The Mexican Institute of Transportation (IMT) said that the use of new technologies in toll booths and increasing the use of railroads are part of the actions needed to mitigate the polluting effects of the country’s main highway corridors.
“If we free up more roads, reducing congestion will allow for greater efficiency, and logistics and trucking companies will be able to offer better services,” said Luz Angélica Gradilla Hernández, a researcher at the IMT’s Sustainable Transportation and Climate Change Division.
He recalled that Plan Mexico seeks to have more industrial clusters and that “to the extent that we as a country can offer greater infrastructure in efficient modes of transportation, we can attract more investment and create more jobs in freight transportation.”
When presenting the results of the Inventory of Emissions in Highway Corridors and Challenges for Mitigation during the Energy Efficiency in Multimodal Transport Forum, he reiterated that freight trucking is the main source of polluting emissions in the transport sector.
Therefore, the core of this work is to establish strategies to mitigate the emissions generated by this sector. “It would be ideal to achieve its decarbonization and, in this transition, also achieve renewable energy generation, and for road transport to be used only for short distances, where it is most efficient.”
He explained that the Mexico-Nuevo Laredo Corridors, the Piedras Negras Branch, the Mexico-Ciudad Juárez Corridor, as well as the Mexico-Nogales Corridor, the Tijuana Branch, the Manzanillo-Tampico Corridor, the Lázaro Cárdenas Branch, the Mexico-Veracruz Corridor, the Veracruz-Monterrey Corridor (including the Matamoros branch), the Puebla-Oaxaca-Ciudad Hidalgo Corridor, the Mexico City-Puebla-Progreso Corridor, the Yucatán Peninsula Corridor, the Pacific Corridor, the Mazatlán-Matamoros Corridor, the Baja California Transpeninsular Corridor, the Altiplano Corridor, the Acapulco-Tuxpan Corridor, the Acapulco-Veracruz Corridor, and the Trans-Isthmus Circuit were studied.
Source: IMT
“Here we have some corridors with very red sections, and that’s where the highest carbon dioxide emissions are. Where there’s the most traffic congestion, it’s one of the factors that influences the highest emissions,” said Gradilla Hernández.
In the Mexico-Nuevo Laredo corridor alone , carbon dioxide (CO2) represents 23,072.02 tons emitted daily or 8.4 megatons annually, making it the largest gas emitted, followed by carbon monoxide with 373.37 tons emitted daily.
TIMSA 2023
The highway section that generates the most CO2 emissions is the Mexico–Querétaro highway, with a daily share of 5,985.59 tons. This represents 25.9% of total daily emissions. The sections that generate the most emissions are the Querétaro–San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí–Matehuala, and Matehuala–Entronque Puerto México highways.
Therefore, he mentioned that some of the challenges to mitigate these effects will include modal shifts , increasing energy efficiency with a multisectoral approach, infrastructure, using Artificial Intelligence to optimize routes, and more efficient toll booths, among others.
According to the document, other strategies to reduce the impact on transport corridors include:
Cargo vehicles with more modern and efficient engines. The older vehicles currently in circulation have very high pollution potential and exceed the permitted useful life for federal freight transport.
Low-carbon fuels. It’s important to ensure the quality of fuels in transport corridors, such as ultra-low-sulfur fuels, among others.
Electrification. It’s important to incorporate electric vehicles for the last mile of freight transport, as well as to develop road electrification projects, particularly on those with higher concentrations of emissions.
Logistics efficiency. This involves optimizing space and freight vehicle journeys, as well as reducing empty journeys.
He argues that global trends replicated in Mexico show that energy consumption and emissions from the transportation sector will continue to increase as a result of economic growth.
It notes that according to the Third Update Report of Mexico’s National Emissions Inventory, emissions from this sector in the country are projected to reach approximately 233.1 million tons in 2030 and 269.8 million tons in 2050.
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