Title: Transit leverage assessment and climate change mitigation pathway for urbanised areas

Authors: Mohammad Tamim Kashifi; Umer Mansoor; Syed Masiur Rahman

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia ' Centre for Environment and Water, Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), P.O. Box 713, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: This study investigated the effect of transit leverage on vehicle kilometres of travel, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions for seven major Saudi Arabia cities with at least half a million population. We found energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from road transport can be reduced to half of existing values if we increase the annual average per capita mileage of public transport by one-fifth of the current per capita mileage. We also conducted Monte Carlo Simulation with vehicle occupancy, average trip length, and average daily trips as variable inputs to study the effect of variations of three variables on vehicle kilometres of travel, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions. The simulation results indicate that we can decrease CO₂ emissions for seven major cities from 14.6-16.5 Mt-CO₂/year to the range of 7.0-8.4 Mt-CO₂/year by increasing bus passenger kilometres travelled to about 15% of total annual per capita mileage.

Keywords: car dependency; greenhouse gas emissions; public transport; Saudi Arabia; transit leverage.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2022.120066

International Journal of Global Warming, 2022 Vol.26 No.1, pp.18 - 37

Received: 23 Aug 2020
Accepted: 25 Mar 2021
Published online: 06 Jan 2022 *

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