As coronavirus blockades loosen around the world, city leaders are struggling to tackle a new problem: the possibility of stagnation worse than before the pandemic. From Shenzhen to Milan and Austin, officials are trying to convince people to return to buses and subways and to demand space on the roads for cyclists and pedestrians.
In many cities, officials fear that people will avoid public transportation for fear of contracting the virus and decide to drive instead, which will increase vehicle traffic more than ever. Avoiding a wave of cars on city streets is important not only to avoid delays in congestion, accidents, and increased air pollution, which kills approximately four million people worldwide each year. It is impossible to stop global warming unless cities dramatically reduce pollution from cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
“Cities have an opportunity to make changes and keep the air cleaner than they saw during the blockades,” said Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, who has tracked global emissions of carbon dioxide during the pandemic. “But if they don’t pay attention to this problem, emissions could go back to where they were before or even increase.”
Transportation accounts for a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions, and emissions from road vehicles, in particular, have grown considerably in the past 50 years.
There are already warning signs: More than 30 major cities that came out of the blockade, including Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Oslo and Geneva, registered more congestion on their roads in mid-June compared to the same period last year, according to TomTom data. , A navigation company. Other preliminary evidence suggests that driving is increasing faster than using public transportation as people move out of confinement and move again.
Many city leaders are trying to fix that, in some cases drawing on the lessons learned from previous pandemics in Asia. Here is a look at some of what they are trying.
Recover the streets for walkers and cyclists.
The pandemic has influenced city officials to do things that had been politically controversial in the past, such as taking space from cars.
San Francisco, where passenger numbers decreased by 80 percent between early March and late May, has opened 24 miles of carless corridors for pedestrians and bicyclists to get around; Another 10 miles are in the works, and most of these corridors span multiple city blocks.
Bogotá, Colombia, which in the past had carved bicycle lanes on sidewalks, has now reserved 52 miles of road space for cyclists. It was intended as a temporary measure, said Nicolás Estupiñán, the city’s transportation secretary, but public support has emboldened the city to make it permanent.
Estupiñán said Bogotá also staggered working hours for different industries: a 10 am start for construction, 12 pm for retail, etc., so that the roads would be less congested.
Milan has also made its network of pandemic era bicycle lanes permanent. “Covid’s physical distance requirements give us great influence,” said Maria Vittoria Beria, spokeswoman for the Milan mayor’s office. “What did we have in the drawers that could help social distancing? Bicycle lines.”
They are being used, at least for now, when the weather is mild. City data suggests that bicycle sharing and electric scooter use increased sharply in May, while traffic congestion remained well below 2019 levels.
According to Felix Creutzig, a transportation specialist at the Mercator Research Institute at Global Commons and Felix Creutzig, transportation specialist at the Mercator Research Institute at Global Commons and in other cities emerging from blockades, such as Berlin, London and Paris, the data Collected at bicycle counters indicated that cycling had become more popular than it was before the pandemic. Climate change, a group of experts in Berlin.
But as cities reclaim streets from cars, they also struggle with deep inequalities in access to transportation. New York City, for example, has historically built fewer bike lanes and shared bike springs in neighborhoods that house large numbers of essential workers, most of whom are people of color.
Get gasoline consumers out of the way
Some cities have been trying to discourage drivers from bringing older, more polluting vehicles into the city center, mainly by imposing charges to enter congested areas during rush hour.
In May, when its closure was loosened, London began re-establishing low-emission areas in the city, which impose tariffs on older cars, trucks and vans that do not meet air pollution standards. The city also recently increased its congestion charge by 30 percent, requiring many drivers to pay $ 18 a day to enter the busiest parts of central London.
In Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, where bus passengers have plummeted 60 percent during the pandemic, city officials are concerned about a death spiral for the system. They have proposed both a congestion tax on private vehicles entering the city and a tax per mile on transportation services like Uber, with the aim of investing that money in the bus network to reduce fares.
Still, officials acknowledge that attacking private cars can be difficult in a struggling economy. New York City had planned to become the first American city to impose a congestion tax in late 2020, but the fate of the measure is now unclear. Last week, when New York allowed the reopening of more nonessential businesses, the Department of Transportation warned on a sign on the Manhattan Bridge: “Anticipate traffic.”
Get people back on public transportation
While the number of passengers on buses and subways has accumulated during the pandemic, public transportation remains critical for essential workers and those without a car. A recent study in New York City found that subway ridership decreased less during confinement in neighborhoods with more low-income, non-white residents.
To make public transport safe, many cities have focused on the use of masks and constant cleaning. In Seoul, masks are required on public transportation, and because talking can spread the virus, loud conversations inside subway cars can lead to complaints to authorities. Taipei has started temperature controls at train stations.
Some are using more high-tech solutions to keep passengers at a safe distance: the Beijing transit agency now allows essential workers to reserve bus seats using a mobile app and provides personalized routes to transport these workers, allowing space between seats. Denmark’s railway company DSB introduced an app that shows which cars have the most amount of space available, which helped increase the number of passengers in transit as locks decreased.
Many transit officials remain optimistic that bus and train passengers will eventually return, citing early evidence that few people have contracted the virus in large, crowded transit systems like Tokyo’s, as long as people wear masks and remain alone. But in the meantime, many cities face serious financial crises as incomes fall and budgets tighten.
“Without help, some systems may not survive, and others may reduce their service or raise rates,” said Paul Skoutelas, president of the American Association of Public Transportation, which has called on Congress to provide additional help to help transit agencies. transit to resist the weather. storm.
Even in the midst of the crisis, some transit agencies are completely reinventing public transportation.
In Austin, Texas, the city has expanded its public bus system that can be booked through a mobile app by passengers who are not well served by existing bus lines. Officials are also developing plans to better integrate existing bus and rail lines with the city’s shared bike system by offering unified tickets and applications. They also plan to eventually replace the city’s 1,000 shared bikes with electric versions that make traveling in the sweltering Texas heat easier.
“The pandemic has really pushed us to think more creatively,” said Randy Clarke, president of Capital Metro, Austin’s public transportation system. “How do we make a system that is more equitable and sustainable, and that offers people more options than cars?”
