Indicators: reliable signposts on the road to sustainable transportation. The partnership for sustainable urban transport in Asia

Panel: Panel 3. Sustainable transport and land use

Authors:
Lee Schipper, EMBARQ
Wei-Shiuen Ng, EMBARQ
Cornelius Huizenga, Clean Air Initiative

Abstract

Is transportation getting more sustainable? If not, would we know what to do? This paper defines sustainable transport and describes indicators of sustainable transport, which measure the environment impacts of transport (including green-house gas emissions), the financial health of the system, safety, and access. Indicators are particularly important for developing countries because congestion, safety, air pollution, and the economic health of transport providers are usually poor. Illustrative examples are given from cites in the Partnership for Sustainable Urban Transport in Asia, or PSUTA . Future work will reveal the full quantitative picture of these three cities.

As tools, indicators summarize trends and relationships among quantities that describe the most important activities, outputs, and side effects - both positive and negative - of transportation activity. Indicators permit diagnosis, evaluation of costs, benefits, and time frame of cures, prognosis based on the cures implemented, evaluation of progress against a base line, rebalancing of the system if goals are not being achieved, and marketing of results. Indicators also draw stakeholders into an objective discussion of each of these steps. Indicators of governance map their roles in solving problems.

Indicators of sustainable passenger transport are being developed and deployed with authorities in Pune (India), Hanoi (Viet Nam), and Xi'an (China). The paper describes how authorities assess needs to determine what indicators are necessary (at what precision), mapping the gap of information required to develop indicators, bridging the gap of information and funding data and analysis, and crossing the bridge to commit to a quantitative approach to policymaking and evaluation. The paper concludes with recommendations on both the most important indicators required for the cities, and the most important policy steps required to improve transportation, focusing on emissions (including green-house gases) and congestion, or rather, clean air and access.