Sustainable Transportation Strategy against Energy lnsufficiency and Environmental Needs
1 Issues facing sustainable transportation
1.1 The demand for cars is growing
The whole world currently has 80 billion people and 8502 million cars, if these cars placed one car after the other, it could circle the earth 10000 times. As can be seen from Table 1 ，countries listed by the number of road motor vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants are as follows. Motor vehicles include cars, vans, buses, freight and other trucks, but excludes two-wheelers.
It is predicted that with the rapid growth of China’s economy, it is estimated that within 20 years, China will have same number of cars as in the United States. Similarly, the number of cars in India has asked in the last 16 years.That’s a threefold increase. As the world population grows and the economies of China and India grow rapidly,By 2020. There will be a billion cars in the world.” And by 2050,The number of cars on the road will reach 2 billion, 2.5 times the current number.
Number of vehicles in some countries
1.2 Environmental deterioration
With the rapid increase in car ownership. Many countries in the world began to close another consequence of cars is global warming. Currently, all twenty-five percent of carbon emissions come from buses and light trucks, and more will come from passengers in the future cars and trucks, which show that the world energy shortage and global warming will be more serious.
2 Coping Strategie
2.1 Develop clean and sustainable alternative energy sources
In the face of continued rapid increase in oil prices and global warming, we must find to clean, sustainable alternatives. But the problem is not unique it can be solved overnight, and the wide application of internal combustion engines has been more than 100 years history. Finding alternative clean fuels to replace oil will take at least 40 to 50 percent years and tens of billions of dollars.
At present, electricity is most likely to replace oil in providing clean fuel for transportation material source. The challenge is how to generate clean and sustainable electricity source. Some possible sources include: fuel cells, sun, wind, ground heat, waves, water and other renewable energy sources. To accomplish this goal must solve the problem of power storage and transmission.
2.2 Vigorously develop green transportation
Green transportation is defined as the use of low pollution and friendly to the urban environment a healthy means of transportation to complete social and economic activities. Green modes of transportation generally include walking, cycling, public transportation (subway, commuting) railways, light rail, trams and buses). Build one fit for the 21 century, the green transportation system to improve urban traffic conditions, save energy andReducing environmental pollution is the key to maintaining urban competitiveness and ensuring quality of life factor in.
Encouraging people to use walking and cycling to commute not only protects the ring border. It is also beneficial to the physical and mental health of the user, but its scope of use is less small, the development of public transportation is to reduce the use of cars, reduce energy consumption and the best way to protect the environment.
Bicycle superhighway
In the United States, due to the rapid rise in gasoline prices (increased over the past year by 35%), encouraging commuters to abandon their self-driving cars and use public transportation. Many American cities ,there is a similar trend.In Asia, Hong Kong has the highest proportion of public transport use in the world at the same time.
Self-driving bus lines
At the moment, the problem we face is that the oil price continues to rise rapidly, and every day is increasing the car exhaust emissions caused by global warming. surface to meet these challenges, clean and sustainable alternative energy sources must be found replace oil, reduce environmental pollution. In the meantime，green transportation needs to be vigorously developed, encourage people to use public transportation, walking, cycling, and other transportation.Means of demand management and traffic engineering. In short, only urban planning,land use and public transport system are closely integrated to promote the use of public transport oriented development can adapt to the goal of sustainable development.
REFERNECES
1.Joseph B White. One Billion Cars [N]. Wall Street Journal, 2006-04-17 (Page R1)
2.John Larkin. Developing Problem: As Indians hit the road, the country is scrambling to keep up [N].Wall Street Journal,2006-04-17 (Page R6)
3.Public Broadcasting System. Car of the Future[EB/OL][2008-04-22]. http://wwwpbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/
4.Dan Harris, Oil Hits Record Highs as Americans Hit the RoadEB/OL1.[2008-05-19]. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story/
