Reducing air pollution from urban transport : Companion report (abridged version)

This report intends to assist in the design of appropriate strategies for controlling the impacts of urban air pollution, from mobile sources. The report considers only the direct air impacts of surface transport, excluding aviation, marine transport, non-road vehicles (such as bulldozers and mining equipment), noise pollution, habitat fragmentation, and waste disposal of scrapped vehicles. The report is divided into eight chapters, complemented by nine technical annexes, and an Executive Summary, which provides general guidelines on key policy themes, cross-references the relevant sections of the report, and annexes where the topics are discussed, and provides a general overview of urban environmental problems. Chapter 1 describes the nature of the problem, the levels, and trends of ambient air pollution in developing country cities, and the context within which transport-related air quality policy needs to be set. It emphasizes that the behavior of the many personal and corporate actors in the transport sector, are fundamental in determining the effectiveness of policy efforts to reduce urban air pollution. Chapter 2 discusses the impacts of the principal urban air pollutants, and how to assess the contribution of transport to poor urban air quality. It concludes by identifying three principal transport aspects within which air quality improvement can be sought: through reducing the emission of pollutants per unit of fuel consumed, reducing the consumption of fuel per unit of transport services, and, limiting the overall demand for motorized transport services. Chapters 3 through 5 discuss, for each of these three aspects, the array of policy areas and instruments in which improvements can be sought, and identify the range of instruments that can be used. The annexes supplement these chapters by providing more detailed information on the physical, and economic characteristics of technologies-both of some current commercially viable technologies, and of some technologies that are still in development, and also how to ensure their proper maintenance-and on the economic valuation of health impacts of air pollution.