![]() ![]() In places where public transit development is common, there are experts who can work efficiently and avoid going over-budget. Often, they run over budget simply due to a lack of institutional knowledge, says Jonathan English, transport director of the chamber of commerce and advocacy group Toronto Region Board of Trade, who has researched public transport development in the US, Canada and in Europe. Projects that push ahead despite bureaucratic and legal hurdles are often later derailed thanks to cost overruns and minimal support from federal funding. Local and regional governments have relatively more power in land-use decisions than elsewhere, says Elkind, making big projects subject to the politics of city councils and county boards. Major infrastructure projects like passenger rail are slow in the US for a number of reasons. While more than 20 countries now have high-speed trains zooming people to their destinations at more than 200 miles per hour, the US has yet to complete a single true high-speed rail line. Travelling by plane is estimated to result in seven times the carbon emissions of high-speed rail. The US was responsible for about a quarter of global passenger aviation emissions in 2019. The US also lags behind China and Northern European countries in electric car sales – electric vehicles made up only 2% of all new cars sold in 2020 (75% of cars sold in Norway the same year were electric).Īnd when they need to travel longer distances, Americans tend to fly. The vast majority of their cars burn petrol, each emitting an average of 4.6 tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to the total yearly emissions of someone living in France. In 2019, more than three-quarters of American workers drove alone to work. "It's certainly creating a lot of environmental challenges, but also social and political challenges, given the isolation that people are experiencing in suburbs." "Now we're just locked into it," says Elkind. Pedestrian, biking and public transit have taken the backseat. ![]() ![]() Many cities in the US are built on a 1950s blueprint of sprawling subdivisions reliant on cars. Since the mid-20th Century, federal funding for transport has largely gone to car infrastructure such as highways, says Ethan Elkind, who leads the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. If the US is going to meet its climate commitments to reduce emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050, it's going to have to do something about this. Since 2017, transport has been the single largest source of greenhouses gases in the US – higher than electricity or industry emissions – and these emissions are dominated by cars. The car-centric infrastructure and culture of the US is also the crux of its greenhouse gas emissions. It's easy to see why having a car in the US is synonymous with mobility and freedom to travel – without one, you're beholden to poor transit services that might include one-hour waits for buses that may or may not arrive, minimal or non-existent bike lanes and limited rail service, among other challenges. It's an extreme example, but not a huge contrast with hundreds of other American cities where travelling without a private vehicle is time-consuming and difficult. Its 400,000 residents have only their own cars and a city-sponsored rideshare service to get around in. Arlington, Texas has the strange honour of being the largest city in the United States with no public transport service – not a single bus line or rail track. ![]()
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