Suchergebnisse

Passenger transport has significant externalities, including carbon emissions and air pollution. Public health research has identified additional social gains from active travel, due to the health benefits of physical exercise. Per mile, these benefits greatly exceed the external costs from car use. We introduce active travel into an optimal fuel taxation model and characterize analytically the second‐best optimal fuel tax. We find that accounting for active travel benefits increases the optimal fuel tax by 44% in the USA and 38% in the UK. Fuel taxes should be implemented jointly with other policies aimed at increasing the uptake of active travel.

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable form of personal transport. Yet its net effects on mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and underresearched. Here we collected travel activity data in seven European cities and derived life cycle CO2 emissions across modes and purposes. Daily mobility-related life cycle CO2 emissions were 3.2 kgCO(2) per person, with car travel contributing 70% and cycling 1%. Cyclists had 84% lower life cycle CO2 emissions than non-cyclists. Life cycle CO2 emissions decreased by 14% per additional cycling trip and decreased by 62% for each avoided car trip. An average person who `shifted travel modes' from car to bike decreased life cycle CO2 emissions by 3.2 kgCO(2)/day. Promoting active travel should be a cornerstone of strategies to meet net zero carbon targets, particularly in urban areas, while also improving public health and quality of urban life. ; This work was supported by the European project Physical Activity through Sustainable Transportation Approaches (PASTA). PASTA (http://www.pastaproject.eu/) was a four-year project funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (EU FP7) under European Commission - Grant Agreement No. 602624. CB is also supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the Centre for Research on Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS, Grant agreement number EP/R035288/1). ED is also supported by a postdoctoral scholarship from FWO - Research Foundation Flanders. ML held a joint PASTA/VITO PhD scholarship. SS is supported by the Martin Filko Scholarship from the Ministry of Education in Slovakia. ; Brand, C (corresponding author), Univ Oxford, Transport Studies Unit, South Parks Rd, Oxford OX, christian.brand@ouce.ox.ac.uk