【推荐2】Building good transportation is a good idea. To have environmental value, new transportation has to sufficiently replace or eliminate driving to cut energy consumption overall. That means that a new traffic system has to be supported by reduction in car use. Traffic lanes should be eliminated or converted into bike or bus lanes. Ideally, these should be combined with higher fuel taxes, and parking fees. Needless to say, I have to struggle to make myself extensively understood. But they’re necessary, because you can’t make people drive less, in the long run, by taking steps that make driving more pleasant, economical, and productive.

Lengthy commuting (通勤) time is a forceful factor which can slow the growth of suburbs. The farther people live away from cities, the longer commuting time they need, which means more pollution their cars produce. If, in a misguided effort to do something of environmental value, governments take steps that make long-distance car commuting faster or more convenient—by adding lanes, building bypass, employing traffic-control measures that make it possible for existing roads to accommodate more cars with fewer delays—we are actually encouraging people to live still farther from their jobs, stores, and schools. As a result, governments are forced to further extend road networks, water lines, and other facilities. If you cut commuting time by 10 percent, people who now drive fifty miles each way to work can find reason to move five miles farther out, because their travel time won’t change.

Traffic congestion (拥堵) isn’t an environmental problem; traffic is. Relieving congestion without doing anything to reduce the total volume of cars can only make the real problem worse. Highway engineers have known for a long time that building new car lanes only temporarily reduces congestion, because the new lanes add additional driving. Widening roads makes traffic move faster in the short term, but the improved conditions eventually attract additional drivers, and congestion reappears. With more car on the roads, people think about widening roads again. Moving drivers out of cars and into other forms of transportation can have the same effect, if existing traffic lanes are kept in service: road space stimulates road use.

One of the arguments that cities inevitably make in promoting transportation plans is that the new system, by relieving automobile congestion, will improve the lives of those who continue to drive. No one ever promotes a transportation system by arguing that it would make travelling less convenient—even though, from an environmental perspective, inconvenient travel is a worthy goal.

【推荐3】Shared e-scooters (电动滑板车) are becoming common across Australia. While they may offer a low-carbon option for tourism, do they benefit tourist cities? Our research team at Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute partnered with Neuron Mobility to conduct a survey of Townsville tourists between 2020 and 2021.

We analyzed the visiting e-scooter users’ travel and spending behaviors. Though their e-scooter hire costs were identical (一样的) ，the visitors who rode the e-scooters the most spent most money in Townsville.

The active e-scooter users completed average 11 e-scooter trips, covering nearly 26 kilometers each while in Townsville. Many of these trips would have been completed by walking if e-scooters were unavailable. But they would have taken longer to complete each trip on foot, thus limiting the total number of destinations visited. Some other trips wouldn’t have occurred at all. One user commented, “We enjoyed being able to travel to areas that we would not normally have been to or were too far to walk in a reasonable amount of time.”

Many of these users said they did not need to use a car thanks to the e-scooters. This meant they were able to travel along the streets in Townsville without being trapped in the already busy roadways.

Across all the e-scooter users surveyed, most had never ridden an e-scooter before, but 91 percent reported they could ride it easily. Confirming the positive effect of e-scooters on both city image and visitor experience, 93 percent said they enjoyed travelling within Townsville. Besides, of all the visitors, active users spent more money on restaurants and cafes than the conditions without using e-scooters. Light users also spent a greater amount of money, mainly on shopping and services.

Henry, an-scooter user said, “The weekly pass was extremely cost-effective. I highly recommend it and I will use e-scooters again.” In fact, tourist cities like Townsville that adopt e-scooter sharing are promoting their image and tourism economy.