Transit leverage assessment and climate change mitigation pathway for urbanised areas

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.