To electrify transportation, we have to swap gas cars for battery-powered ones.
Just as important is the system they run on: The location of origins and destinations. How the roads and parking work. The relative status among the different modes–including the emerging classes of hyper-efficient micromobility vehicles. What is a normal way to get something a quarter mile a way. To move across town.
Compact development multiplies electrification’s possibilities
In a more compact community, each charger, bus depot, and e-bike corral serves more trips. Such locational efficiency translates to higher utilization which lowers cost per electrified trip and accelerates payback on infrastructure. That increases returns on investment.
Shorter, more frequent trips better enable micromobility and transit. Public and workplace charging reach more users, and fleet duty cycles become more predictable. That means more people and trips served.
Dense, connected neighborhoods support an ecosystem of e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, scooters, neighborhood EVs, electric transit, shared fleets, and zero-emission delivery. That spreads benefits and reduces battery and grid needs.
Clustering buildings, parked vehicles, and loads in closer to one another enables managed charging, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) with school and transit buses, building-vehicle coordination, and neighborhood microgrids—boosting flexibility and resilience. That means more opportunities to create fuller ecosystems of electrification in which different uses support one another.
High-ridership, short-route corridors can more cost-effectively match battery duty cycles, simplify depot design, and enable reliable layover or on-route charging. When land use supports frequent service, electric buses reach lower total cost of ownership faster and deliver bigger air-quality gains. That means better transit electrification economics.
Compact form cuts miles driven, trims parking and road costs, and lowers household transportation expenses. Savings from fewer cars and less asphalt can be reinvested in charging, transit, safe streets, and building upgrades. That means savings for household and municaplities.
Denser electrification makes way for tipping points
Full electrification at scale requires existing neighborhoods and districts to to step away existing from natural gas distribution systems in big leaps. Large chunks of existing shared infrastructure needs to be retired in coordinated investments to avoid leaving a minority of ratepayers with stranded assets and impossibly high costs. The process needs a critical mass of subscribers.
Urbanism methods–compact development combined with community-scale planning–can help make transportation electrification investments play a key supportive role. By pairing infill housing and mixed-use development with transit, depot charging, e-mobility hubs, and building heat pumps, districts concentrate flexible electric load.
The payoff: Fully-electrified towns that make use of electric transportation even more.
“Avoiding” travel and “shifting” modes first increases returns
Research shows the most cost-effective way to deliver maximum electrification services for the fewest energy requirements and environmental harm is in the “avoid–shift–improve” framework (ASI).
ASI prescribes avoiding unnecessary demand for a service in the first place; then shifting remaining demand to inherently lower-impact modes, energy carriers, places, or times; and finally, improving the efficiency and cleanliness of technologies and infrastructure that still serve that demand.
Urbanism is fundamental to the first two aspects. The most direct way to “avoid” is compact, complete neighborhoods that reduce trip lengths and vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). And fundamental to”shifting” is safe, reliable transit and protected bike networks that move trips to efficient modes suited to small batteries.
“Avoiding” and “shifting” before “improving” to electrification saves resources by requiring fewer batteries, chargers, and grid upgrades to meet the same mobility needs. It lowers net cost and raises accessibility, since short trips fit low-cost e-bikes and walking and high-utilization charging cuts per-trip costs. And it frees up cash—city capital once aimed at road widening and parking, plus household savings from ditching a second car, can fund more charging, transit, and building electrification.
Urbanism creates new EV opportunities for equity (and durability)
Urbanism provides a way to focus on electrifying the modes that are key to making sure everyone is served—buses, shared fleets, e-bikes, and neighborhood carshare—and where air pollution burdens and cost pressures are highest.
Such a lense can help to elevate electric buses and bus rapid transit in high-ridership corridors with bus-priority lanes; protected bike networks with e-bike purchase, charging, and maintenance support; on-street and multi-family charging in renter-heavy and lower-income neighborhoods; and community ownership models and fare policies that reduce total mobility costs.
This spreads benefits beyond car owners and builds a wider coalition for outcomes that are more likely to be lasting.
Some implications
As the synergies beween urbanism and electrification come to more light, so to does the opportunities for agencies and experts working on them to address the issues together.
Public utility commissions have a stake in VMT. Per-capita VMT reduction and electrified trip share are relevant planning metrics. Encouragement is sensible for utility programs that support location-efficient electrification with make-readies for multi-family housing, depot charging for transit and delivery fleets, managed charging, and V2G. Coordinate electric upgrades with targeted gas decommissioning as districts densify and electrify.
Electric vehicle advocates have a stake in advocating compact development to cities. They can promote zoning reform near jobs and transit, parking reform, complete streets and protected bike lanes, bus lanes, and curb management that prioritizes transit and zero-emission delivery.
Cities and municipal planning organizatons have a stake in targets for electrified trip share and per-capita VMT, not just EV registrations. They can aopt EV-ready and e-bike-ready building codes that require conduit and panel capacity in multi-family and commercial projects; site charging facilities to maxomise utilization at depots, mobility hubs, main streets, and curbside at multi-family buildings; and support e-cargo logistics and consolidation centers to cut van miles.
Transit agencies which seek to electrify high-frequency routes first have a similar stake in supporting greater density as well as protected lanes and other infrastructure to support a better service experience and more riders. More on the technology side, they can align schedules for layover charging, design depots for future V2G revenue and resilience, and pair bus electrification with bus-priority street design to amplify benefits.
Utilities have a stake in buiding an ecosystem that rewards them for expeditiously electrifying everything while providing maximum public benefits. In the near term they can offer fleet and multi-family tariffs with managed charging and capacity subscription options, fund make-readies in disadvantaged communities and at mobility hubs, and deploy more school-bus and transit-bus V2G where feeders are constrained, and coordinate with building electrification to enable gas main retirement.
States and departments of transportation can tie transportation funding to per-capita VMT reduction and electrified trip growth, streamline permitting for curbside and depot charging and for utility upgrades tied to district electrification, and synchronize clean power timelines with transport electrification to maximize emissions cuts.
Employers and developers can site near frequent transit and bikeways, replace parking minimums with mobility benefits, provide e-bike and transit stipends, install shared and open-access charging and secure e-bike parking, and convert last-mile delivery to e-cargo bikes where feasible.
Bottom line
Use urbanism to right-size the transportation challenge—shorter trips, more choices, closer destinations—and electrify mobility and buildings as you build compact, complete neighborhoods. Do that, and the rest of the system—chargers, fleets, and the grid—becomes cheaper to deploy, simpler to operate, and more equitable in its benefits.
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