Public Transportation as a Means to Sustainability

“An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.” 

Picture credits: Unsplash.com

INTRODUCTION

How often do you, the reader of this article, rely on or think about your local public transportation? Maybe, you take the bus to school, or to the mall once a few months, or, likely, to you it is just an invisible and distant part of city life.

However, it is way more significant on a large scale: improving public transportation globally might just be one of the main keys to reducing carbon emissions and slowing down the impact of climate change, to give space to climate restoration. 

Firstly, public transportation emits way less carbon into the atmosphere than private cars do in the same distance traveled. Just imagine: thirty people traveling to work on a single bus that emits twice the carbon of a private car, versus thirty people driving in thirty separate cars.

Secondly, public transportation can also be seen as an intersectional solution: all over the world, cities with better public transportation experience less traffic congestion and a more equal mobility distribution. Additionally, it is a great resource for underprivileged communities who can better access jobs, healthcare, and other everyday necessities without paying the high cost of owning a personal vehicle. 

Finally, public transportation, especially that which does not use fossil fuel, not only decreases urban carbon emissions, but also paves the way for a better, more connected, and safer society. Public transit can promote connection within a community of its users, creating a platform for more strongly grounded further climate activism.

The goal of this article is to teach you about the widespread adoption of public transportation as an essential step towards climate restoration, as well as provide possible ways you can contribute to this cause and work towards creating Petro’s “advanced city” in your community.

PUBLIC BEATS PRIVATE

To understand just how much of a valuable climate change solution public transit can be, it is important to know the environmental benefits of public transit over private vehicles. 

Public transportation paired with bicycling or walking emits up to a third less carbon into the atmosphere than traveling on private vehicles. This may not seem like a whole lot, but it can really be a gamechanger when considered on a global scale. Even when compared with electric vehicles, public transportation is better on a large scale because the electricity that is used to charge those vehicles is often powered by fossil fuel. 

Also, public transit can promote connection within a community of its users, creating a platform for more strongly grounded further climate activism. It is fair to say that public transportation is not only a hopeful solution to the problem of climate change, but also a great way to foster connection between people of different socioeconomic backgrounds and bring people together for the same cause of climate restoration activism.

No matter how you look at it, simply put, public transit is always better than cars.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AND CLIMATE RESTORATION

With all of this being said, it is clear that public transportation is a good way to combat high carbon emissions. But how is it one of the best ways we can work toward global restoration of our climate to pre-industrial levels?

Transportation as a sector contributes a fifth of the entire planet’s carbon emissions, so reducing it by implementing more public transportation worldwide can turn the tide for climate activism. Importantly, it is a key to completing the hopeful goals set by the Paris Climate Agreement, such as limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Of course, climate restoration is not simply about reaching “net zero” carbon emissions, but restoring the environment to pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And while public transportation does not provide a direct solution for that, it gives the opportunity to redirect current climate advocacy efforts away from useless offsets made by companies to cover their emissions.

TAKING ACTION

Now, let’s talk action. Of course, sitting here and learning about this is important, but what really gets the job done is taking the lesson and applying it in real life. So, let’s see how anyone reading this article can support the goal of climate restoration through public transit advocacy and beyond.

Of course, the easiest way to contribute towards the goal of expanding public transportation is to start using it instead of driving a private vehicle. It can be difficult depending on how robust it already is in your place of residence, but acts as simple as taking the bus to school can help to eventually build up momentum around public transportation. 

People need to show private investors as well as governments that public transportation is needed, because the most important issue in public transportation today is funding. A more complex and effective way to contribute is advocating for countries to include public transportation goals in their national climate plans: out of the 177 countries that have “Nationally Determined Contributions” compliant with the Paris Agreement, only 68 include a mention of public transit policy.

To summarize, the actions any reader of this article can take are: use public transit as an alternative to cars, spread awareness about it as a mode of transportation, and advocate for more private and government-backed funding for public transit. An even simpler way to contribute to the goal of climate restoration, not connected to public transit, is to sign the pledge on the website of the Foundation for Climate Restoration.

The goals that must be met in order for public transit to save the environment are ambitious. For example, to satisfy the limit of global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to research, in the world’s 50 highest-emitting cities, rapid transit (public transportation designed to move large amounts of people fast in urban areas) needs to double from 2020 to 2030. 

With all that being said, if we come together and step up, we can achieve these goals in time for our climate to be able to recover. Yes, public transportation to some can seem very complex and intimidating, but the world will heal only when people of every background contribute their share towards fixing our species’ footprint on our planet. 

History has proved that, if people come together in times of crisis and urgency, we can solve even the most difficult problems.