Transforming our modes of transportation is critical if we are to combat the deadly air pollution and avert climatic calamity.
Road mobility is a major cause of air pollution, which contributes to over 400,000 early deaths in Europe alone annually. Cars today pose a silent but significant threat to the health of city dwellers.
Air pollution causes chronic ailments such as respiratory problems, cancer, asthma, dementia, cardiovascular disease, and harm to the brain, lungs, and other organs. Obviously, this illness affects nearly every organ in the body.
Urban Transport
Given that human error accounts for 90% of road deaths, vehicle automation has the potential to reduce its frequency substantially. Even if AV incidents have occurred and will undoubtedly occur in the future, the predicted safety gains will be enormous.
However, autonomous vehicles may aggravate or lessen congestion and emissions depending on how they are governed. Eventually, the result will be determined by the policy framework, particularly whether driverless cars are electric and shared.
Conversely, the explosive growth of app-based mobility services like shared mobility has the potential to cut car ownership and emissions significantly. This emphasizes the significance of hastening the transition of ride-sharing systems to zero-emission modes in order to mitigate their negative impacts.
Buses
As cities across Europe undertake steps to attain ambitious sustainability objectives, the transportation sector is under pressure to decarbonize as quickly as feasible.
Sustainable zero-emission mass transit options, such as e-buses, are critical to the transportation system and are widely accepted by multiple authorities. While this transition is not without hurdles, research has revealed a number of clear indicators of effective e-bus networks.
Clean Cities
We have far less than a decade to prevent average global temperature rise, after which even a half-degree increase increases the danger of floods, famine, and high temperatures.
The transportation industry has been a major contributor to the escalating climate issue, accounting for roughly one-quarter of all pollution in Europe. We cannot continue to have polluting vehicles and trucks on our roads if we are concerned about combating climate change.
Several cities are making a move towards greener policies. However, the rate that they are going seems to be not enough to make significant changes.