How do transport policies contribute to a low carbon city? An integrated assessment using an urban computable general equilibrium model

Abstract

As the transport sector plays an increasingly important role in structuring future energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, decarbonization of the transport sector is necessary to achieve low carbon city development. In this paper, representative scenarios of low carbon transport policies are designed to create a better understanding of how the transport sector contributes to emissions reduction and increase of social welfare, using an integrated urban model which follows the tradition of the spatial computable equilibrium model. This integrated model is able to overcome the shortcomings of individual transport and economic models and capture the interplay between the transport sector and the urban economic system. The results show that the decarbonization goal can be achieved effectively by implementing transport policies such as the deployment of electric vehicles, speed regulation, pedestrian-friendly design, and bicycle-oriented development. Electric vehicles provide the most significant emissions reduction potential, whereas the lowest reduction is attributed to pedestrian-friendly design. However, the interesting finding is that the welfare increase generated by the decrease in the same quantity of emissions is most significant in the pedestrian-friendly design scenario. The trade-off between welfare and emissions reduction deserves attention when designing transport policy.