BBC Future Planet - Francesca Perry
Cities around the world are seeing
dwindling numbers of fossil-fuel powered cars on their streets, and many
are planning to keep it that way after lockdowns ease.
As
global lockdowns keep most people at home, congestion-riddled,
pollution-choked streets around the world have transformed into empty,
eerily silent spaces. The most conspicuous absentee is the car, as
personal vehicles remain parked in driveways and side streets.
This lack of cars has contributed to a sudden drop in emissions of
carbon dioxide, pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate
matter. Its effect on oil prices has been not so much a drop as an
implosion.
Some cities have temporarily turned emptier streets into walking and
cycling-only zones to enable socially distanced exercise.
Meanwhile,
Milan – the epicentre of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak –
announced it would transform
35km (21.7 miles) of its streets for cycling post-lockdown. Could this
pandemic, a global emergency, actually catalyse an ongoing movement
towards cleaner air – and might Milan’s scheme form a blueprint for
cities that have repeatedly tried to tackle the domination of the car?
The pandemic’s
impact on the environment has been staggering. Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are heading for a
record 5.5-5.7% annual drop. From mid-January to mid-February, China’s carbon emissions
fell by around 25%.
In Delhi, a city with often the worst air quality in the world, pollution caused by PM2.5s
reduced by roughly 75% as traffic congestion
dropped by 59%. A 70% reduction in toxic nitrogen oxides
was reported in Paris, while satellite imagery
showed nitrogen dioxide levels in Milan fell by about 40%. In the UK, road travel has decreased
by as much as 73% and in London, toxic emissions at major roads and junctions
fell by almost 50%.
Although car use has decreased, so has public transport use. Services
have been reduced, the need for travel has declined, and a public fear
of using it has grown, now that proximity to strangers has become
synonymous with infection risk.
Some Chinese cities, including Wuhan –
where the coronavirus outbreak began – shut down public transport
entirely to reduce risk of contagion.
The urban mobility app Moovit
reported
that public transport ridership has dropped on average by 78%
worldwide, with Milan and Rome, for example, seeing a decrease of 89%.
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Images from the European Space Agency show NO2 emissions in Paris in March 2020 were down significantly compared with the same period in 2019. (Credit: Reuters)
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Where
car, bus and train journeys have been dwindling, bicycles have been
picking up the slack. As a form of isolated transport that doubles as
exercise – that is much easier given the wealth of empty streets –
cycling has become more appealing in a number of cities.
In March, use
of bike-share systems increased
by roughly 150% in Beijing and
67% in New York, where cycling on main thoroughfares increased by 52%. Meanwhile, cycling traffic
increased by 151% on trails in Philadelphia and in April Dundee saw cycling traffic increase
by 94%.
Cities that seize this moment to make it easier for people to walk, bike and take public transport will prosper after this pandemic and not simply recover from it
Janette Sadik-Khan
To
accommodate streets now busier with bikes, as well as facilitate social
distancing, some places have installed temporary cycle lanes or closed
streets to cars. Pop-up bike lanes have appeared in cities including
Berlin, Budapest, Mexico City, New York, Dublin and Bogotá.
Governments
from
New Zealand to
Scotland have made funding available for temporary cycle lanes and walkways amid the pandemic. In Brussels, the entire city core
will become a priority zone
for cyclists and pedestrians from early May for the forseeable future.
Meanwhile, temporary street closures to cars have taken place in
Brighton, Bogotá, Cologne, Vancouver and Sydney as well as multiple US
cities including Boston, Denver and Oakland. In England,
restrictions have been lifted to enable and encourage councils to more quickly close streets to cars.
But these, of course, are temporary measures. What will happen as lockdowns are lifted?
There are widespread concerns that as travel resumes, people will
avoid public transport amid continuing fears of the virus and instead
turn to private cars, clogging roads and causing pollution, perhaps even
more so than before. Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai,
are already seeing this happen.
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The easing of lockdowns has not meant a flood of people returning to public transport in China, where many stations remain quiet. (Credit: Getty Images)
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It
is with this in mind that Milan announced its plan to make changes in
the wake of the pandemic that support alternatives to driving. “In order
to prevent an excessive use of private cars, with the consequent
increase in air pollution, the city of Milan will encourage the use of
bicycles,”
its announcement states.
As travel restrictions are lifted, the government will begin
construction on the cycle lanes – all of which take space away from cars
– alongside implementing reduced speed limits and widened pavements.
This is far from a ban on cars, but it does suggest a shift towards
more sustainable forms of transport in the long term, catalysed by the
pandemic. So could other cities follow suit?
Janette Sadik-Khan, a former transportation commissioner for New York
City and principal with Bloomberg Associates, is working with Milan and
other cities on their “transport recovery” programmes. “The pandemic
challenges us, but it also offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change
course and repair the damage from a century of car-focused streets,” she
says. “Cities that seize this moment to reallocate space on their
streets to make it easier for people to walk, bike and take public
transport will prosper after this pandemic and not simply recover from
it.”
In the Colombian city of Bogotá, mayor Claudia López closed 117km
(72.7 miles) of streets to cars in order to make cycling and walking
easier during the coronavirus lockdown. Though these streets are
typically closed every Sunday – in
the long-running, pro-cycling initiative Ciclovía
– Lopez has extended the closure throughout weekdays too, as well as
added 80km (49.7 miles) of cycle lanes to the city’s existing network of
550km (341.7 miles).
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The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, has extended closures of streets to cars and opened additional cycle routes during lockdown. (Credit: Getty Images)
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“Covid-19
safety now piles up with all the other advantages to cycling in Bogotá,
and we are exploring other measures, in addition to new cycle lanes,
that should increase not only infrastructure but also access to
bicycles and other safe and clean transportation alternatives,” explains
Bogotá’s environment secretary Carolina Urrutia Vásquez. “Hopefully
these will remain primary transportation choices, as well as ‘last
mile’ alternatives, past the current crisis.”
We have the opportunity to see what would our cities look like when we are designing for people, not cars
Samu Balogh
In Paris, where mayor Anne Hidalgo’s Plan Vélo
had already promised to make every street cycle-friendly by 2024 and remove 72% of Paris’s on-street car parking spaces, a post-lockdown
plan was announced
that includes creating temporary cycle lanes following metro line
routes, for those hesitant to return to public transport. The planned
construction of permanent cycle highways has also been accelerated in
response to the crisis.
At the national level, Pierre Serne – president of cycling
association Club des Villes et Territoires Cyclables – was asked by
French minister Élisabeth Borne to coordinate a sustainable
post-lockdown mobility plan. “We anticipate a lot of people will chose
cycling instead of public transportation,” says Serne. “It could
potentially mean millions of new bikes in streets and therefore we
have to be able to provide adequate facilities. If we failed, the only
alternative might be millions more cars and that would be a nightmare in
terms of pollution and congestion. I am willing (and rather confident)
to see these temporary measures become permanent because, pandemic or
not, cycling is one of the cleanest and healthiest ways to move,
especially in urban areas.”
In Budapest, new temporary cycle lanes are due to last until
September – but maybe further. “We are constantly monitoring the use of
the temporary bike lanes, and we are hoping that a good many of them
could remain in place,” says Samu Balogh, the mayor’s chief of staff.
“The pandemic has changed transport globally… We have the opportunity to
see what would our cities look like when we are designing for people,
not cars.” Such thinking builds upon existing efforts from the city to
eliminate road deaths, which includes decreasing car numbers and
lowering speed limits.
“In the long term we are working towards implementing traffic-calming
measures and new bike lanes so we can create a more inviting
environment for cycling and walking,” says Balogh.
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Rare sights like blue skies in Delhi have shown that "dramatic change is indeed possible," says the World Institute's Claudia Adriazola-Steil. (Credit: Getty Images)
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In the UK, London mayor Sadiq Khan
has made clear
that the capital’s cleaner air should not be temporary and that the
ongoing challenge is to “eradicate air pollution permanently”. Xavier
Brice, chief executive of the walking and cycling charity Sustrans,
believes the country’s recovery “can be a catalyst for positive,
long-lasting change in the way we live and move around” and hopes that
temporary cycling and walking measures – which Sustrans lobbied for –
“inform future road space planning, after lockdown is lifted”.
The future will be very different, and I’m convinced it will be much more local
Shannon Lawrence
It
seems this may take effect in Manchester. “When restrictions are
lifted, rather than returning to business as usual, we need to take the
opportunity to see how we can support more people to choose to walk or
cycle, instead of travel by car,” says city councillor Angeliki Stogia,
who leads Manchester’s environment, planning and transport strategy.
There are also developments at the national level, as the government’s
recently published
De-Carbonising Transport report outlines a strategy for reducing car use in order
to tackle climate change, in line with the country’s commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It has also
committed to ban the sale of new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars in the UK from 2035 to help achieve this.
Which brings up an important point: it is petrol and diesel cars, rather than
electric vehicles
(EVs) that contribute to carbon emissions and toxic air in cities.
Electric vehicles have steadily increased in popularity over the last
decade: BloombergNEF reported in 2019 that
more than two million EVs were sold in 2018,
up from just a few thousand in 2010. It predicts sales will rise to 56
million by 2040.
But EVs are not problem-free: they are expensive,
require sufficient and widespread charging facilities, and still
contribute to congestion on city streets. In a low-carbon future,
however, electric cars – especially those that are shared – could form
one part of a multi-modal transport infrastructure.
So in these cities’ efforts to ensure healthier air, outright bans on
cars don’t feature as a core approach. But, if their plans are
successful, combustion-engine cars may well become a rarer sight.
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The approach in many cities has not been to ban the conventional combustion-engine car, but to make healthier and more sustainable options more convenient. (Credit: Getty Images)
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It’s
hard to say what will happen next, especially as we don’t know when
“next” will be. But the sudden drop in pollution and improvement of air
quality around the world has been a wake-up call, not least in light of
studies showing that pollution makes Covid-19 more deadly and
could even contribute to the spread of the virus.
The coronavirus pandemic struck at a time of climate emergency, an
emergency caused in part by the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions
released into the atmosphere – much of which comes from cars. This
pandemic may have inadvertently triggered an environmental reprieve, but
it has not stopped climate change.
On 22 April, Earth Day
catalysed calls for the current crisis to be a turning point in our
relationship with nature. “We must act decisively to protect our planet
from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate
disruption," says UN Secretary General António Guterres. "We need to
turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the
future.” Just like viruses, he noted, greenhouse gases do not respect
national boundaries either.
Tackling air pollution and climate degradation is high on the list for the new
Global Mayors Covid-19 Recovery Task Force,
coordinated by C40 Cities, which sees mayors worldwide collaborate to
achieve a climate-friendly economic recovery from the pandemic.
“The
future will be very different, and I’m convinced it will be much more
local – more cycle deliveries, more working from home and more school
runs made by bike or walking,” says Shannon Lawrence, C40’s director of
global initiatives. “All of which means fewer cars on the road, which in
turn means improved air quality, better public health and a major
contribution to tackling the climate crisis.”
This Covid-19 crisis is allowing us a glimpse of what a changed world looks like with far fewer cars and much cleaner air
Claudia Adriazola-Steil
Implementing
restrictions on cars has different practical and political limitations
around the world, however. In places like Milan, Bogotá and Paris, there
have long been bottom-up and top-down efforts towards more sustainable
mobility – from
car-free days to successful bike-share systems. Change is perhaps easier in these places, although not simple.
“Space is of course political, and so supporting and
ensuring sufficient space for non-motorised transport and the spectrum
of users who have livelihoods dependent on space(s) is crucial,” says
Rashiq Fataar, chief executive of Cape Town-based NGO Our Future Cities,
which works with cities across the African continent. “Transport
options which are safe, clean, less crowded and more efficient should be
the benchmark, but transport planning must begin to see itself as part
of a system providing economic and social ‘access’ in our cities.”
Indeed, a decline in car use cannot be expected unless people have
efficient, accessible and affordable alternative options. But as Fataar
points out, mobility is linked to every aspect of life in cities, and a
change in car use may only be possible if issues around housing, public
services and work culture are addressed too. Such huge volumes of
commuting, for instance, may not be necessary if working from home is
made easier, services are more equally distributed geographically or
people can afford to live within walking distance of their work.
Policy and behaviour change may take a long time, but there exists a
building momentum across the world that recognises car-free streets as a
critical way of tackling the urgent climate crisis, as well as a
strategy to improve health and wellbeing. This pandemic has resulted in
countless forced changes to our lifestyles, economies and environments.
Seeing what’s possible can lead to change – the question is how to
ensure the change resulting from this global emergency improves health
for people and planet.
We are a long way off from the demise of the car, but as the world
seeks to recover from the collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic,
perhaps the willingness to tackle another deadly emergency – outdoor air
pollution causes
4.2 million deaths per year – will get stronger.
“This Covid-19 crisis is allowing us a glimpse of what a changed
world looks like with far fewer cars and much cleaner air,” says Claudia
Adriazola-Steil, deputy director of the Urban Mobility Program at the
World Resources Institute. “Dramatic change is indeed possible.”
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