Climate change and transportation: challenges and opportunities
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Transportation in the United States is responsible for a disproportionate amount of \nglobal greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. To address the \nissue, strategies that seek to mitigate transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions and adapt transportation systems to the threats of a more inhospitable climate should be \ndeveloped through the transportation planning process. The transportation plans and \nrelated documentation of 60 metropolitan planning organizations, 13 domestic cities, and \n27 large international cities were reviewed to ascertain if climate change considerations \nare being incorporated into transportation planning. The review of transportation plans \nrevealed that climate change considerations are often not incorporated into the planning \nprocess, especially in regard to adapting transportation systems to the effects of climate \nchange due to the inherent uncertainties in climate data and risk analysis. On the other \nhand, greenhouse gas mitigation is more frequently included in the planning process, \nwhen compared to climate change adaptation, because the required data collection \ntechniques and analysis tools are better developed and already in place within many \nplanning organizations. This research has shown that there is much room for improvement in terms of including climate change into transportation planning through a variety of recommendations presented in the body of this thesis. Many of the identified mitigation and adaptation recommendations could be worked into existing transportation planning requirements, processes, and strategies at the metropolitan and local level. However, due to the influence by federal and state governments on the planning process, \ncompletely addressing climate change through transportation systems will require these \nhigh levels of government to redefine transportation regulations and planning \nrequirements in addition to partnering with metropolitan planning organizations and local \ngovernments to develop more reliable climate data and increase its availability.
Source: ROSA P
Author: Nicholas Schmidt
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Georgia Institute of Technology
OpenAlex ID: W2187588569