EMBARQ Researchers Highlight Transport’s Impacts on Environment, Public Health, and Quality of Life at 87th Annual TRB Meeting

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 | Washington, DC, United States

EMBARQ, the WRI Center for Sustainable Transport, had a strong presence at the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) 87th Annual Meeting, presenting research that offers policymakers critical insights on the negative impacts of modern transport systems, as well as concrete recommendations to help reduce these impacts.

This year’s event, which took place from January 13-17, 2008, attracted approximately 10,000 transportation professionals from around the world to Washington, D.C.  EMBARQ researchers made important contributions to the week’s events by presenting eight research papers and presiding over several TRB workshops.

EMBARQ helped kick off the week’s activities by co-sponsoring (with the World Bank) a Sunday morning session entitled "Transportation in Developing Urban Areas: Addressing Air Quality and Climate Change Issues".  The session included presentations by both EMBARQ researchers and other transport experts on the health effects of transport-related air pollution in developing country cities, as well as the transport sector’s contribution to global warming.  (See a complete session program here.)

Later in the week, EMBARQ researchers presented a series of papers detailing the various ties between transport, the environment, and public health. (See below for EMBARQ’s participation in all of the week’s activities.)

Dr. Lee Schipper, EMBARQ Director of Research, presented a report on recent US and EU fuel economy regulations and their effects on total CO2 emissions.  In the paper, entitled “Automobile Fuel Economy and CO2 Emissions in Industrialized Countries: Troubling Trends through 2005/6,” Dr. Schipper notes that the automotive industry has held fuel efficiency almost constant while increasing vehicles' weight and power. "Total emissions from this part of the transport sector are dependent on how many people drive, what they drive, and how they drive," said Schipper. "Fuel efficiency standards only address what they drive, and they don’t even do that very well."  (Session Details)

Read the Full Paper

Video from Dr. Schipper's Poster Session Presentation on Fuel Economy and CO2 Emissions

EMBARQ’s New Business Development Director and Senior Transport Engineer, Dario Hidalgo, presented two papers examining transportation infrastructure around the world.  The first paper explores the case of Chile’s Transantiago system - the most ambitious transport modernization plan in a large developing country city implemented in the last decade.  In the paper, Hidalgo and co-author Pierre Graftieaux note the positives and negatives of this controversial project and offer recommendations for system improvements.  “Transantiago teaches us that the total time commuters walk, wait, travel on board and transfer should be at least the same than before system implementation, and the occupation standards should be less than 4-5 pax per sq meter in the peak,” said study author Dario Hidalgo, from EMBARQ. “We need to design transit systems considering cost and environmental efficiency, but still need to put user service delivery at the forefront”. (Session Details)

Hidalgo and Graftieaux also presented a paper reviewing the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines in 11 metropolitan areas in Latin America and Asia (the cities examined are Sao Paulo, Santiago, Curitiba, Quito, Bogotá, León, México, Pereira, Guayaquil, Jakarta and Beijing). The experiences in these cities show BRT's potential for a wide range of applications, at a fraction of the cost of rail alternatives. Nevertheless, the authors identify several planning, implementation and operational problems.  These problems resulted from institutional and financial constraints, rather than the technologies adopted.  Lessons learned from these applications are useful for the development of similar projects. (Session Details)