The Urban Technology Alliance (UTA) organised a panel session at the 2024 Smart City Expo in Barcelona to share experiences from some of its city members on their strategies and approaches to transforming the mobility sector in pursuit of their NetZero goals.

The transportation sector is a key function in any major city, but is also a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on the city, its contribution ranges from 20 to 50% with the C40 network of cities claiming an average of 33%. Reducing emissions is critical for cities if they want to reach their NetZero goals.

Organised with support from Japan’s Smart City Institute (SCI Japan) we pulled together 5 speakers who all had practical, hands-on experience of working directly in or with the city to address the challenges of reaching NetZero.

Prof Akinori Morimoto, who is an international expert on Urban transportation systems and a key advisor to the city of Utsonomiya in Japan provided an overview of activities in Japan as well as an specific information on the recent introduction of a Zero Carbon Light Rapid Transport (LRT system in Utsonomiya). His overview highlighted the significant issue of an ageing population and its effects on smaller cities and rural areas.

He focused on mitigation measure in cities that were experiencing population decline. Specific measures  included integrated transport and urban planning and measures to increase densification or compaction of cities around sustainable areas with mixed model transportation.

As a use-case, he presented Utsunomiya City which introduced a newly built LRT system in 2023. The LRT system comprises 15km of line spanning the east and west of the city and crossing the major river that divides the city. One key features of the system is that the system runs on 100% renewable energy generated from solar power and waste treatment. This results in an an annual Co2 reduction of 9,000 tons of Co2 in operations.

The new LRT has replaced 36 buses and offers 256 service rides per day. Ridership on weekdays, at an average of 13,000 rides per day is steady and  matched projections. However ridership on weekends is significantly higher than expected indicating citizens have switched from private to public transport for non work activities.

Prof. Morimoto finished with some data on the ongoing activities looking into densification and into its overall effect on pollution from vehicles with projections of a 30% reduction in Co@ emissions by 2050.

Julie Blais, based in Grenoble, France, who heads up the Mobility and Foresight department at SMMAG (Syndicat Mixte des Mobilités de l’Aire Grenobloise) which is the regional transportation authority combining the Grenoble Metropole, the two neighbouring communities and the Département of Isère focused on Grenoble’s unique situation, covering a significant geographical area (1600 km²) comprising dense urban areas in the valley, with lower density towns and villages in the surrounding areas including high mountains.  She highlighted  Grenoble’s Sustainable Mobility Plan (SUMP) which was winner of the EU’s SUMP award in 2020 and has focused on a ‘regional express mobility service’ which comprises an integrated approach to transportation that improves rail and bus services and has developed multi-modal hubs to promotes inter-modality through integrated ticketing and the development of new cycling facilities.

She pointed out that there was no silver bullet, and a mixed approach was key to reaching NetZero.  Summing up, 3 key issues were highlighted:

• City planner often lag behind behaviour/societal change, e.g. the remote working change after Covid. She argued that increasing citizen engagement is key to improving this.
• Constant change results in uncertainty in the modelling tools that city planners use. There is a need to extend purely econometric models to address uncertainty and introduce social science and observational data
• Finance is a key constraint for any city, and particularly in capital intensive areas such as transportation. She notes that modes such as cycling and walking were both cheap and beneficial!

George Brenner is an Innovation and IT project leader in the Vienna public transportation corporation – Wiener Linien – which has responsiblity for the entire public transportation network in Vienna. He highlighted the growth of the city over the last 120 years and some of the mistakes made with lack of planning in the middle of the last century stressing that cities often operate in a rapidly changing world and that city planners had to move quickly and adapt.

On the positive side, the delay in building a city metro meant that the tram system survived providing a significant low emission aspect of the transport mix today, and the late development of the metro system meant that it has been able to cope with modern city growth and integrate better with other transportation modes.

The city has ambitious targets for NetZero and has had significant success using parking pricing to drive changes in urban car use which has been coupled with growth of both the tram and metro systems all helping to reduce emissions. However, he noted that Net Zero targets (2040) are probably not achievable and that without political will progress will be slow – citing the pricing schemes as examples of tough political battles.

Veronica Guteiriez is the general Director of Innovation, transformation and modernization from the City of Santander. Santander developed its initial mobility plan in 2010 and has reviewed and updated twice in 2016 and 2022. The main focus has been up developing multi-modal hubs in key areas in the city, improving bus transportation and encouraging cycling and walking. The bus network, which is the core of the public transportation network, has been modernized over the last 10 years with the % of hybrid and electric vehicles growing to over 40% in that time.

Due to the hilly terrain, the city has also worked on providing ‘vertical transportation infrastructure’ ie escalators, lifts etc. in public spaces to encourage walking despite the hills and has worked to improve the option of cycling in the city with dedicated cycle lanes, bike parking and bike sharing schemes.

Juho Kostienen is a project lead for the Mobility lab in Helsinki. The mobility lab is a living lab type approach that Helsinki has set up allow experimentation with mobility solutions for the city. Like UTA, it focuses on trials using city testbeds that enable rapid prototyping and deployment of new solutions often bringing together commercial and research groups with the city to solve problems.

Helsinki has a 2030 target for Carbon neutrality , with a zero emission target of 2040 and to be carbon negative after 2040. The mobility lab is seen as a key component of the strategy to achieve those goals allowing the city to work with commercial partners to rapidly try out new ideas, technologies and approaches.

In panel discussion we touched on several key topics:

• Citizen engagement: there was discussion on best practices for citizen engagement and how to best balance citizen needs with overall city goals and practices. Several panelists highlighted the difficulty of balancing conflicting goals and ensuring that citizen voices were heard, but didn’t dominate. It was noted that there is a tendency for citizens to object to new transport schemes initially, and only come to appreciate them after they have been in operation for some time.
• Integrated multi-modal planning: all speakers agreed this was critical and all wanted to do a better job. Constraints included the organisational structure of city (aka siloes) and finance. However, multi-modal hubs and integrated pricing/ticketing was critical to success.
• Road Usage pricing models including parking, road use and clean air/low emission zones: Although these are politically contentious, several panelists highlighted their effectiveness in reducing city centre traffic and helping to reduce emissions with parking being the simplest to operate and clean air zones being the most effective at reducing heavy polluting vehicles.
• Financial constraints: all cities are operating under significant financial constraints and often the most effective solution from a netZero perspective is also unaffordable. Creative financial solutions, including Public-private partnerships were considered essentially, although the reality was no city could do all it wanted to do.
• Densification and integrated city planning. Again, all cities recognised the need for densification as part of a integrated city planning programme. Transportation was obviously a key part of that and as highlighted in Utsunomiya, could help drive densification. However in the absence of large capital projects, smaller measure to promote specific existing areas, and measures such as transportation hubs and pedestrian/cycle infrastructure was a good first step to better usage and eventual densification.
• NetZero goals and political will. It was recognised by most participants that NetZero goals are often politically driven and sometime represent a ‘stretch goal’ rather than a credible plan. However in all cases it was political will that determined how well the city was progressing towards its goals. NetZero requires some difficult compromises between competing stakeholders in the city and decisions will inevitably upset some people. Only by ensuring that tough political decisions are taken will goals be achieved.

Summary

From our discussions it is clear that there is no ‘silver bullet’ when it comes to decarbonising the transportation network in a modern city. Equally, no two cities are the same, so what works well in one city is not guaranteed to work in others. However, a dynamic and flexible approach working across all transportation sectors is critical with multi-modal hubs, a focus on citizen needs and political will key factors in success. While many cities have ambitious NetZero goals, steady progress towards those goals is clear but more needs to be done if the world is to reach its decarbonisation targets.