Skip to main content

Reducing transport emissions: lessons from a career

Image
By

Margarita Parra and I discussed lessons from her 8 years directing William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant-making aimed at reducing transportation-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The interview was prompted by an article Margarita wrote for the Foundation’s website to reflect on and share lessons learned from her work there. 
The article was also picked up (and adapted slightly) by WRI’s the CityFix blog. 

 Margarita is worth paying attention to on this issue given her long track record of working on it through several relevant organizations. Before Hewlett Foundation, her experience included ICLEI's Ecomobility programme. She is also a Member of the Board of Directors for the Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT). 

 Here is how you can digest my discussion with Margarita: 
  • The best way is to LISTEN to the 31 minute audio with the player above. 
  • Or subscribe to the audio podcast if you are a podcast listener (search for 'Reinventing Transport' in your podcast player app or click the symbol that looks like a wifi icon in the player above).
  • There is no long article this time. Just some very brief highlights below. So please do listen or read Margarita's original article that prompted our interview.  
  • The Youtube version is at the end of this post (scroll to the bottom).
  • My Patreon patrons will be able to download a full transcript. 

Some brief highlights from the conversation

  • Margarita described how the Hewlett Foundation's grant-making on transport emissions works. 
  • Why transportation needs to be an increasingly important part of emissions reduction efforts. 
  • The "two-part strategy" that Margarita applied to this issue at the Foundation: 1. decarbonize and 2. optimizing to get more mobility of people and goods with fewer vehicles. 
  • Debate over which should be primary. Why both are needed. Why she (and many) are attracted to 2. But how her analysis showed that 1. offers faster results right now, especially given technology advances. 
  • Some of her favorite grantees and projects. These includes projects by ITDP and WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, such as the Rickshaw Rising Challenge. 
  • Rapid change and innovations, such as IT enabled phenomena such as ride-hailing and dockless bikesharing among others, and how they offer both promise and risks. 
  • The state of the transition to Electric Vehicles: accelerating but still largely policy-driven not yet a market-driven process.
  • Why co-benefits of carbon emission reductions are crucial, since they address people's immediate priorities. 

IF YOU LIKED THIS 

Please do share it on social media or with any of your friends or colleagues who might be interested. 

If you haven't already, subscribe (for free):
  • sign up to get updates by email from this site OR 
  • subscribe to the audio podcast (search for 'Reinventing Transport' in your podcast player app or you can click the symbol that looks like a wifi signal strength icon in the player below).
You can help me continue this work by becoming a Patreon patron of my efforts.



 Finally, here is the YOUTUBE version


I would really welcome your feedback. Leave a comment below!

Comments

  1. Palle R JensenFriday, September 7, 2018 at 7:22:00 PM GMT+8

    You have to include the RUF DualMode concept developed in Denmark
    www.ruf.dk
    www.ruf.dk/rufstatus.pdf
    www.ruf.dk/recommendations.pdf

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help improve this map of global sustainable transport advocates

By
I am working to map global "sustainable transport" advocates (for want of a better phrase).  You can help! Submit suggestions or corrections via this google form . Here is the map so far. Please explore it and help me improve it.
Post a Comment
More »

Heavyweight champions for better buses

By
Many cities strive for better public transport. But too few do enough to improve their BUS systems. For Reinventing Transport this time around I discussed bus improvements with  public transport planning veteran,  Colin Brader of ITP.   Colin has worked on numerous public transport projects around the world and is one of the authors of the 2019 EBRD report, " Driving change: reforming urban bus services ". A key point in our discussion: Cities need bus reform champions. We will see that one even has a bus improvement "heavyweight". Scroll down for highlights of our conversation or listen with the player below. Click here to learn how to subscribe to this podcast. Yangon bus stuck in traffic. Yangon has made drastic bus reforms recently. Colin Brader  is the founder of the  UK-based international transport consulting firm, ITP , and is currently ITP’s Chairman. For more than 2 decades he has worked through ITP on projects that have tran...
3 comments
More »

Transport-based City Types and their Trajectories

By
I want to help you get perspective on your city and its transport system with the help of simple city types based on their dominant transport modes, such as Walking Cities, Transit Cities, Bus Cities, Motorcycle Cities and Car Cities. This way of thinking about cities is a  heuristic  (an imperfect mental model or technique that is nevertheless good enough to be helpful). And it obviously is imperfect. For example, real cities often have various modes of transport, and modern cities are really all some kind of hybrid city type. But it is still useful, especially if we add the idea of a Traffic Saturated City , which is a very different beast from a Car City. It is important for change-makers in Traffic Saturated Cities to be aware they are not in automobile dependent cities yet. Options for digesting this:  Read the brief article below and study the diagrams. They complement the podcast.  For more depth, LISTEN to the 37 minute audio w...
2 comments
More »