Connections

57 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22293

Connections is a weekly series of knowledge notes from the World Bank Group’s Transport & Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Global Practice. It covers projects, experiences, and front-line developments.

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Enhancing Road Resilience in Pacific Island Countries: World Bank Assisting Adaptation to Climate Change

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12) Michaels, Sean David

Pacific island countries are experiencing higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather that is increasingly frequent and intense. The resulting damage has likewise been extreme. Between 2012 and 2015, for example, losses from three cyclones ranged from 11 percent to 64 percent of GDP in Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. In many of these countries, primary roads and critical infrastructure are adjacent to the coast, and the majority of the population lives within 1 kilometer of the sea. Expected climate change effects will place coastal assets and communities at a higher level of risk. Governments are well aware of these challenges. Today, more than one-fourth of the World Bank’s transport commitments support mitigation and adaptation to climate change (a share that is growing), and its work with Pacific island countries is one of the ways it is responding to the rising demand for climate action. The demand from Pacific island countries in recent years has focused on road resilience, and early lessons will provide a strong basis for further progress.
Advances and Challenges in 'Intelligent Transportation': The Evolution of ICT to Address Transport Challenges in Developing Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) Wang, Winnie ; Krishnan, Raman ; Diehl, Adam

Transport efficiency and safety in the advanced economies have long benefited from information and communication technology (ICT). However, these ICT applications have typically been high-cost, customized infrastructure systems. Now the era of the Internet, digital mobile communication, and ‘big data’ analysis has created a new global potential for less costly and more powerful ‘intelligent transport systems’ (ITS). The World Bank is supporting client transport agencies in deploying these new tools, including cloud-based services, open data standards, and smartphone applications, to more efficiently manage transportation assets and improve road safety. In the process, such projects have also demonstrated improvements in the traveler’s experience and the attractiveness of public transit. Moreover, the greater potential of the new technologies to reduce congestion and travel times means that the new era has also strengthened the potential of ITS to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, realizing the potential of ITS in developing countries depends on improvements in assessment practices to find what works best and in the data capabilities of domestic institutions. Significant improvements in these areas are critical to the success of ITS.
Mobility for All: Getting the Right Urban Indicator

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) Peralta-Quirós, Tatiana

Most urban transport projects have focused on improving the ability of citizens to move freely and swiftly about the city. Typically, that ability has been measured by the share of the population living within, say, 0.5 kilometer of a transit stop, or the maximum travel distance per unit of time, or the amount of transportation infrastructure in a city. Using such ‘proximity’ measures to monitor urban mobility has led to congested highway networks and public transit systems that have failed to bring jobs and services within the practical reach of residents, especially the poor. These proximity-based measures represent indirect attempts to capture the real objective of transit systems: the accessibility of opportunities. New technologies and richer databases now make accessibility, the number of jobs, health facilities, schools, and other essential services that are available without a car in, say, 30–75 minutes, a practical criterion for judging the state of mobility and for designing ways to improve it. Using the accessibility criterion will be critical to achieving SDG 11, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.’
Creating Pro-Poor Transport: Connecting the Dots - Transport, Growth, and Poverty Reduction

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10) Alam, Muneeza Mehmood

Transport plays a crucial role in connecting people to goods and services and fostering sustainable development. The literature links improved transport infrastructure to economic growth and poverty reduction through five key mechanisms: (1) reducing transport and production costs, (2) creating jobs, (3) expanding productive capacity, (4) improving access to markets and basic services like health and education, and (5) reducing prices of final goods and services. These benefits depend on supportive conditions in other sectors, such as access to credit, functioning land markets, low trade barriers, and so on. Therefore, any assessment of potential gains from transport infrastructure and services should also account for the interaction with complementary markets. However, the analysis of such interactions, assessing how and when transport infrastructure can help reduce poverty and income inequality, is largely missing from the literature, leaving significant knowledge gaps across the spectrum of transportation settings. This note highlights existing findings and some limitations in the literature on three basic types of transport infrastructure: large projects such as regional or national highways and railroads; rural transport; and transport in urban areas.
Envisioning the Transport We Need: Goals of the UN High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport

( 2015-09) Vandycke, Nancy

The world faces two urgent challenges: eradicating poverty through economic development, and tackling climate change. Sustainable transport is crucial to both. In August 2014, the UN Secretary-General established a High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport to make policy recommendations that ‘promote accelerated implementation of sustainable transport.’ The World Bank is a member of the technical working group supporting the advisory group, which sees sustainable transport as a prerequisite for all countries to attain competitiveness, inclusive and equitable growth, balanced social and spatial development, and energy and food security. And it is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in support of the 2°C Scenario. Progress can be accelerated if all heed the calls for action on sustainable transport and development that exist today in a wide range of international agreements, conventions, and declarations.
Impact Evaluation to Inform and Transform Investments in Transport and ICT

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-06) Vandycke, Nancy ; Legovini, Arianna ; Liaplina, Aleksandra ; Di Maro, Vincenzo

A new World Bank initiative, ‘Impact Evaluation (IE) - connect for impact,’ aims to radically transform and better inform the way that transport and information and communications technology (ICT) projects are designed and implemented. Although multilateral lending to this key strategic sector comprises 29 percent of all global assistance, only 0.4 percent of impact evaluations have had transport as a subject. This initiative aims to fill the gap and bring high quality and valuable feedback to projects, improving design, enabling mid-course corrections, and informing ex-post evaluations. For the first time, this initiative will offer a systematic sector approach to generating concrete evidence of what works, what does not, where, when and why. It will greatly increase the impact and value add of investments in transport and ICT projects, which is especially important given global trends toward increasing urbanization, with 70 percent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050.
More Climate Finance for Sustainable Transport

( 2015-05) Ebinger, Jane O. ; Vandycke, Nancy ; Rogers, John Allen

Actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stabilize warming at 2 degree Celsius, as agreed by the international community in 2009, will fall short if they do not include the transport sector. Transport is responsible for around 23 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and emissions are expected to rise without further action to curb emission growth and invest in low carbon transport modes. Investment needs are estimated at around $3 trillion to increase the sustainability of existing and new transport systems and to mitigate climate change over the 2015-35 periods. This is in addition to existing annual investments estimated at $1-2 trillion. The actions taken today to send the right policy signals, and establish the enabling institutions and regulations to attract the necessary private finance will be critical to support this transformation. Significant investment opportunities exist in public transport systems, vehicle efficiency improvement, and reducing the need for travel through demand management, regional development policies, and land use planning. As the international community embarks on the road towards CoP 21 in Paris, there is a case to be made for more climate finance flowing towards transport.
Korea’s Leap Forward in Green Transport

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-04) Lee, Changgi ; Sung, Nak Moon ; Choi, Sang Dae ; Yi, Eun Joo Allison ; Lee, Sangjoo

Megacities in developing countries suffer from serious traffic congestion, high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and heavy air pollution. These urban areas face a stark dilemma: economic expansion attracts more people and vehicles; but the resulting traffic and pollution hinder further growth while reducing the quality of life for their citizens. Not long ago, Seoul faced a similar conundrum. Choked with pollution and traffic jams, it changed course and helped Korea make a historic transition to green urban transport. It shifted from supply-side policies focused on expanding roadways and metro lines to green demand-side policies focused on creating transit-oriented cities. Today, Seoul boasts a passenger-trip share for metro and bus of more than 60 percent. Energy consumption in Korea’s road sector is lower than in other countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP). Congestion costs have been decreasing, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the transport sector have been kept under control. This path breaking transition was founded on multimodal solutions integrated by information and communication technology (ICT) in a context of strong political leadership and public financing.
Challenges and Opportunities in Urban Transport Projects: Career Reflections of Two World Bank Specialists

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-03) Kumar, Ajay ; Zimmerman, Samuel

Problems or even failure in transport initiatives are more likely for projects set in the urban areas of developing countries. Connecting a rural village to an all-weather road or restoring a section of national highway is usually straightforward. Costs are modest, institutional issues limited, and the benefits obvious. In contrast, urban transport is not a single mode governed by a single agency but a collection of modes with varied administrative boundaries and many private sector stakeholders. Successful urban transport strategies reflect an understanding of linkages among transport, land use, and environmental factors. Working out the complex local challenges requires social, political, and technical capacities often in short supply in developing countries. And even when a project manages to attain its physical objectives, the civil and governmental capacity needed for sustainability often remains underdeveloped. The institutional frictions and gaps point to the elements of the way forward on urban projects: thoroughly understand the local context, then build broad public consensus around the value of better transport and the value of institutional arrangements to sustain it.
Boosting Mass Transit through Entrepreneurship: Going beyond Subsidies to Reduce the Public Transport Funding Gap

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-02) Pulido, Daniel ; Portabales, Irene

Most of the world’s urban mass transit systems cannot cover operating costs, let alone capital expenses, through farebox revenues. On average, 25 percent of metro operating expenditures are not funded by farebox income. With limited public subsidies, as well as obstacles to raising fares and political sensitivities to road user taxes, metro systems have been increasingly pursuing income from commercial activities connected with their operations. Metro systems earn commercial income, such as from advertising, naming rights, and especially real estate activities, are making inroads in their operating deficits. Commercial revenue in some systems is nearing 20 percent of fare revenue. Although reforms of transit financing structures remain high on the policy agenda, a review of ancillary income streams of metro systems around the world shows that a more entrepreneurial approach to tapping their commercial potential can help them narrow their funding gap.