Our health, quality of life, and the climate are at risk from the way we travel in cities. But tried and tested solutions are available and now need to be rolled out at scale.
Population living in cities in EU (2021)
Emissions by road transport in EU and UK major cities (2021)
Population exposed to unsafe air in EU (2021)
Despite many journeys being relatively short in cities, and public transport, walking and cycling being available alternatives, cars still dominate in cities.
High levels of car ownership usually imply high car use, and hence dangerous levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s take a look at how per capita emissions from urban transport compare across major cities:
Not only are the CO₂ emissions a problem, accompanying toxic air pollution is making us all sick. Road transport is responsible for 37% of dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx).
The solutions for transforming our cities are already there. City leaders must act and roll out tried and tested measures.
Greater London is an interesting case study for the trends to date and the main challenges ahead. The UK capital has the world’s biggest low-emission zone, good public transport and is making progress on cycling infrastructure. Let’s take a look at what’s happened to key indicators over recent years.
Every city is different, but it’s clear the solutions to cut car use and carbon emissions exist. But with a worrying growth in freight kilometres happening in many places, city leaders should now focus on tackling the problem of urban deliveries.
Read Transport & Environment’s full State of European Transport report.
Data sources
Population living in cities in the EU, World Development Indicators United Nations Population Division. World Urbanization Prospects: 2018 Revision; Road transport MT CO2eq, T&E calculations based on ClimateTRACE urban area-level road GHG emissions emissions estimates. Rollend, D., Kott, T., Foster, K., Mocharla, R., Muñoz, R., Fendley, N., Ashcraft, C., and Hughes, M. (2022). Transportation Sector – Road Emissions Estimation Methodology. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), USA, Climate TRACE Emissions Inventory. Population exposed to unsafe air, European Environment Agency Urban population exposed to air pollutant concentrations above 2021 WHO air quality guidelines, EU-27.
