Appendix C

Briefing Paper on Exploratory Topic 2: Ensuring a Just Transition to Net-Zero Transport

Patricia “Paty” Romero-Lankao, University of Toronto, Canada

Karen Vancluysen, POLIS Network, Belgium

The transition of the transportation sector to a zero-carbon future offers diverse socioeconomic benefits, such as reductions in greenhouse gases (GHGs) and tailpipe pollutants and improved public health and jobs.^1,2,3,4 Cities and regions, with their concentration of people, economic activities, infrastructure, and research and development organizations, offer considerable opportunities to transition transportation, including road, rail, freight, maritime, or air mobility, to a more sustainable future.^5,6,7 However, transportation decarbonization can produce new and, in many cases, perpetuate pre-existing inequities if promoted without intentionally focusing on concerted strategies away from past and current inequitable structures. Therefore, it is critical to comprehensively examine and address the challenges and opportunities linked to equity and justice in the transition to net-zero transportation systems (see Key Terms) to ensure that this significant transport transformation will not leave anyone behind.

A solid body of scholarship finds that focusing on decarbonizing vehicles and technological innovations alone—without a combination of user-tailored mobility modes and fundamentally rethinking entire transport ecosystems—will not be enough to meet climate and sustainable development goals and ensure equity. While these

approaches may “clean up” a transportation system, they can also unleash other unequal risks from issues such as congestion, lack of accessible and affordable mobility options for underserved populations, and displacement of health impacts to areas providing energy and raw materials for electric vehicles. These risks would add other unintended adverse consequences on already disproportionally impacted groups. In other words, by only relying on decarbonization, we will not be able to ensure equity in the transition to net-zero transport.

This briefing paper discusses crucial questions on the opportunities for and barriers to achieving equity in the transition to net-zero transport. It draws lessons from existing approaches in the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) for policymakers and academia to navigate and steer responses, ensuring equity and justice in the transition to net-zero transport. Below, we list the overarching questions organizing this paper:

• How are current net-zero transport policies and innovations targeting equity and justice?
• How do we ensure everyone benefits from decarbonization strategies? What opportunities do we have, and what barriers do we face?
• How can we create benefits for all from decarbonization strategies and avoid harm, particularly for underserved or disadvantaged communities?

EQUITY TENETS AND THE SOCIOECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF THE TRANSPORT TRANSITION

The commitment of the United States and the European Union to energy justice provides essential opportunities to further tenets and principles of transport equity and justice (see Key Terms). Yet, this increased emphasis also provides challenges as policymakers and technology developers incorporate potentially unfamiliar concepts from the social sciences into their policy and technology projects. With this in mind, this section highlights questions guided by an equity lens.

Distributional equity emphasizes questions, such as who benefits, who bears the burdens, and how the benefits and burdens of electric vehicles, shared mobility services, clean fuels, and other technological innovations are distributed among different populations within and across cities and regions and over time.

Procedural equity highlights questions of who is at the decision-making table, whose voices are heard or excluded, and how women, the elderly, the working class, rural, and other underrepresented racial or ethnic groups can participate in framing the mobility and net-zero transport needs as well as the policies and innovations to address those needs.

Recognition justice guides analysis and action targeting the legacies of historical and current transportation and land use policies and practices. Examples include questions on who benefits and is burdened by transportation corridors, transit-induced gentrification^8,9 and redlining or “the systematic denial of various [transportation] services or goods by federal government agencies, local governments, or the private sector either directly or through the selective raising of prices” (Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation 2020).¹⁰ Recognition equity also guides questions such as how the legacies of investment, regulations, and other policies and practices affect transportation inequities. How do these legacies interact with intersecting determinants of transportation inequities such as gender, income, and race?

Most recently, experts and decision makers have expanded their equity lens by integrating a life-cycle approach into a social-cycle analysis. This guides questions on who benefits, who bears the harms, and how harms and benefits play out in the following life-cycle stages of transportation: (1) raw material extraction; (2) production of vehicles, energy sources, and technologies; (3) operation and supply of electricity and transportation; (4) consumption and use of transportation services and technologies; and (5) waste management of, for example, old vehicles and their parts.^11,12,13

An equity lens to the net-zero transportation transition helps highlight other questions and considerations. For instance:

• What are the workforce impacts and opportunities for transportation decarbonization policies and technological innovations?
• How can we avoid producing new and perpetuating preexisting inequities in access to affordable, safe, reliable net-zero services, technologies, and vehicles? And how can we do all this while ensuring no groups are left behind?
• How can we develop inclusive governance approaches throughout planning, implementation, and evaluation to engage with everyone—particularly underserved communities—and how can the ladder of engagement guide effective engagement methods that:¹⁴

• • enable minorities, disadvantaged or marginalized groups to have a front seat in the transition to net-zero transport as users, planners, decision makers, and workers?
  • generate interest in the transition within groups that have not generally been involved?
  • include representative bottom-up bodies (grassroots, unions) to meaningfully contribute to broader decarbonization visions or strategies locally, nationally, and internationally?
  • avoid box-ticking or social washing?

CURRENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS

This section examines how equity can be addressed in EU and U.S. legislation, programs, and practices. It points out that scholarship and practice increasingly emphasize the urgency of embedding the equity tenets and principles of fair distribution, process, and recognition in net-zero transport approaches.^15,16,17,18

Equity is already and increasingly considered an essential respect by local, national, and international stakeholders working in or shaping the decarbonization of the transport sector. Below, we describe some examples of how the United States and the European Union have enabled the integration of equity provisions into high-level funding opportunities or policy programs.

In the United States, Executive Order 14008 (January 27, 2021) generated a comprehensive approach to addressing environmental justice concerns, including (a) a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to collaborate with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and (b) a new Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. Both were mandated to identify immediate investments in disadvantaged communities, and (c) a Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to identify disadvantaged communities.¹⁹

The executive order also established the Justice40 Initiative, tasked to ensure that low-income and disadvantaged communities benefit from the energy transition by mandating that at least 40% of the benefits of climate and energy programs go to disadvantaged communities.²⁰

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (November 15, 2021) explicitly seeks to advance environmental justice through different actions. The act directs agencies to fund programs that increase access to reliable, clean, affordable power and safe drinking water and improve broadband connectivity. It also targets funds for community resilience programs, such as healthy streets, flood mitigation, and resilient infrastructure.²¹

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, August 16, 2022), includes requirements for “improving the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s community engagement processes, creating energy credits for solar and wind facilities sited in low-income communities, and $42 million in Tribal and Native Hawaiian climate resilience investments.”²² The IRA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund allocates grants for state, local, regional, and Tribal governments to provide financial or technical support so that underserved communities benefit from zero-emission technologies. The IRA also indicates that $7 billion of zero-emission technologies be deployed in underserved and low-income communities; it allocates $8 billion entirely to low-income and disadvantaged communities.

The European Union proactively creates financial mechanisms and publishes recommendations and research on overarching social themes linked to transportation, including gender equality, access to transport for all, reskilling opportunities, connecting rural and remote regions, and more. A first example is the Social Climate Fund

Future Policies and Programs

• How can transportation decision makers engage underserved communities, community-based organizations, and smaller businesses in defining where, when, and how to allocate investments and resources?
• How do we ensure processes, methods, and procedures are fair and transparent regarding access to finance and opportunities to participate in programs (procedural equity)?
• How do we assess whether just transition financial schemes support society’s most vulnerable or affected members and small businesses? How do we create measures of accountability and evaluation?
• How can we ensure transportation technologies and investments are tailored to different mobility needs, from families to small business providers of goods and services?
• What funding may be needed? How can the United States and the European Union work together on future programs?

Systems Thinking

• What structural opportunities, barriers, and legacies must be considered to achieve equity in the transition to net-zero carbon?
• How do issues of transportation equity relate to land use planning and other matters addressed by the other exploratory topics?
• How can we design transport options tailored to the mobility needs of different groups and users? For instance, can we develop system approaches to target intersecting sociodemographic factors (e.g., race, gender, social class, age, (dis)ability) and built environment factors (e.g., urban to rural areas, small towns, and transport deserts)?
• What incremental and transformational policy instruments and programs can move away from car-centered and polluting freight transportation systems?
• Are there portfolio or policy bundle approaches to providing users safe, affordable, and cleaner mobility and freight transport options?
• How can we address the legacies of past policies and practices (e.g., transportation corridors, redlining and gentrification of underserved areas)?
• How can we foster workers’ and communities’ capacity to navigate the changing jobs and skills demanded by the decarbonization of transport and provision of new mobility services?

Research and Funding

• What research, innovations, and collaborations are needed to achieve transportation equity in studying, prototyping, and deploying new services, social initiatives, and technological innovations?
• What tools and indicators help (a) define and measure transportation disadvantages; (b) assess the equity performance of net-zero transportation investments, policies, and practices; and (c) drive use and implementation of the indicators?
• What funding or joint programs could be developed to support actionable research?

LEARNING FROM RELEVANT CASE STUDIES

To understand what social, environmental, technological, and economic factors need to be considered to achieve equity and avoid creating new or worsening existing inequities in the transition to net-zero transport, it is essential to recognize the current legacies of historical political landscapes, policies, and practices that led to present-day disparities. This requires analyzing historical and recent trends in transportation-relevant inequities in critical areas such as urban development and transport: redlining, gentrification, transport affordability, accessibility, acceptability, technology adoption, public health and community resilience, and jobs and workforce development. This section examines concrete examples with lessons learned and options for fostering equity in the net-zero transport transition.

The LA100 Equity Strategies, a city-wide and community-informed research program to improve equity in Los Angeles’ transition to clean energy by 2035 by mapping what community members themselves feel is needed to achieve more equitable outcomes.^27,28 LA100 Equity Strategies examines how widespread transportation electrification can address transportation inequities embedded in historical practices such as zoning, renting, investment, and redlining. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power support for transportation electrification has predominantly benefited affluent White communities. Participatory research with underserved Angelenos highlighted three transportation equity priorities:²⁹

• Partner with community leaders and community-based organizations on the design, implementation, and evaluation of
  • incentives, outreach, and other programs to meet community needs;
  • electrification infrastructure and housing retrofit (e.g., electric panels);
  • affordable, reliable, accessible, and safe e-mobility options, such as e-bikes, e-scooters, shared electric vehicle programs, and walking; and
  • options to reduce air pollution and improve health, such as truck electrification.³⁰
• Address community concerns about access, affordability, safety, and pollution reduction when updating, retrofitting, and expanding net-zero mobility options.
• Expand access to affordable and safe electric mobility infrastructure and ensure that charging stations are in locations that meet daily household routines and support charging of e-bikes, scooters, and other mobility options.³¹

Based on community insights, LA100 Equity Strategies assessed strategies to foster equity in transportation electrification, including the electrification of heavy vehicles, adoption of electric vehicles, access to charging infrastructure and expanding transportation electrification benefits to households who do not own cars or cannot afford an electric vehicle.^32,33 To foster city-wide efforts such as LA100 Equity Strategies, it is crucial to ask how net-zero transportation policies and technologies can

• Create procedural mechanisms for underrepresented, low-income, gender, racial, or ethnic groups to participate in framing the mobility and net-zero transport needs, as well as the policies and innovations to address those needs.
• Expand the benefits and reduce the burdens of subsidies, rebates, electric vehicles, shared mobility services, clean fuels, and other policies and innovations.

• Target redlining, gentrification, and other root causes of explaining inequity in access to affordable, safe, accessible, and reliable mobility options.

Fostering Active Travel for People with disabilities requires removing financial, infrastructural, and communication barriers while adopting a pan-impairment approach, bearing in mind the large variations within this group. Limited traffic zones and other traffic calming measures can have unintended consequences on people with disabilities, such as disproportionate increases in journey times. To mitigate these impacts, it is important to formulate key questions upstream on including people with disabilities in such projects’ planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. These could include:

• How can we meaningfully engage organizations representing people with disabilities in conceptualizing such measures?
• What are the best channels and ways to communicate changes clearly and thoroughly to people with disabilities?
• Are exemptions needed to alleviate the impact of such measures on certain groups?
• What kind of research and mapping is required to understand their needs? Who can fund these? Do we have enough data?
• What funding, research programs, or policies exist or should be created to improve the accessibility of street space?

Addressing transportation inequities across the urban–rural continuum starts by developing sustainable mobility options for rural communities and economic activities that are often car-dependent and receive less investment and attention in creating affordable, practical, and accessible transport alternatives. The mobility of rural areas affects cities, with more than a million people commuting into the city of Paris, for example. A study of transportation equity across the urban-rural continuum found that rural and exurban populations are the primary users of single-occupancy vehicles, the lowest adopters of electric cars, and the least exposed to air pollutants.³⁴ Therefore, investments and policies tailored to the needs of rural areas can help achieve multiple goals, such as decarbonization, decongestion, and urban-to-rural equity. Questions researchers, policymakers, and others in the field can ask include:

• How can we support transport operators deploying services in suburban, exurban, and rural areas to avoid “transport deserts”?
• Which new services and technologies currently support the mobility needs of suburban and rural areas?
• How can we curb the underinvestment in sustainable and accessible alternatives in rural areas?
• How can active travel be fostered for short-distance trips? What kind of infrastructure is desirable and possible? How can we make these options safe?
• How does the higher average age of the population living in suburban and rural towns impact sustainable mobility options that should be investigated and implemented?
• What research is needed to create practical rural-specific mobility options? Do we have enough data?
• How can instruments, strategies, and programs better connect suburban and rural areas to cities?

EMERGING AND TRANSITION TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS

In recent years, technological innovations such as electric vehicles, automated vehicles, and drones, as well as applications for shared mobility solutions, have been presented as transformational solutions to decarbonize the transportation sector, with its outsized responsibility for the unequal distribution of urban air GHGs and tailpipe