, transportation accounted for 13 per cent of the city’s emissions. Paris has recently ordered eight hundred electric buses and is making great progress in electrifying the parts of its public transportation system that use diesel and other fossil fuels. And again like London, Paris has LEZs, and restrictions are getting ever tighter: by 2030 only zero-emission vehicles will be allowed to drive in Paris. Unique to Paris, however, is its focus on walking and cycling – and the steps it is taking under the leadership of Mayor Anne Hidalgo to make active transportation easier and safer.
Every city has people who choose to walk and to bike. Making these activities easy and simple for most people allows them to choose walking and cycling as their routine way of going from place to place, but it requires rethinking how public spaces are used and challenging the dominance of the personal vehicle in transportation plans. This applies to any city, but the historic dominance of automobile-centered planning means that change takes political leadership and strong citizen participation. Paris has a unique combination of both.
Like most major cities, more than half of Paris’s public space is currently devoted to the automobile, yet only 13 per cent of trips within the city take place in personal vehicles. These vehicles contribute disproportionally to air-quality issues in Paris.
In response to ideas raised by residents through Mayor Hidalgo’s participatory budget and democracy initiatives, Paris has undertaken a redesign of its transportation infrastructure to put the needs of pedestrians and cyclists first. Introduced in 2017, the Pedestrian Paris Strategy (Paris Piéton) aims to create a network of connected pedestrian routes and to give over more of the road network to those on foot. The plan recognizes that pedestrians need to feel safe when walking and are more likely to choose to walk when they feel safe – particularly when their routes connect them to their destinations with attractive surroundings.
To increase both safety and the feeling of safety, intersections have been redesigned to give pedestrians more space, to improve visibility, to allow diagonal crossings, and to give pedestrians priority. Sidewalks, intersections, and other walking routes were reexamined with the goal of making them safer for those with mobility, visual, and other impairments. Measures were proposed to reduce traffic intensity. Seven major squares in Paris have been earmarked for redesign to reclaim space for human-powered mobility. And there are plans to replace the roads around the Eiffel Tower with gardens and pedestrian paths.
In some cases, separated spaces were developed for cyclists and for pedestrians to address safety concerns. Paris has also made a significant effort to improve the experience of walking – adding more benches and planters, creating meeting spaces at strategic locations, and adding more comfortable waiting spaces for transit stops. Artistic features and painted murals are being added to Paris’s streets.
The city is also adding green spaces. Studies have shown that humans, especially children, benefit from interaction with nature. Even in urban settings, exposure to nature can lower stress, reduce anxiety, and ease depression. Neighborhoods in Paris have received support in transforming select roadways into green streets. Residents of these neighborhoods install and maintain planters, trees, and even replace strips of pavement with grass. In some areas, these streets are being shut down to vehicular traffic. It’s a way to bring nature to a neighborhood while giving residents a reason to meet others in their community and discover how their own neighborhood can fill many of their basic needs.
Pockets of the city are regularly closed to vehicles. These areas are called Paris Respire (Paris Breathes) Zones. Depending on the area, it may be once a week, once a month, and throughout the year or only in the summer. Even the famous Champs Élysées is closed to traffic the first Sunday of each month. The goal is to have a Paris Respire Zone in every city area. Emergency vehicles and residents can still use the streets, but on the whole the streets belong to people on those special days, not to vehicles.
These days have been so successful that Paris has an annual citywide car-free day. City streets are shut down to all but essential motorized traffic. The people are invited to party, play games and sports, hold parades and races, go for bike rides, and enjoy being outdoors with fellow Parisians. This car-free day is enormously popular. And while residents learn how to live without a car for a day, they also enjoy a day with measurably lower air pollution and lower overall noise levels. Car-free days can demonstrate to people that it is possible to not use a car on other days, as well.
In addition, Paris has been investing in cycling infrastructure. A network of bike paths are being built with the goal of making all of Paris accessible by bike by the end of this year (2020), with more than seven hundred kilometers (435 miles) already built. At the launch of the plan, Mayor Hidalgo stated, “Our goal is to turn Paris into a global cycling capital.”
To ensure all parts of the city are accessible and that cycling is safe, convenient, and pleasurable, Paris has developed a bike express network. Protected two-way continuous bike lanes were constructed on a north-south and east-west axis as well as on the banks of the Seine. Bike trails were added to two of the city’s ring roads and two of its main boulevards.
A secondary network of bike lanes and trails extend from these main arteries. The speed limit for cars in all but the main roads of the city has been dropped to thirty kilometers (about eighteen miles) per hour to protect the safety of cyclists and encourage cycling. In fact, it has been suggested in the media that trip speeds in the city center are effectively faster by bike than by car.
Also included in the infrastructure plans are bike-parking spaces: ten thousand new spots are planned for strategic points around the city.
Building a pedestrian- and cycling-friendly city has not been without controversy, however. Pedestrianization of the Seine Quayside has been particularly contested. The roads running along the river Seine have acted as an urban highway through the city. The road on the Left Bank of the Seine Quayside was closed to vehicular traffic in 2013 and has since been popular with pedestrians and cyclists: in just three years, six million people took advantage of the space. But the Right Bank, pedestrianized in 2016, has been beset by lawsuits and controversy.
Paris City Council voted to close a 3.3 kilometer (two mile) stretch of the road on the Right Bank of the Seine Quayside in 2016. The area was to be redeveloped as gardens, cafés, and active-transportation paths. Extensive public consultations and stakeholder-engagement exercises were conducted, but not everyone felt heard. A commission of inquiry was launched due to complaints from those in the suburbs who were not part of the consultation. They felt that closure of the road would impact their commute times and that they should have been part of the process. The police force were concerned that the closure would increase response times. Motorists’ and drivers’ organizations claimed that the closure caused congestion and increased pollution levels: a common refrain for policies that challenge the transportation supremacy of the automobile.
In 2016, automobile advocates sued Paris in an effort to keep the Right Bank open to traffic. The city lost the case as the court found procedural problems with the impact assessments related to vehicle traffic, road pollution, and noise levels; however, the city won on appeal. Today, the roadway remains closed to traffic, and plans are in progess to replace the pavement along the road with grass. The pedestrianization was a difficult political fight, but one that appears to have ended successfully with Mayor Hidalgo’s overwhelming reelection in June 2020.
A bank of Vélib’ bicycles, ready for Parisians and tourists outside of station rue Lepic, Montmartre. Paris’s successful bikeshare program sparked worldwide interest and similar initiatives. Source: Paul Gueu/iStockphoto.com.
All these steps have been significant and effective – in Paris, carbon emissions from transport are down markedly, as are emissions from fine particulate matter. London emissions are reduced as well, and air quality is much improved. These are important steps toward a low-carbon city – and as shown by London, addressing the type of vehicles driving in the city matters greatly as well.
Making Electric Vehicles Possible: EV Charging
By 2050, London will allow only zero-emission vehicles within the city. With the intended expansion and tightening of the ULEZ, it is becoming increasingly expensive and ultimately will become impossible to drive internal combustion engines in London. By 2030, the only new vehicles registered to drive in London will be zero emission. To make this possible, an expansive electric vehicle (EV) charging network is required, as a lack of charging infrastructure is a significant barrier to EV adoption in cities.
London first started developing a public charging network in 2011. By the end of 2020, the city will have installed 300 rapid chargers and 3,500 regular chargers. By 2025, the numbers are expected to be approximately 3,000 rapid and nearly 50,000 regular chargers. The city is well on its way to achieving its goals.
Installing chargers sounds straightforward, but technical challenges make large-scale implementation complex. For example, at the moment, a single standardized charging port does not exist.
There are also concerns about how EV charging will affect the electricity grid. As transportation becomes electrified, the demand for electricity increases. Upgrades to the power grid will be necessary, capacity may need to be increased, and engineers will need to find ways to be smarter about how EVs use electricity – for example, can the batteries be used to store energy to support the grid, particularly to support intermittent sources of electricity such as wind?
In the future, utilities may be able to allow an EV battery to recharge when overall power demand is low and take power from the EV battery when demand spikes. A car that’s plugged in while the owner is asleep or at the office can therefore help to manage the gaps the utility sees between supply and demand of electricity. A good idea, but one that requires considerable planning for an electricity- distribution network that can utilize distributed energy storage.
Those are not the only challenges. Cities are densely developed, and finding convenient places to add charging infrastructure can be challenging. Car owners must have confidence that there’ll be enough chargers in accessible locations before they’ll be willing to choose an electric vehicle (a problem referred to as “range anxiety”).
This complexity means that adding EV charging stations to a city involves input from many different institutions. For the City of London, developing a network of EV-charging infrastructure involves 35 different planning authorities and consultations with more than 140 organizations and more than 350 stakeholders. Getting this number of organizations to work together to find solutions is a huge challenge – but at its best, it’s a great source of ideas, innovations, and opportunities for collaboration.
Transportation for London (“TfL,” the municipal organization responsible for transportation) oversees the city’s efforts to install chargers. To build the system, TfL has been collaborating with the private sector and supporting shared business charging infrastructure.
The plans are working. In 2018, plug-in vehicles represented 2.8 per cent of new car registrations in London. The city has installed 178 rapid chargers, 72 of these devoted exclusively to taxis. The private sector has added another 24. By the summer of 2019, 2,250 slow to fast chargers were operational. The city’s target of 300 rapid chargers and 3,500 slow to fast chargers by the end of 2020 seems entirely achievable. A call center has also been established to provide around-the-clock customer support.
London shows us what is possible. Its congestion charge and ULEZ have manifestly improved transportation, air quality, and people’s lives. These successes have made it possible for the city to be aggressive on policies regarding electric vehicles – people want to live in a city with clean air, where it is easier and safer to get around. These programs build a political constituency for action, demonstrating a way forward for other cities that do not know where to start.
This kind of city leadership matters. A significant transition to clean, non-polluting vehicles needs to happen rapidly if we are to keep the world on a 1.5 degree path. Another important strategy for cities is to address the owners of huge vehicle fleets – starting with themselves.
City Fleets Go Zero Emission
Cities themselves own significant fleets. From cars to heavy construction machinery, garbage trucks to police cars, parks vehicles to fire trucks, cities are significant owners and operators of vehicles. Centralized ownership of fleets is an advantage when considering environmental impact – vehicles can be “right sized.” (For instance, does a parks supervisor need to drive a pickup truck or will a hybrid do? Does a parking-ticket officer need a minivan or can they walk, cycle, and use transit?) It is easier to install and operate EV charging stations for fleets, particularly for those with set, regular operating hours. And, as will be discussed later, cities have regulatory authority or influence over some other fleets – and where they do not, they have a bully pulpit to demand change.
Significant strides are being made to dramatically reduce reliance on gasoline or diesel-powered fleets. It is now possible to order electric garbage and recycling trucks, cars, police interceptors, pickup trucks, and most other vehicles in a city fleet. It is also possible to buy hybrid vehicles for almost everything else, and these purchases are cost effective because these vehicles are heavily used, and therefore provide savings on fuel and maintenance over their gasoline- and diesel-powered counterparts. New York City, a leader in the greening of fleets, has gone from 211 electric vehicles in 2014 to more than 2,200 today, with plans to have 4,000 by 2025. When added to hybrids and right sizing, the city estimates that it has saved nine thousand metric tons of CO2 and an average of US$550 per year per vehicle in maintenance costs.
Private Fleets
Cities have control over their own fleets but also have significant power over private-sector fleets – sometimes by contract (for example, when garbage and recycling are collected by a private-sector hauler), and sometimes by regulation. Cities regulate taxis. They have the authority to regulate electronically dispatched vehicles for hire (such as Lyft vehicles), and they often license other fleets or have some regulatory authority over them, such as business licenses.
City Action Works: Taxis
Progress does not need to be slow. In Oslo, Norway, zero-emission vehicle adoption (primarily through electric vehicles) is significant.
Norway has created powerful incentives for EV adoption by taxing the purchase of gasoline and diesel cars at high rates and also subsidizing EV purchase. Oslo, its capital, has a congestion charge and bus lanes, both of which give preference to EVs. These measures together have resulted in interesting examples of EV adoption, including in business fleets. For example, Oslo is partnering with the local electricity utility and an American developer of wireless EV charging infrastructure to develop a wireless system for charging taxis. The chargers will be placed at taxi stands, allowing the cars to be recharged while waiting for their next fare. Through this technology, the city is planning an all zero-emission taxi fleet by 2023.
Oslo is not alone. Shenzhen, China, the world leader in EVs, has a fleet of taxis that is almost entirely electric – reducing emissions by nearly one million tons of CO2 per year. There are nearly twenty-two thousand taxis in Shenzhen, and the city has been innovative in moving to EVs. Thousands of chargers have been installed to support these taxis, and these chargers may also be used by personal EVs. Some of the chargers are embedded in streetlight poles: a clever solution as these are often located near street parking and already have access to the electrical grid. This modification also facilitates the more widespread and easy use of EVs by the general public, as access to charging helps to address range anxiety.
London, England, has adopted policies supporting the electrification of taxis. Many current taxis are hybrid, and the iconic London black cab is now available as an all-electric model, launched to satisfy the city’s regulatory requirements. (The company that manufactures these cabs recently announced a hiring increase at its UK plant to meet the increased demand for electric taxis in London and in other cities that are following London’s lead.)
Since 2018, new taxi licenses are given only to vehicles that are zero-emission capable, including full electric, hydrogen, and some hybrid vehicles. The age limit for existing taxis will be reduced from fifteen to twelve years by 2022, and a fund is available to help convert internal combustion engine taxis to cleaner liquid petroleum gas. To further support electric taxis, the city’s installation of rapid charging points particularly considers locations for taxi use. These standards are being applied in a modified form to electronically dispatched vehicles for hire and other personal-hire vehicles as well.
Private Delivery Fleets – Untapped Potential
The transformation of city-owned fleets can lead to a market transformation, through demonstrating that EVs (and other zero-emission vehicles) can be used successfully in a large busy fleet. Cities assist by providing a market for vehicle manufacturers, and city policies can encourage the move to clean transportation.
But in some places, the private sector has been very slow to adapt; for example, the fleets operated by post offices and couriers. These fleets typically (but not exclusively) use popular models of vans. The fleets are significant – Federal Express estimates its fleet at eighty-five thousand vehicles, the US post office nearly two hundred thousand, and Canada Post seven thousand. While some efforts have been made to acquire more fuel-efficient vehicles, very few of these fleet owners have made a public commitment to electrify or otherwise create zero-emission fleets. Yet many of the popular models of vans they use have electric versions that have been available for years; today there are models by Mercedes, Nissan, Renault, and other major manufacturers that average more than 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) per day and are well suited for delivery fleets with central distribution hubs where they can be charged. There are smaller manufacturers as well, and DHL has a partnership with Ford to manufacture the ubiquitous Ford Transit in an electric version. Amazon has announced that it will buy one hundred thousand EVs by 2030 (through its ownership of a vehicle-manufacturer startup named Rivian). Some companies are exploring fuel cells and other zero- or low-emission technologies. This is all good news – but a sense of urgency is lacking. We’re in a climate emergency, yet most of these companies and government agencies have done little to transform their fleets at the scale and pace required over the past decade.
These fleets are largely regulated nationally or at the subnational (state or province) level, where despite the rhetoric of some elected officials, there seems to be no action commensurate with the scale of the climate challenge. Concerns include cost of acquisition and need to build infrastructure. However, EVs are vastly less expensive to run and maintain, making the cost of ownership reasonable. Without strong policy direction from governments, progress will be slow – except in cities such as London, where the added cost of running polluting vehicles in the ULEZ is already motivating a transition to clean fleets. It is expected that more and more city governments will find ways to encourage this transition, given the huge number of delivery vehicles operating on their streets every day.
The Final Word
Greenhouse gas emissions in major cities include significant emissions from cars and trucks, particularly in spread-out cities built to favor private cars over public transport. A significant portion of these emissions – as much as 25 per cent – can be addressed through policies that make cities easier places to walk, ride, and use an EV (or a zero-emission alternative). Policies in place today show that cities can both regulate transport and provide access to infrastructure (such as charging points) that can help rapidly accelerate the use of electric cars, taxis, and other fleets. This transformation can make it easier for people to opt for low-pollution choices and drive market change (and increase employment). Because these changes make cities cleaner, healthier, and better places to live, they have proved to be popular and enduring, even though initially controversial.