An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2021) / Chapter Skim
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15 National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation Public Transportation's GHG Savings Public transportation in the United States saved 63 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMT CO2e) emissions in 2018 -- the equivalent of taking 16 coal power plants offline for a year (U.S.
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16 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Public transportation in the United States used 49 million gallons of biodiesel fuel and 47 thousand gallons of ethanol in 2018 (FTA 2020a)
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 17 Public Transportation's VMT and Fuel Impacts Communities with public transportation avoided 148 billion miles of personal vehicle travel in 2018 through transportation efficiency and land use efficiency savings. That was 5% of the 3 trillion total U.S.
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18 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Transit's Transportation Efficiency Impact, or the avoided personal vehicle travel of transit passengers, was 17.8 billion miles of vehicle travel and 790 million gallons of fuel use in 2018 based on 54 billion total transit passenger miles, a mode shift factor of 0.329 and an average personal vehicle fuel economy of 22.5 mpg. That represents $1.7 billion in annual fuel cost savings at current fuel prices, or $2.2 billion at 2018 fuel prices [Energy Information Administration (EIA)
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 19 analysis but are extremely important for communities. These include a reduction in criteria air pollutant emissions that have an impact on health, traffic safety improvements as fewer residents drive, and health benefits as more residents walk and bicycle to transit and in place of driving for shorter trips in locationefficient areas.
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20 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions The Average Light-Duty Personal Vehicle Emissions -- a weighted average of passenger cars, pickup trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles -- was 0.51 kg CO2e per mile of direct, indirect, and upstream GHG emissions at 22.5 mpg (FHWA 2019a)
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 21 Note: Values in are in CO2 not CO2e in this chart only for consistency with previous analysis; private auto value in terms of single occupancy vehicle (SOV)
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22 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions the electricity sources in their area (Figure 6)
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 23 Transit agencies are taking climate actions. Transit GHG emissions have fallen over the past 15 years on both an overall basis and a perpassengermile basis.
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24 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Fuels Data Center shows counts of public transportation buses by fuel and technology from 2007 to 2018 using data from APTA's 2019 Public Transportation Fact Book (APTA 2019)
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 25 Transit Vehicle Emissions by Fuel Heavy rail and light rail systems were all powered by electricity in 2018 and had GHG emissions per vehicle mile of 1.85 and 2.92 kg CO2e per vehicle mile, respectively, including both direct and upstream emissions. Commuter rail systems used several different fuels in 2018.
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26 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Hydrogen was used as a fuel by only four transit agencies in the 2018 NTD dataset. The emissions value used here is for hydrogen produced from natural gas.
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 27 National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation by Mode Adding together the three categories of GHG impacts (transit vehicle emissions + trans portation efficiency + land use efficiency) , heavy rail has the largest net GHG savings overall at 30 MMT CO2e (see Figure 10)
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28 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Emissions among larger transit agencies are lower, in part, because these agencies are more likely to operate rail modes than are smaller transit agencies. For example, 11 heavy rail systems are operated by the largest transit agencies and have a median emissions of 0.10 kg CO2e per passenger mile.
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 29 choosing lowcarbon fuels and technologies, and supporting efficient transit operations. Some other efficiency improvements may include public ondemand service where routebased service is not a good match to community needs and lowcarbon microtransit options such as providing shared electric bicycles and scooters as part of transit service.
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30 An Update on Public Transportation's Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions vehicle travel creates net savings of 120 MMT CO2e via transportation and land use efficiency in 2050. As passenger levels grow, land use efficiency is expected to grow as well, so a large share of these savings comes from avoided travel among community members who may not be transit passengers.
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National Sustainability Benefits of Public Transportation 31 Doubling and Tripling Ridership Increasing ridership is the strongest way to increase public transportation's GHG impacts in communities (Figure 11)
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