The sustainability concerns determining the development course of urban transport

Abstract

The Budapest Climate Strategy adopted in April 2018 includes the greenhouse gas emission inventory of the Hungarian capital city. According to the document, in 2015 the annual level of CO₂ₑ emission was approximately 9 million tonnes in Budapest (i.e. 5.3 tonnes CO₂ₑ/capita), of which the share of transport amounted to 20%, with nearly 1.8 million tonnes. At the same time, the impact of the means of community transportation represented only 12.8% of the total emission of transport (around 230,000 tonnes while the CO₂ₑ emission attributable to private and commercial road transport was nearly seven times as much.
A recently concluded project of the Australian Institute for Sensible Transport (www.sensibletransport.org.au) studied the modes of transport functioning in the city of Melbourne from two aspects: CO2 emission (gram) for passenger-km and space intensity (m2/passenger). The data are shown in Figure 1. The study encouraged the local government to set the goal of decreasing the 2005 level of pollutant emissions by 26-28% by 2030, which evidently requires the support and development of less harmful modes of transport. The CO2 emission is illustrated by black balloons. It is an unexpected result that the specific rate of environmental pollution per one passenger kilometre of electric cars powered from the city power grid is only slightly lower than that of an average passenger car of traditional drive, taking into consideration the CO2 generated in the course of the production of electric power. A less surprising fact is that the specific figures of means of community transport are more favourable in terms of pollutant emission compared to the modes of traditional motorized individual passenger transport.