Environmental Impacts of Transportation & Solution

This essay discusses the impacts of transportation on the environment and suggests evidence-based solutions like riding energy-efficient vehicles, focusing on the degrading air quality of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It also highlights the need for reworking on the structure and culture of municipalities, governing bodies, and policy makers to mitigate the negative impacts of transportation.

1ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSPORTATION & SOLUTION
Environmental Impacts of Transportation & Solution
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Author note
Climate change has become one of
the major global issues and it requires
immediate action for reducing the amount
of greenhouse gas emissions from the
regular modes of transportation. Despite
being wealthy in terms of finance,
technology and social structure, Canadian
municipalities are consistently struggling
to make a difference in case of the climate
change, suggesting as well as
implementing an effective solution [6].
Therefore, this essay will continue to
research various transportation impacts on
the environment and suggest evidence
based solutions like riding energy efficient
vehicles, focusing on the degrading air
quality of Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada. Although, Canada has enough
resources and possesses potential to reduce
amount of greenhouse gases, no innovative
ideas have implemented yet to make the
air of Victoria pollution free.
Although, the impacts of widely
developed transportation systems on
environmental balance is well recognised
to local, national and international
platforms; in recent times, ineffectiveness
of technical, monetary and human capital
has been identified as a barrier as far as
utilizing the existing resources are
concerned. The futile pattern of ‘climate
change policy’ development is the reason,
which induces the need for reworking on
structure and culture of the municipalities,
governing bodies and perception of policy
makers. Hence, the mitigation process and
strategic planning for environmental
sustainability against negative impacts of
transportation will be discussed [9].
As mentioned before, British
Columbia’s position is comparatively
better than other provinces suffering with
the same issue as they have unique
municipal structures. However, those
institutions are needed to work on
integrating goals to restrict climate change,
develop mitigation policies and include
necessary actions into their social and
environment development planning [7]. As
founded from various research initiatives
local municipality and governing bodies
are successful to align the goals with the
strategy yet fails in practical
implementation with the support of
necessary information and frameworks.
Before moving towards the solution, it is
important to consider an overview of the
current scenario regarding impacts of
increasing mode of transportation.
The growth of transportation
development is rapid and has become
successful in decreasing travel time yet
simultaneously has become the major
reason behind air pollution. The concern
has been increasing since the failure of
several policies, which were framed
keeping the agenda of reducing
greenhouse gases initially. The first and
foremost concern is transportation
consumes a great deal of energy and
creates environmental pollution. Energy is
necessary for operating and manufacturing

2ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSPORTATION & SOLUTION
the vehicles. All the vehicles are not
equally energy efficient and do not possess
advanced mechanisms. For instance,
among all the urban modes of transport
cars consume more energy than any other
vehicles. It has been predicted by
researchers that traffic congestion will
increase up to 140 percent within next 10
years along with the rate of energy
consumption in developed countries like
Canada [5].
Municipality and national
governing bodies can initiate plan of even-
odd policy to take a control over the
number of cars in streets until occurrence
of any emergency. Private vehicles will be
permitted to drive, purchase gas or park
on alternative days depending on the last
digit of the registered number plate,
whether it is even or odd. Policy makers
must use proper communication channels
to circulate the news effectively to citizens
to make the implementation successful.
Development of transportation in
urban areas of Victoria is a chief source of
air pollution. Not only Victoria, but both
developed and developing countries are
facing this environmental problem
worldwide [10]. Ecologists believe the
rapid increase in number of vehicles is
responsible for air pollution. At some
point, the air is saturated with the
pollutants and becomes unhealthy to
breathe. The carbon emissions from the
motor vehicles are responsible for such
degrading atmospheric situation. As a
result of incomplete combustion,
evaporation of petroleum oil; by products
like carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon are
generated respectively. Besides, due to
excessive numbers of vehicles leads to
increase of Aldehydes and dust particles in
the air. This directly influences global
warming as well. In order to mitigate the
issue it is not enough to control the
number of transports in roads of Victoria,
car manufacturer companies must be
aware enough to launch an innovative type
of engine at an affordable range that is
capable of providing a solution to this
current issue improving combustion in
exhaust system of car and motorcycles.
Although, transport manufacture
companies have launched energy efficient
electronic cars to mitigate issues with
higher energy consumption, commoners
cannot afford such environment friendly
luxury cars due to its high pricing strategy
[1].
In addition to air pollution, the
higher rate of traffic congestion is leading
towards noise pollution as well. It has been
proven by several researchers that
transport generated noise pollution is
directly associated with negative
pregnancy outcomes along with headache,
heart problems among the older
generations and it might affect the
listening capacity of babies mostly and
individuals [3]. Although, there is an
official warning to drivers not to blow
horn in front of hospitals and schools yet
lack of public awareness is the reason.
Therefore, municipalities must opt for
effective communication channels to
improve the civic sense and awareness
regarding mitigation of issues related to
noise pollution.
Apart from the problem specific
solutions, in order to make a difference in
current scenario British Columbia Natural
Gas Strategy has potential to mitigate
climate change by introducing low carbon
energy systems [8]. The strength of this
location is immense availability of natural
gas. Therefore, government has identified
opportunity of developing LNG for using
in transports to ensure sustainability.
Before proceeding with LNG
development, British Columbia
government must acknowledge few
aspects, which are as follows. 1) As to
reduce the amount of greenhouse gas
emissions government can think for
implementing more programs like that of
‘environment incentives’. Ships coming to
major ports and trucks, which are regular
on highways, are rewarded if they choose

3ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSPORTATION & SOLUTION
LNG facilities for their vehicles. 2)
Government can make the use of electric
drives compulsory to ensure more
efficiency in terms of reducing energy
consumptions and GHG emitting rates.
People need to understand that it seems to
be expensive initially yet it has a positive,
long-term effect on environment at the
same time in reducing consumption of
energy. 3) Climate policies must be
amended strongly and tax will be applied
on increasing rate of carbon emissions.
Plants, factories will consider the
environment issues along with profit if
they have a tendency to cut down the cost
of the tax given [2]. 4) Province based
well-equipped and skilled workforce is
required to develop a monitoring team as
far as detecting leakage in gasoline
pipeline is concerned. 5) There are more
scopes of future research to find out more
alternative sustainable sources of energy,
which are efficient and cost effective apart
from natural gas [4].
From the recent evidences,
information and recommended suggestions
it can be summarized that in British
Columbia, excessive number of vehicles
on road is responsible for about 60% of the
total GHG emissions. An increase of
almost 40% has been noticed in transport
emission since the beginning of 1990 [10].
Municipality have the power to influence
energy efficiency. Moreover, opportunity
of investing in transport infrastructure,
street renovation and tree plantation
programmes of the locality are there to
decrease the intensity of consequences
caused by carbon emission. There must be
policy of rewards and incentives for the
consumers who choose to opt for electric
drives to encourage their effort to
contribute in improvement programme for
degrading condition of environment.
It must be remembered that
population is another reason of increased
number of vehicles. Government can focus
of strengthening birth control or settlers’
policy if they want to keep a balance in
ecosystem. Therefore, apart from
encourage given to electric car owners
government can arrange special benefits
for bicycles and pool cars. It is always
better to travel in a pool car with five
different people together, intend to go to a
same destination rather than driving five
different cars. Parking areas must be
managed according to such rules of
Government. In addition to that,
Governing bodies must encourage on-site
production of energy or installation of
alternative technologies in manufacturing
automobile vehicles and motorcycles.
Public awareness must be increased in
terms of making the solar and wind energy
popular [5]. Collaboration with NGOs or
recruiting executives’ position in ‘social
and environment development’
department, Government can provide
manufacturing companies, plants and
citizens can be provided with environment
and carbon emission related knowledge.
The conclusion can be drawn
stating that to overcome the environment
impacts of transportation in Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada the evidences of
ongoing issues suggest implementing
several solutions. Alternative technologies
in car manufacturing, encourage
sustainable sources of energy, suggests
implementing environment policies with
adequate information and feasible
framework and most importantly the
mitigation and adaptation policies need
public support to grow as an energy
efficient green Canadian province.

4ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSPORTATION & SOLUTION
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