A SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM REQUIRES MORE THAN ELECTRIFYING VEHICLES

The shift to electric mobility is a core element of strategies to mitigate global warming and reduce local pollution. Simply replacing ICEVs with EVs, however, does not address other persistent transportation-related problems such as congestion, safety, and access. Residents in cities globally suffer from traffic congestion. According to INRIX, US drivers lost an average of 97 hours because of congestion at a cost of US$1,348 per driver, some US$87 billion in total (INRIX Research and Cookson 2018). Congestion is often worse in LMICs, where road construction and traffic management have not kept pace with motorization. Drivers in Bogotá, Colombia, lost 254 hours and those in Moscow lost 210 hours in traffic during 2018. Additional losses and environmental impacts come from fragmentation and inefficiencies among transportation operators in many markets that cause delays and poor use of capacity.

Road safety is another costly transportation externality. Traffic accidents cause more than 1.4 million deaths and 50 million serious injuries every year, 93 percent of which are in developing countries (World Health Organization 2018). The World Bank estimates that these deaths and injuries reduce the gross domestic product of LMICs by between 1 percent and 5 percent.4 Ensuring equitable access to transportation options is another critical goal of sustainable and inclusive transportation strategies. An estimated 1 billion people live more than 2 kilometers from an all-weather road, and one in six women avoids searching for a job because she fears harassment during transit. Switching to EVs will not address any of these issues.

More fundamental shifts in how transportation is organized must therefore accompany the electrification of vehicles. Avoid-Shift-Improve is a simple sustainability framework used in the transportation sector. The first priority is to make the overall transportation system more efficient, primarily by avoiding unnecessary or unnecessarily long trips. In urban areas, land use planning that creates mixed-use neighborhoods reduces the trip to work, shopping, or entertainment, which also promotes local economic development. Moving more activities such as work or education online, as was done involuntarily during the COVID-19 pandemic, also reduces commuting and therefore congestion.

The second priority is to increase trip efficiency by encouraging modal shifts: from energyintensive modes such as personal cars to nonmotorized transportation or mass transit. Residents will dispense with personal cars only if convenient and affordable alternatives are readily available. Wide and safe sidewalks and bike lanes encourage nonmotorized travel for shorter distances. Efficient public transit gives commuters incentives to use buses and light rail. Transit-oriented development is now used by progressive cities around the world to increase the use of public transportation. It involves planning and design of urban areas that create compact, mixed-use, pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly developments around public transit hubs (Salat and Ollivier 2017). Singapore plans to have 80 percent of the population living within a 10-minute walk from a train station by 2030, which would allow 75 percent of peak-hour trips to be made by public transportation (Singapore Land Transport Authority 2013).

The third priority is to improve the efficiency of vehicles across transportation modes. ICEV engines have become ever more fuel-efficient, but more people buy bigger cars, offsetting these gains. Because electrification will take time, climate goals cannot be achieved without major additional efficiency measures for the ICEV fleet. In the International Energy Agency’s net zero emission scenario, such measures contribute more emission benefits by 2030 than electrification of vehicles (see figure 1.2). So far, the trend toward larger, heavier vehicles is also evident in the EV market, with many EVs replacing relatively fuel-efficient ICEVs rather than heavily polluting clunkers. One study for the United States found that EVs replaced ICEVs whose fuel economy was 4.2 miles per gallon better than average, and 12 percent of EV buyers replaced hybrid vehicles (Xing, Leard, and Li 2021).

According to United Nations estimates, behavioral changes triggered by avoid and shift strategies—traveling less and switching to more sustainable modes—can reduce about 15 percent of the CO2 emissions required to meet the Paris Agreement climate target of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C (UNFCCC 2020). Although the behavioral contribution to CO2 emission reductions seems minor, by 2030 it can more than halve the share of EVs in the global vehicle fleet that would be required to get to net zero emissions—from 45 percent to 20 percent (IEA 2021a). Further, these behavioral changes will deliver many additional social and environmental benefits, including lower congestion, greater road safety, more equitable access to transportation, and decreased land consumption.

Transportation sustainability has many aspects, and decarbonizing the transportation sector in a way that supports global climate goals will require a multidimensional approach that involves all aspects of the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework. An efficient and well-planned transition to electric mobility will play an important role. Industrialized countries have the financial and technical resources to promote a quick shift, but it will be much more difficult for lower-income countries to develop an effective and affordable electric mobility strategy. When to embark on this transition and how to design and implement an EV strategy are discussed in the chapters that follow.

Notes

1. Data in this section are from the World Road Statistics 2020 database, International Road Federation, Geneva, Switzerland, https://worldroadstatistics.org/

2. World Bank staff estimate based on World Road Statistics data.