Evaluating climate change adaptation policies for urban transportation in India

Abstract

Globally, the response to climate change has been through mitigation to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. But the inevitable climate change effects due to constant feeding of emissions into atmosphere leads to severe and extreme precipitation causing flooding. The combined impact of flooding, rapid urbanization and vehicular growth has become a looming threat to the transportation system which is affecting the developing economies disproportionately. There is an urgent need for the transport infrastructure to adapt to these climate change effects to reduce human as well as economic losses and adaptation is seen as the necessary tool to address this. In this paper, a methodological approach to formulate the adaptation strategies from urban transport to urban flooding in developing economies is presented. Further three adaptation policy bundles are formulated specifically to enhance the resilience of transportation system against urban flooding thereby strengthening the adaptive capacity of the system. These strategies are evaluated for the years 2030 and 2050 along with base year for various travel parameters to estimate the impact of flooding. This study finds that the implementation of bundle 1 is an effective adaptation measure when compared to bundle 2 and 3. The comparative analysis with BAU flooding scenario shows that VKT of bundle 1 is reduced by 4% and 3%, speeds increased by 21% and 45%, vehicle hours travelled by 9% and 8% for the years 2030 and 2050 respectively. Trips that are cancelled due to flooding can be nullified using appropriate strategies is also shown in this paper.