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

  • UITP, ITF welcome UN plan to advance sustainable transport
    November 1, 2016
    Both the UITP and the International Transport Forum (ITF) have welcomed the United Nations High-Level Advisory Group report which recommends that greener, more efficient and sustainable transport can save trillions and help achieve the sustainable development goals. According to the report, Mobilizing Sustainable Transport for Development, greater investment in greener, more sustainable transport systems is essential for propelling the economic and social development that is vital to achieving the Sustai
  • Priority boosts ridership and cuts congestion
    May 4, 2016
    Transit priority is proving a win-win in Europe and Australia. David Crawford reports. Technology that integrates with the Australian-originated Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) is driving bus signal priority and performance analysis initiatives on both sides of the world; in its homeland, with a major deployment in 2015, and in the capital of the Republic of Ireland.
  • EU invests in truck parking project in Italy
    December 2, 2014
    The EU's TEN-T Programme is to provide around US$500,000 to support preparatory and design studies for a network of safe and secure parking areas for truck drivers in Campania, Calabria and Sicily. The drivers will be able to pre-book parking and get reliable online information with the help of an integrated information service. The studies will be carried out in two phases. A preparatory study will identify the existing parking areas with the capacity for easy upgrade and potential new sites, while the
  • BMW begins ActiveE project in China
    June 25, 2013
    BMW Group recently brought its ActiveE program to China to prepare for the future commercialisation of electric vehicles in the country. Twenty Beijing residents selected to participate in the project received the keys to the all-electric car they will be driving over the next year. Fifteen users in the southern city of Shenzhen will also get cars at the end of June to give the company an idea of how the model operates in the city's hot, humid climate, balancing the results from the test in the cooler, dri