Assessing Sustainable Development Of Urban Passenger Traffic Based On The Ecological Footprint Model

Canadian ecological economist-Willian Rees first proposed the ecological footprintconcept in1992. And he and his PhD student Mathis Wackernagel built up the calculationmodel of EF to measure the situation of human’s sustainable development in1996. Lateron, some researchers further studied the various factors(yield factor and equivalencefactor)of the ecological footprint. With improvement of this method and its simple concept,it is easy to communicate. Therefore, more and more researchers and the governmentsectors have used ecological footprint as a tool for understanding humanbeing impactionon ecological environment and making decisions.This article firstly described the theories of ecological footprint, then studied theexisting research on traffic ecological footprint model. I found there are certainshortcomings in some thesis. For this reason, this thesis built up a new and completetraffic ecological footprint model.The paper utilized traffic ecological footprint model to discuss the ecological of thevarious modes of urban traffic in detail. Each traffic ecological footprint in discussionconsisted of three parts in the text: the ecological footprint of fossil energy; constructionland’s ecological footprint; water footprint. Discussion about the urban passenger transportin the thesis included seven travel mode-public bus, taxi, light rialway, private car,motorcycle, electric bicycle, bicycle.Taking Wuhan for instance,After calculation of ecological footprint of each trafficmode, the thesis compared total ecological footprint of each passenger traffic andecological footprint of each ecologically productivity area. From the perspective ofeco-environment and resource use, the thesis researched on ecological intensity (EI)andecological efficiency(EE)of the various modes of transport, and made the priority of eachmode in Wuhan. Then the thesis campared EI and EE of Wuhan with Chinese othercities——Shenyang, Beijing and Xi’an. Finally the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity were compared to judge the states of sustainable development ofpassenger traffic in Wuhan.Although the thesis has applied the ecological footprint model in the field of transport,and thoroughly considered the resources use and environmental impacts of urban traffic,biological carrying capacity and ecological footprint under certain conditions could bechanged. Take city traffic planning for instance, the city traffic planning is artificial. Withthe process of urbanization, the city could be expanded to the suburbs and the planningarea of the traffic would increase, so time series on urban traffic ecological footprintcalculation is much more important. In addition, requirement of the energy for theconstruction and maintenance of urban road in detailed analysis are also a very goodresearch direction.In conclusion, application ecological footprint analysis model into the field oftransport, it is viable for assessing the ecological footprint of Wuhan passenger traffic.This also indicates that the monitor of urban traffic development not only protect resource,but also promote green and sustainable development of urban traffic.