Natural resource consumption of local transport according to the MIPS concept

The natural resource consumption of local transport was studied according to the MIPS concept (Material Input per Service Unit). MIPS values were calculated for the infrastructure and traffic of municipal streets, private roads, bicycle lanes, and local rail systems. The material input of streets was studied for the statistical groups of municipalities. The natural resource consumption of vehicle traffic was studied for private cars, buses and four different types of goods transport vehicles. Of the Finnish private roads, only those used by permanent residents were included in the study. The cities of Forssa and Helsinki were part of more detailed case studies in respect to their lot access roads. In the case of Helsinki, MIPS values were also calculated for three different rail transport systems (underground, tramway and local trains in the Helsinki metropolitan area). Within the scope of this study, Finnish local transport and its infrastructure consume annually an average of 23 million tons of abiotic (i.e. non-renewable) natural resources, 549 million tons of water and 3,9 million tons of air. The average consumption of municipal street infrastructure and transport comes to 12,1 million tons of abiotic resources, with 7 million tons used for the construction of the infrastructure. The respective value for the private roads studied is 10,6 million tons. The life cycle of consumption of air is mostly caused by the fuel combustion of vehicle traffic. As traffic is much more dense on municipal streets than on private roads, municipal street traffic accounts for the largest part of the air consumption of local transport in Finland. The MIPS values for transport on private roads are manifold compared to transport on municipal streets because of the much less dense traffic on private roads. The average abiotic MIPS values for passenger transport provided by the study range between 0,1 (bus on average municipal street) and 7,2 (private car on private road) kg/person-km. Bus transport on municipal streets also causes the lowest and private car transport on private roads the highest MIPS values for water consumption (3 and 160 kg/person-km, respectively). Cycling has the lowest and private car transport on private roads the highest MIPS vales for air consumption (0.02 and 0.19 kg/person-km, respectively). For goods transport the biggest difference was found between a full trailer truck on municipal streets (0.1 kg of abiotic resources, 2 kg of water and 0.05 kg of air per ton kilometre) and a van on private roads (75, 1670 and 2 kg/t-km, respectively). This report may be found at http://www.mintc.fi/oliver/upl256-Julkaisuja%2014_2006.pdf