This edited volume discuses urban transport issues, policies, and initiatives in twelve of the world’s major emerging economies – Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam - countries with large populations that have recently experienced large changes in urban structure, motorization and all the associated social, economic, and environmental impacts in positive and negative senses. Contributions on each of these twelve countries focus on one or more major cities per country. This book aims to fill a gap in the transport literature that is crucial to understanding the needs of a large portion of the world’s urban population, especially in view of the southward shift in economic power. Readers will develop a better understanding of urban transport problems and policies in nations where development levels are below those of richer countries (mainly in the northern hemisphere) but where the rate of economic growth is often increasing at a faster rate than the wealthiest nations.

Increasing levels of auto ownership and use are causing severe social, economic, and environmental problems in virtually all countries in Europe and North America. This book documents the worsening transport crisis and differences among countries in their urban transport and land-use systems. The focus is on public policies to deal with urban transport problems. Through in-depth case studies of eight countries, the book seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative solutions to transport problems, and thus a way out of the transport crisis.

The development of U.S. urban transportation policy over the past 50 years illustrates the changing relationship between federal, state, and local governments. This comprehensive text examines the evolution of urban transportation planning from early developments in highway planning in the 1930s to the concern for sustainable development and pollution emissions. Focusing on major national events, the book discusses the influence of legislation, regulations, conferences, federal programs, and advances in planning procedures and technology. The book offers an in-depth look at the most significant event in transportation planning—the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962. Creating a federal mandate for a comprehensive urban transportation planning process carried out cooperatively by states and local governments with federal funding, this act was crucial in the spread of urban transporation. Claiming that urban transportation planning is more sophisticated, costly, and complex than its highway and transit planning predecessors, the book demonstrates how urban transportation planning evolved in response to changes in such factors as environment, energy, development patterns, intergovernmental coordination, and federal transit programs. It further illustrates how broader concerns for global climate change and sustainable development have braided the purview of transportation planning.

Policy-making for urban transport and planning of economies in the developing world present major challenges for countries facing rapid urbanisation and rampant motorisation, alongside growing commitments to sustainability. These challenges include: coping with financial deficits, providing for the poor, dealing meaningfully with global warming and energy shortages, addressing traffic congestion and related land use issues, adopting green technologies and adjusting equitably to the impacts of globalisation. This book presents a contemporary analysis of these challenges and new workable responses to the urban transport problems they spawn.

Most Asian cities have grown more congested, more sprawling, and less livable in recent years; and statistics suggest that this trend will continue. Rather than mitigate the problems, transport policies have often exacerbated them. In this book, the Asian Development Bank outlines a new paradigm for sustainable urban transport that gives Asian cities a workable, step-by-step blueprint for reversing the trend and moving toward safer, cleaner, more sustainable cities, and a better quality of urban life.

Traditional transport planning has generated transport systems that propagate an unfair distribution of accessibility and have environmental and safety issues. This book highlights the importance of social and political aspects of transport policy and provides a methodology to support this approach. It emphasizes the importance of co-ordinating urban, transport and traffic planning, and addresses the major challenge of modifying the building and use of roads. The author makes suggestions for innovative and radical new measures towards an equitable and sustainable urban environment.