Sustainable Transportation Around the Pacific Rim: Challenges and Changes in Asia

The United States, China and Singapore all face challenges concerning the negative effects of automobile travel in terms of congestion and pollution. This article discusses these challenges, and contrasts the solutions that each of the countries has developed to make transportation more sustainable. In the United States, with few exceptions, sustainable transportation efforts have mainly been spearheaded by the federal government. In China, it is the cities that are integrating land use and multimodal transportation. Singapore, which has long faced problems with scarce land, has been in the forefront of instituting policies that limit automobile travel and encourage transit use. Each country also faces different constraints to sustainable planning practices. In the United Sates, these constraints include cost, policy and law coordination, low-density development, a strong car culture, and developer resistance. China’s obstacles also include cost and an automobile-oriented culture, but the country must also deal with rapid land development and lack of data. Singapore’s unique challenges include climate and the lower incremental benefit of new sustainable practices, in addition to cost and data limitations.