
Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2024. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This article is the third in a series that assesses the costs and benefits of governmental expenditures on municipal transit infrastructure and vehicles in Canada. It will assess the validity of claims that much increased public funding of transit will cause large reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and ensure the attainment of Canada’s climate policy goals.
The Canadian Urban Transit Association Vision 2040, published in 2009 set out proposed targets for per-capita ridership growth by 2040. These targets included a 50% increase in per-capita trips in large and medium cities and 100% increase in smaller municipalities. Combined with population growth, CUTA projected this would increase trips by 86% by 2040 from those in 2007.
In the United States, enormous effort has gone into attempting to quantify the GHG emissions generated by transit and other modes of passenger transportation. The Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) quantifies both direct and indirect transit GHG emissions for each sample project. These direct and indirect emissions are compared to “displaced” emissions. These are the avoided emissions from reductions in automobile use and the results of improvements in “land use efficiency”. The latter concept is based upon the view that the increased availability of public transit leads to more compact land use patterns and results (i.e. shorter trips, increased walking and bike trips, and lower rates of car ownership).
The American Public Transit Association quantified emissions avoided in the United States through displaced car trips at 16 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, while producing 12 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, for a net change (i.e. reduction in emissions) of 4 million tonnes. Including the somewhat controversial estimates of transit’s effects on land use, APTA estimated that there were also 30 megatonnes of emission savings, almost eight times the benefit from vehicle use displacement alone . APTA’s figures thus produce an annual US emissions decrease in 2007 of 34 megatonnes. A reduction of 34 megatonnes would have been 0.56 per cent of the U.S total and 4 megatonnes would have been 0.065 per cent of the U.S total.
Unfortunately, Transport Canada in its annual reports on transportation in Canada does not provide information comparable to either the FTA or APTA.
John Lawson, formerly the Chief Economist for Transport Canada in 2012 assessed the implications of shifting passengers between modes, assuming that the operating conditions, including load factors, remained the same. A doubling (i.e. 100% increase) of transit ridership would transfer 16.25 billion passenger-km from light duty vehicles to transit and reduce emissions by 2.53 megatonnes (Mt) per year. A doubling of urban transit ridership far exceeds the “stretch” goals suggested by transit agencies in the past and exceeds even the 86% goal set out in the CUTA Vision for 2040.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the emissions from all transportation sources in 2022 were 196 Mt, and emissions from all sources were 708 Mt.[1] So, doubling transit ridership at great cost would reduce Canada’s transportation-related emissions by 1.29% and total emissions by 0.36%.
The National Climate Change Table Process in 1999 failed to produce an estimate of the costs of abatement through transit subsidies. It found only that the cost was likely to exceed $1,000 per tonne, significantly more than all other options available.
Completely eliminating the use of passenger cars and light trucks, even if possible, would move Canada just over a quarter of the way to the Canadian government’s goal of reducing emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030. It should by now be clear that vast spending on transit can at most play only a very small role in getting to “Net Zero” by 2050. The spending certainly will have no measurable effect on global emissions, temperature or weather.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/greenhouse-gas-emissions/sources-sinks-executive-summary-2019.html#toc5
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