Skip to main content

New ITF Projections for urban mobility in China, India, Latin America

Transport in the urban centres of emerging economies is becoming a major battleground for combating climate change. Projections presented by ITF Economist Aimée Aguilar Jaber during the COP 20 climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru indicate that big cities in China, India and Latin America with over 500,000 inhabitants will more than double their share of world passenger transport emissions by 2050 to 20 per cent, from nine per cent in 2010, if current urban transport policies remain unchanged. 38 pe
December 19, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Transport in the urban centres of emerging economies is becoming a major battleground for combating climate change.

Projections presented by ITF Economist Aimée Aguilar Jaber during the COP 20 climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru indicate that big cities in China, India and Latin America with over 500,000 inhabitants will more than double their share of world passenger transport emissions by 2050 to 20 per cent, from nine per cent in 2010, if current urban transport policies remain unchanged. 38 per cent of the total growth in world surface transport passenger emissions to 2050 will come from big cities in these three regions in such a business-as-usual scenario.

These new projections, released by ITF for the event, highlight a critical choice for policy-makers: whether to pursue urbanisation based on public transport or on private transport with cars and two wheelers. Sustained policies that promote either private or public urban transport lead to very different mobility futures, as projections for modal shares in 2050 show (see charts, left).

These alternative scenarios have profound impacts for the contribution of urban transport to global emissions that are detailed in the 2015 ITF Transport Outlook, of which chapter 4 containing the projections for China, India and Latin America was pre-released for the COP20 conference.

The projections were presented by ITF Economist Aimée Aguilar Jaber during the Side Event "Mitigation Potential of Urban Sustainable Low-Carbon Transport: Priorities for INDCs, NAMAs and SDGs" on 4 December, jointly organised by the 5466 Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and ITF.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Cost benefit goes under the microscope
    August 21, 2017
    Conventional cost benefit analysis (CBA) of plans for urban smart mobility initiatives needs serious rethinking, according to a recently-completed European study. The three-year Evidence Project (the Project) emerged in response to concerns about the availability and quality of documented research – including CBA – required to prove that investment in sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs) can be economically beneficial. Covering 22 sectors ranging from electric vehicles to shared spaces, the Project clai
  • Xerox’s mobility app offers Mobility as a Service
    June 1, 2016
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at a new mobility app in Los Angeles and Denver that brings Mobility as a Service one step closer. Commuting today doesn’t have to require a single modal route. You can take Uber to the nearest light-rail station or a bus to the commuter line. Then on the other end of your trip, you can book a bikeshare the rest of the way to your office. For many who live in major metropolitan areas around the US this is a distinct reality as new ways to move from Point A to Point B continue to
  • News from ITS around the world
    March 13, 2012
    Join us, there's a BIG job to be done, writes Michael Lilly, Vice President of ITS Alaska
  • Houston Police: increase in crashes when red-light safety cameras removed
    November 7, 2014
    A new report shows a 30 per cent increase in fatal traffic collisions and a 117 per cent increase in total traffic crashes at 51 intersections in Houston where red-light safety cameras once stood. New figures from the Houston Police Department released by the National Coalition for Safer Roads (NCSR) show total traffic collisions more than doubled from 4,147 in 2006-2010 when cameras were in use to 8,984 in 2010-2014, when cameras were not in operation. The city ended its red-light safety camera program