An Integrated Approach to Transportation Policy in BC ASSESSING GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTIONS OPPORTUNITIES IN FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION

Transportation services are central to movement of goods and people in modern economies. Their provision embodies many tradeoffs between: economic benefits, health effects, social and environmental impacts. Policies aimed at achieving deep greenhouse gas emission reductions from the transportation sector will invariably impact the balance of these benefits and dis-benefits of transportation. These impacts will arise both directly, as intended by the designers of the policy and indirectly, as a consequence of limited foresight, internal dynamics of the system and other drivers of how transportation services are delivered. Finally, it is important to remember that transportation facilitates transactions in the economy. The incentives in the economy and capacity of infrastructure to respond to changing patterns of demand are often a much stronger determinant of the evolution of this sector and its emissions. It is tempting to ask which greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy is optimal. When the objective of a policy or program is to change matters marginally, one can assume that all other features remain unchanged and optimise for this specific objective. However, in the case of deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions this is not the case. Consequently, climate mitigation policies and programs cannot be optimal, unless one specific metric of impacts is used to reflect the myriad perspectives of stakeholders on the many aspects of this sector. In this white paper our goal is to present an integrated assessment for the design of greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies. This involves: • a framework for understanding the drivers of GHG emissions from the transportation sector; • an approach for assessment of the intended and unintended impacts of policy proposals, reviewing more than a dozen BC initiatives; • and, an evaluation methodology that explicitly reflects the challenges in realising the objectives of policy through program deployment and final outcomes. We review iconic greenhouse gas emissions policies and programs, providing illustrations of their intended and unintended consequences. These illustrations highlight the importance of adopting an approach that can capture the full dynamics of this sector and the lifecycle impacts of policies and programs aimed at its modification. Proposals such as low carbon fuel standards, mandated vehicle technologies, congestion fees, and investment in alternative transportation infrastructure all have complex intended and unintended consequences which need to be carefully assessed. The tools to conduct such analysFs are already available to academia. A laudable goal is the translation of available knowledge into a toolkit …