Replacing car trips by increasing bike and public transport in the greater Barcelona metropolitan area: A health impact assessment study
Highlights
► We assess the health impacts of replacing car trips by bicycle or public transport. ► Replacement of the car trips reduces mortality in travellers who shift the mode. ► Replacement of the car trips also reduces mortality in residents of urban areas. ► Replacement of car trips can reduce the emissions of CO2.
Introduction
Urban transport faces major challenges due to the continuous growth of urban population, private vehicle ownership and congestion. When the urban transport experiences major difficulties, consequences are felt by households, by businesses, and by the urban community at large. Transport may become a binding constraint on economic growth, social development and inclusion, along with increased negative impacts on health and on the environment.
The motor vehicles are a major source of environmental and noise pollution in urban areas (Schwela et al., 2008). About 70% of environmental pollution and 40% of greenhouse gases in European cities come from motorized transport (EEA, 2010). Different programs of governmental and international organizations such as the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the European Environmental Agency (EEA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) have suggested changes in public policies to encourage public transport and non-motorized transport (walking and cycling) in the cities, to combat problems such as climate change, environmental pollution and energy dependency (EEA, 2010, UNEP, 2010, US EPA, 2011). Other programs and tools like the Transport, Health and Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP) and the health economic assessment tools (HEAT) for walking and for cycling from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and programs from organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, are focused not only on the environmental benefits of reducing the use of motorized transport, but also on its potential health benefits (Hunt, 2011, Kahlmeier et al., 2011, The World Bank, 2011, WHO-UNECE, 2010).
The health benefits of replacing the car by the bicycle to travel in urban areas have been quantified in previous studies (de Hartog et al., 2010, Lindsay et al., 2011, Rabl and de Nazelle, 2012, Rojas-Rueda et al., 2011). These health benefits have been attributed mainly to increased levels of physical activity (Andersen et al., 2000). Also the economic and health benefits of the use of public transport have been estimated in previous studies, related not only in terms of increased physical activity, but also with a reduction of road traffic fatalities and crime (Edwards, 2008, Litman, 2010). Although these studies only included in their analysis the replacement of short trips by bicycle, and had not taken into consideration longer trips or other modes of transport such as public transport.
The city of Barcelona is the second most populated urban area in Spain, composed of 36 municipalities representing 3,231,458 inhabitants, of whom 1,630,494 live in the city of Barcelona (DSM, 2011), and a high population density of 15,963 inhabitants/km2 in a space of 101 km2. In the Barcelona Metropolitan area 7.7 billion trips were made in 2010, 17% of which were made by car, 36% by public transport, 31% by walking, and 1% by cycling. In Barcelona City, walking was also the dominant mode (about 45% of trips), followed by public transport (30%), and while the car accounted for close to 10% of all trips and cycling around 2%. Ninety‐nine percent of the population who live in the city of Barcelona has access to public transportation and on 28% of roads in the city the bicycles have priority (bike lanes and low speed zones) (DSM, 2011). The conditions for cycling and walking are ideal most of the year (average temp 17.3 °C, 74 days of rain), and a topography that is favourable in most parts of the city with essentially small differences in altitude (16 m over sea) except for hills at the edges of the city.
The aim of our study was to quantify the health impacts of replacing the use of car in the metropolitan area of Barcelona by bikes and public transport. We have created different scenarios to replace the car use in the metropolitan area of Barcelona by bus, tram, metro, train and bicycle, and we have quantified the impact on the health of the travellers who shifted the mode of transport and also the health impact on the general population from a reduction of air pollution resulting from this modal change.
Section snippets
Scenarios
The scenarios of reduction in car traffic in Barcelona metropolitan area are presented in Table 1, and were compared to the business as usual (BAU) scenario represented by the 2009 traffic conditions reported by the Barcelona City council (DSM, 2010). The eight scenarios developed included various combinations of hypotheses on i) the amount of traffic reductions (20 or 40% reduction), ii) characteristics of trips reduced (internal to Barcelona City or traffic between the inner-city and the
Results
The scenarios presented represent a reduction from 94,460 (scenario 1) to 340,648 (scenario 8) daily trips by car in Barcelona (Table 1), the number of trips depends on the scenario (e.g. 20% or 40% of car trips reduction or if it is inside or outside of Barcelona). These car trip reductions represent between 5.9% (scenario 1) and 23% (scenario 8) of all motorized vehicles trips in Barcelona.
Discussion
Interventions for reducing car use and increasing bicycle and public transport use could improve the health of travellers and the general population in Barcelona. The major benefits of the reduction of car trips being replaced by bike or public transport trips come from the increase in the levels of physical activity in travellers, followed by the benefits associated with reduction of air pollution in the general population and to a much lesser extent also from the reduction in the risk of
Conclusion
We conclude that interventions directed to reduce car use and increase cycling and the use of public transport in metropolitan areas, like Barcelona, can produce important health benefits, related mostly with the increase of physical activity in travellers and secondarily the reduction of air pollution impacts in the general population of the city. Also these interventions can help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Contributors
AdeN and MJN conceived and designed the study. DR-R and AdeN collected the data. OT did the Barcelona air dispersion study. DR-R, AdeN and MNJ analyzed and interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. DR-R, AdeN, OT and MNJ edited and approved the final version for submission. AdeN and MNJ are guarantors.
Funding
This work is part of the European wide project Transportation Air pollution and Physical ActivitieS: an integrated health risk assessment progamme of climate change and urban policies (TAPAS), which has partners in Barcelona, Basel, Copenhagen, Paris, Prague, and Warsaw. TAPAS is a four year project funded by the Coca-Cola Foundation, AGAUR, and CREAL. http://www.tapas-program.org/.
Competing interests
All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare the following: no support from any organization for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
Ethical approval
Not required.
Acknowledgements
The dispersion model was built by the Energy and Air Quality Department of Barcelona Regional, and we want to thank especially the contribution of José Lao, who also helped to develop the emission inventories and the air quality analysis in this model. The land use regression models were constructed as part of the ESCAPE project. Rob Beelen and Gerard Hoek (IRAS, NL) and Kees de Hoogh (Imperial College London, UK) guided the work and we would like to acknowledge their important contribution. We
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