RP2021: Final Report: Greening Urban and Suburban Travel

This document presents the final report for Project RP2021: Greening Urban and Suburban Travel, which was supported by the CRC for Low Carbon Living. 

The overarching objective of this research was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger car usage in urban and suburban areas. Transport activity is one of the major sources of emissions related to the combustion of fossil fuels in Australia. In 2010, transport contributed 83.2 Mt CO2 or 15.3% of Australia’s net emissions with road transport accounting for 71.5 Mt CO2 or 86% of national transport emissions. Passenger car usage in urban areas was the largest transport source, contributing 8.5% of Australia’s net emissions and accounting for around 39.7 Mt CO2.  

This research was fundamentally an investigation into new methods to provide urban and suburban public transport and active travel options that offer efficient, affordable and flexible trips while reducing reliance on private vehicle use. There were several components to this project which enabled a national team to investigate interesting questions that are of immediate practical importance. These include development of a number of tools for estimating the carbon emissions benefits from proposed intervention measures. Specifically, the research comprised three complementary work packages which included investigations of travel demand; investigations of travel supply and transport planning studies focusing on pathways to increasing customer usage of alternative modes of transport; and development and application of a framework for supporting effective investment decisions that increase the uptake of the high priority low carbon transport interventions.