As the Japanese Olympic Committee attempts to prepare their city for the massive influx of people to an already crowded metropolitan centre, they must consider the potential environmental impacts of the improvements they make to their transportation systems. Transportation is one of the world’s biggest contributors to environmental degradation, so it should be taken seriously when planning transportation projects.
A Checkered Past
As seen with the developments created for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, transportation projects can seriously degrade the environment. One of the principle strategies of the past development was to widen the roads to allow better flow of traffic. To do this, city planners decided to sacrifice the many natural waterways that flowed through the city. They built structures over top of the waterways or filled them in altogether in favour of roadways. This effectively removed some of the only remaining natural landscape in the city, not to mention ending all life that once resided in the water. Water stagnated, fish and plants died, and the water became saturated with industrial waste and biochemical sludge (Whiting 2014). Additionally, Tokyo removed its street trolley system, which today would be considered a green form of transport, in favour of opening more lanes for emissions producing cars, worsening the city’s air quality (Whiting 2014).
New Strategies: Railways
It seems that the event planners in Tokyo have decided to move as far away as possible from their old, unsustainable methods of transportation development. According to the Governor of Tokyo, Yoichi Masuzoe, “If motorization symbolized the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, de-motorization should be the symbol for the 2020 Olympics,” (Obe 2015). They are committed to environmental causes and have even stated that they plan for Tokyo 2020 to be the first carbon neutral olympics (Climate Action 2014). To achieve this, the event planners have decided to capitalize on their existing network of rail transportation. Widely considered one of the most efficient train systems on the planet, the Tokyo train network is fully sustainable due to the fact that it is powered completely by electricity. For the 2020 games, the city will bolster this network with the rebuilding of the famous Harajuku station, improving two other subway stations, and building both a new station and two new subway lines to connect it (Kameda 2015 and Nagata 2016). These upgrades should improve the capacity of the train networks to reduce the strain of the increased ridership during the olympic games and could in turn incentivize the use of the trains rather than the road system. Additionally, a new model of bullet train is set to arrive for the 2020 games: the N700S is a more efficient model than its predecessor due to its lighter weight and reduced aerodynamic drag (N700s to launch… 2016).
New Strategies: Roadways
Unfortunately, the road systems in Tokyo are heavily used in addition to their network of railways, and they do contribute to a high amount of carbon emissions. However, Tokyo plans to improve the environmental impact of road going transportation. The first method is the construction of three ring roads which are designed to drastically improve the congestion of Tokyo’s crowded streets. The ring design will draw traffic away from the city centre’s grid pattern in which traffic is often extremely heavy, with the hopes that traffic on the ring roads can stay in constant motion. This upgrade to the road network is projected to provide a reduction of 2-3 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year (Tokyo Metropolitan 2015). Furthermore, Tokyo plans to turn to a more renewable and clean source of energy for its vehicles (and buildings). The Japanese government has tasked Toyota, Nissan and Honda with creating new hydrogen fuel cell powered personal vehicles and buses, incentivized by around $385 million dollars worth of subsidies, not to mention the 4.5 billion yen project currently underway to build 35 hydrogen fuel stations and an underground pipeline which will supply energy to the Olympic Village (Obe 2015). Tokyo plans to have 6000 FCV’s on the road by the start of the games and over 100,000 by 2025. It seems like an ambitious push for what is currently a relatively unknown and unpopular form of energy, but the Japanese government seems to realize the need for an immediate alternative to fossil fuels. “The first Tokyo Olympics, 50 years ago, left a bullet-train system as a legacy; I want to leave a hydrogen society as a legacy for the next Tokyo Olympics,” said Gov. Masuzoe (Obe 2015).
References
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