Abstract:
Promoting transit has been a national strategic policy as part of the effort to relieve traffic congestion in China. However, such promotion also offers a great potential benefit in carbon dioxide (CO2) abatement, to which insufficient attention has been paid. For the effects of transit priority policies on CO2 emissions to be understood, an evaluation and a sensitivity analysis were conducted. The relationship between public transit and CO2 emissions with respect to four contributing factors is discussed. The effectiveness of transit priority policies implemented in recent years was analyzed, and its correlation to CO2 emissions was identified. The magnitude of transit CO2 emissions from 2000 to 2008 was estimated. On the basis of varied assumptions, six scenarios were designed to analyze the sensitivity and the range of possible CO2 abatement potentials of different policies. Finally, some recommendations for future policies from the perspective of reducing CO2 are presented.
