Rocky Mountain Institute
Clean Transportation Portfolios for Cities
Ben Holland
Executive Summary
To sufficiently mitigate carbon emissions, we must change the way we design and rebuild our cities. In the U.S., we have spent the past 100 years reversing millennia of best practices in city design in favor of the personal vehicle. As a result, transportation emissions are continually on the rise, communities are disconnected from one another, and households without funds to own and operate a car struggle to access the most basic needs like food and shelter.
For the past year, RMI has explored land use strategies for reducing VMT in high growth and high demand cities, such as Austin, Charlotte, and Denver. For such cities, reforming zoning to enable infill and transit-oriented development clearly shows the potential for reducing VMT and greenhouse gas emissions. However, throughout much of the country, slow or no-growth cities are struggling to attract population in downtown cores. Public transit and mobility alternatives are all but non-existent in many of these cities, leaving little alternative than driving personal vehicles.
Project work will likely include the following
- Working with a network of cities to develop and refine a Clean Transportation Portfolio for tailoring transportation climate solutions to cities with unique characteristics
- Exploring existing and designing new mobility programs to connect disadvantaged communities to alternatives to the personal vehicle
- Developing a land use and transportation strategy that improves economic development while reducing emissions