Not only “revolutionizing” transportation and boosting the economy, Metro also contributes to reducing more than 50% of CO2 in urban areas with this type of vehicle.
Metro Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien, the first urban railway of Ho Chi Minh City, was put into operation for nearly two weeks, after 12 years of construction with an investment of more than 43,700 billion VND.
Metro is one of the popular means of public transport, connecting economic circulation in many countries. This is also the most effective type of transportation that reduces emissions, according to the authors of the World Bank (WB).
Young people take selfies during a test ride of Metro Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien.
The report “Subway and CO2 emissions: Global analysis from satellite data” published in early 2024 said that 192 cities with subways – a type of metro that runs underground – reduced by 51.2%. CO2 compared to the scenario without this vehicle.
Surveying nearly 1,500 cities with a population of over 500,000 people in 113 countries, including Vietnam, the authors from the WB calculated that the above emissions reduction effect means global CO2 emissions decreased by nearly 12%.
In many cities, metro helps reduce emissions significantly. For Brazil, urban railway lines in Rio de Janeiro city help reduce more than 17,700 tons of CO2 equivalent in the period 2009 – 2022, an 89% reduction compared to the scenario without metro. Metro line 5 in São Paulo helps reduce nearly 3 million tons of CO2.
Japan, the third country in the Asia-Pacific region in emissions from fuel combustion (after China and India), has made efforts to reduce emissions by 14% in the period 2000-2022. Some solutions applied are reducing dependence on fossil fuels and increasing the use of public transportation, including metro.
Tokyo Metro – the company that manages 195 km of railway in the Japanese capital – said it would reduce 1.77 million tons of CO2 in fiscal 2022. This level is calculated based on customer data, corresponding to 3% of emissions. Tokyo waste. “We want to encourage customers to realize that they can choose a more environmentally friendly lifestyle,” Mr. Akiyoshi Yamamura – President of Tokyo Metro – said in the company’s 2024 sustainability report.
Calculating vehicle emissions per customer kilometer travelled, rail emissions as a whole are only one-fifth that of the airline industry. With electric trains, direct emissions are even zero.
A country that stands out in railway development is India, where metro is considered a means of revolutionizing urban transportation. Operated since 2002 with the initial goal of reducing load on the city, the metro in Delhi has become the first metro system in the world to be certified with carbon, contributing to the country’s Net Zero goal. this until 2070.
“A lot of passengers prefer the metro to their personal vehicles,” Anuj Dayal, director of communications at the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), wrote in railway magazine Global Railway.
About 945 km of metro rail operates in 21 cities and 919 km is under construction in India, 2024. Source: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs of India
Not only do they create an environmental impact, metro lines are also said to significantly boost the economy. In Bangladesh, the country’s Business Standard newspaper calculated that if more than 22 million residents of the capital Dhaka traveled by metro, the amount of money saved (instead of using other means) would be more than 73.5 million Taka (equivalent to more than 616 million USD). Across the country, metro lines can save up to 2.4 billion USD, equivalent to 1.5% of national GDP.
Besides, if the metro system is supported by a large number of people, which means reducing personal vehicles, Bangladesh can save 2.6 billion USD by reducing traffic congestion.
In addition to developing public transportation such as buses and metros, aiming for a roadmap to decarbonize the entire transportation industry, other issues that need to be focused on are clean energy and conversion to electric vehicles.
Carbon emissions from transportation more than doubled between 1970 and 2018, and are expected to double again by 2070, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In 2022, the global transportation industry will emit 8 billion tons of CO2, a sharp increase due to post-pandemic recovery. Developing urban railways has become a promising strategy to reduce emissions, towards the industry’s Net Zero goal by 2050.