An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation - Softcover

Preston L. Schiller; Eric Bruun; Jeffrey R. Kenworthy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844076652 ISBN 13: 9781844076659

Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2010

Synopsis

Transportation plays a substantial role in the modern world; it provides tremendous benefits to society, but it also imposes significant economic, social and environmental costs. Sustainable transport planning requires integrating environmental, social, and economic factors in order to develop optimal solutions to our many pressing issues, especially carbon emissions and climate change.

This essential multi-authored work reflects a new sustainable transportation planning paradigm. It explores the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable transportation, describes practical techniques for comprehensive evaluation, provides tools for multi-modal transport planning, and presents innovative mobility management solutions to transportation problems. Students of various disciplines, planners, policymakers and concerned citizens will find many of its provocative ideas and approaches of considerable value as they engage in the processes of understanding and changing transportation towards greater sustainability.

This text reflects a fundamental change in transportation decision making. It focuses on accessibility rather than mobility, emphasizes the need to expand the range of options and impacts considered in analysis, and provides practical tools to allow planners, policy makers and the general public to determine the best solution to the transportation problems facing a community.

The book starts by placing transportation within the broader sustainability discussion, emphasising a comprehensive approach to sustainability planning and introducing the notion of "regenerative transportation". In sections on policymaking and planning the book examines how decisions are currently, and how they should be, made—explaining the complex and often misunderstood area of public participation. The authors explain demand management as applied to transportation and present lessons from other public arenas and areas of application, especially in urban-suburban areas.

The text takes readers through each and every mode of transport, beginning with human-powered modes and ending in motorized modes, including marine and air transport. The modes are analyzed separately and in comparison with others according to several criteria: Capacity/utility/functionality considerations; infrastructure demands; resource consumption; land use considerations; pollution; and costs. In ways that non-technically trained readers as well as planning students professionals can find useful the book includes guidance on how to optimize transportation systems; balancing economic, social and environmental objectives while creating just, robust, and diverse, rather than one-size-fits-all, solutions. The modes are grouped and compared within their respective contexts, and there is vital discussion and differentiation between passenger and freight-goods transport. The final section develops a comprehensive summary of the previous chapters and develops arguments for sustainable transportation policymaking and integrated planning, providing international examples and case studies and extracting from them general applications for integrated sustainable transportation. Featuring extensive international examples and case-studies, textboxes, graphics, recommended reading and end of chapter questions, the authors draw on considerable teaching and researching experience to present an essential, ground-breaking and authoritative text on sustainable transport.

About this title

About the Author:

Preston Schiller a sociologist by background, is Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He has taught and done research at several universities including the Huxley College of the Environment of Western Washington University and the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has worked on the Washington State and federal Clean Air and Transportation Acts and been involved with numerous governmental transportation policy, planning, and regulatory boards at local, state and regional levels. His publications have aimed at changing public policy and reducing the environmental impacts of transportation.

Review:

"This is the core text I have been searching for ... an excellent introduction to sustainable transportation." – Mark Zuidgeest, University of Twente & Secretary, Cycling Academic Network

"A comprehensive primer...[and] an essential manual that not only includes guidance but also seeks to provide an understanding of how we arrived at the system with which we are currently struggling to maintain." – Walter Jeffery Moore, American Institute of Certified Planners

"An informative compendium on transport policy issues of considerable interest to laypersons and experts alike...Studying this book can be inspiring and is recommended." – Natural Resources Forum

"For any planner or local official struggling with how to address the issues moving their communities sustainably, this is an essential manual that not only includes guidance but also seeks to provide an understanding of how we arrived at the system with which we are currently struggling to maintain." – American Planning Association

"This is the core text I have been searching for! The book provides an excellent introduction to sustainable transportation. It is comprehensive, highly readable, and puts a new critical, but optimistic, angle to the way we look at transportation sustainability. Essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners." – Mark Zuidgeest, Assistant Professor Urban Transport, University of Twente and Secretary, Cycling Academic Network

"Preston Schiller, Eric Bruun and Jeff Kenworthy have all combined careful research with principled advocacy in service of the planet. ... Sustainable Transportation is thus an especially timely work, and it deserves to reach a wide audience. Preston Schiller, Eric Bruun and Jeff Kenworthy have assembled an encyclopedic and useable catalog of the theory, technique and practice needed for recovery from the Twentieth Century's long delusion about hypermobility, and it comes not a moment too soon!" – From the Foreword by Hank Dittmar, Chief Executive, Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, and Senior Research Associate, Oxford University, UK

"This book on sustainable transport marks a significant improvement in the level of debate and information around this important topic and takes us firmly into the real world of policy, leadership, innovation, citizen action, implementation and the role of visionary politicians. It brings together a formidable trio of experienced researchers and draws on a body of new research from locations around the world that have moved beyond talking and are actually doing something. This is a valuable contribution which should not be underestimated." – Professor John Whitelegg, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York

"This is an excellent detailed manual for serious planning professionals. It goes beyond polemics to offer a sturdy blueprint for a saner future as we leave behind the age of cheap oil and Happy Motoring." – James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere

"For any planner or local official struggling with how to address the issues moving their communities sustainably, this is an essential manual...Written with an accessible style and format, this text presents the issues and guidance which the reader can sip or even gulp without being overwhelmed." – Walter Jeffery Moore, Institute of Transportation Engineers

"Readable, well referenced and with a good balance of history, detailed data and policy- a useful addition for those wanting to get an overview of Sustainable Transport issues" – Manchester Climate Fortnightly

"This multi-authored work reflects a new sustainable transportation planning paradigm--it provides practical tools to allow planners, policy makers, and the general public to determine the best solution to the transport problems facing a community." – Renew Magazine

"When the relatively rare opportunity presents itself to write a positive book review, it is perhaps incumbent on the reviwer to compensate for all the negative, pedantic and miserly comments that may have flowed from his keyboard in previous critiques. It is, therefore, with both hands held high that I warmly welcome this excellent volume....As one might expect given its Earthscan imprimatur, most of the book's chapters have 'attitude'- thought provoking, good humoured, well organised, and, in this reviewer's opinion, offer highly effective advocacy for sustainability in thought and action...this book is too good to be quibbled about. Get it. Read it. Do it." – Journal of Transport Geography

"Don't look too closely at the photograph of this book, or you'll notice the scratched cover and bent corners. That's because despite its size (this is no lightweight textbook, in every sense of the word), I carried it around for a good few weeks, ready to dip into at every opportunity." – Mobility Magazine

"Besides its goal of shaping planning, policy-making, and citizen activities in a sustainable direction, this book is also a synthesis that draws together a huge amount of technical, social, economic, environmental, and cultural material... a well-structured, unique book that would be useful to a wide audience, including students, planners, policy and decision-makers, and engaged citizens." – Dr. Said M. Easa

"Schiller et al. emphasize connections, interrelationships, and the human element; the book is aspirational.  It is ideal for progressive planners and policy reform advocates." – Berkeley Planning Journal

"It might be used as a textbook in undergraduate or graduate courses in city planning, civil engineering, or environmental studies.  The book certainly contains some useful contributions to those teaching transportation planning." – Journal of the American Planning Association

"The book is undoubtedly a strong contribution to the field of (transport) planning
and policy, and provides much food for thought for students, professional practitioners and engaged citizens. The international nature of the book provides a broad understanding for the reader, engendering a necessary perspective to think beyond one’s local environment and to learn from examples successfully developed abroad. The use of analytical and visualization tools aids one’s understanding of the concepts that they are describing ... An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation is a useful, affordable addition to the literature base and should be widely read and appreciated, and, most importantly, its principal messages should be adopted." – Rachel Turner, International Planning Studies

"The authors examine one of the most challenging issues in the field of sustainability, that of balancing societal demands for faster and more efficient mobility with a cleaner and healthier environment. In presenting this challenge, they provide an engaging interdisciplinary account of the evolution of modern transportation and its associated impacts ... With detailed illustrations and case studies, as well as chapter summaries and questions for discussion, this is an excellent introductory text, although it also holds insights for more experienced students and practitioners ... One of the key strengths of the text is that it is not focused just on theories, concepts, and models; the authors have written from the perspectives of expert practitioners – planners and engineers – who have concrete experience in the field that lends added depth to their academic treatment of the issues ... [this book is] an excellent introductory text for students of transportation planning, as well as an engaging source for policy makers and planners seeking new approaches to transportation development in a sustainable context." – Environments

About this edition

• Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1844076652
• ISBN 13: 9781844076659
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400