| Popis: |
Decarbonization has become a crucial issue for all countries in the world, which have varied targets and strategies to deal with it, especially after the Paris Agreement. Around one-fifth of global carbon-dioxide emissions is originated from the transportation sector. Policy changes and new regulations are planned to reduce such emissions e.g. by reducing the use of fossil-fuel private cars. For railways, supply-side policies involving large scale and long-term investment have dominated the debate. In this paper, we focus on people-centric policies that could be, in principle, faster and less expensive. To test the potential success of mobilizing demand for low carbon solutions, we have been developing an agent-based computational economics (ACE) model for many modal choices (including railway, bikes, private cars, etc.). It contains a large number of agents, with realistic operative parameters, environment, and infrastructure, reflecting in this study the Swiss system. In this paper, we focus on the railway system. A description of the Swiss world-class railway system is presented and the dynamics in the model, covering the demand for railway mobility as derived from psycho-social-economic approaches, are explored. Innovations in preferences, emotional attitudes and innovative swaps in non-technological resource shift the simulated use of the railway system. Carbon-dioxide direct emission levels are computed. Dynamic and heterogeneous demands of the agents are investigated along with several scenarios, some of them lead to significant decarbonization. We argue, after the simulation results, that railway demand increase can contribute to decarbonization strategies, including those possibly included in the next wave of Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. However, total decarbonization of the transport system will need to embrace further modes, such as e-vehicles and non-motorized transport. |
