The Anatomy of American Passenger Travel and Transportation CO2 Emissions

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines factors behind recent trends in American passenger transport demand and the consequent greenhouse gas emissions. Prior work shows that growth in Americans' propensities to travel has more than offset the beneficial effect of improvements in energy efficiency on CO2 emissions from passenger transportation. This project will explore drivers behind growth in travel propensity by means of two complementary research strategies. The first is to decompose growth in travel propensity into components associated with changes in the life cycle, economic, and geographic structure of the traveling public. The second is to carry out a statistical analysis of factors that underlie the shifts in propensity within relatively homogenous groups of people over time. The empirical analysis will exploit two rich databases on passenger transportation in the United States: The National Personal Transportation Survey, which provides data on daily travel, and the American Travel Survey, which focuses on long-distance travel. Emissions of CO2 from the transportation sector have grown both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total US emissions. In order to devise strategies for emissions reductions in the transportation sector it is necessary to understand the social and behavioral mechanisms that drive the propensity to travel. The results of this analysis will shed considerable new light on these mechanisms, thus expanding our understanding of travel behavior and providing guidance to the formulation of policies.