Even if you feel like your commute is killing you, it’s good for your health

We know public transport is good for #cities’ environmental and social connections but now it seems that it is a prolongs life for older travellers. Transport ministers can use new research to lobby for extra spending in the UK’s October #budget.

Many commuters who feel that their morning commute on a cramped urban bus, train or tram is virtually killing them may be surprised to know that public transport is an ingredient for longevity.

Research by academics at three UK universities and based on more than 10,000 Britons aged 50 or over found that death rates were substantially lower among those of its participants who used public transport.

It has long been shown that greater use of public transport – and commensurate reductions in car travel – has positive impacts on the environment such as better air quality and fewer road traffic injuries and deaths and on social mobility. But the contribution negative or positive — of the hours people spend on public transport is under-researched.

They found that users had 34% lower mortality than non-users while with those using public transport every day or nearly every day had 41% lower death rates than never users. This compared with previous research finding mortality was 24% lower for cycling and just 8% for walking.

The researchers admit that the precise mechanisms between public transport use and health are unclear: they play down the impact of the extra physical activity involved (e.g., to the bus stop) and do not find any link with long-term illnesses.

Regardless, there are some lessons that urban policymakers can take on. Given the trend towards an ageing population, supporting an activity that helps extend mobility and quality of life for older people seems sensible. Cutting public transport provision could be detrimental for population health, while expanding in the frequency and availability of services will help.

Against this backdrop, the change of government in the UK should help. Although many retired people can access free off-peak fares and discounted rail travel, others are put off by the complexity of the fares system. During the election campaign, Labour pledged to “simplify the ticketing system and … [replace] the current multitude of platforms and myriad array of fares, discounts and ticket types”.

On the roads, the government has pledged to allow local communities to take back control of buses through franchising or public ownership, and end the “postcode lottery” of bus services by providing safeguards over local networks. This will bring English cities and regions in line with a longstanding policy in London, which has been protected from deregulation. Indeed, it would have been interesting if the research had looked at regional differences in mortality rates.

How much financial support will be provided to the public transport sector will emerge in the first Budget and comprehensive spending review likely to take place in October. Until then, passengers will need to carry on “holding tight”.

Olympic events win pewter, rather than gold medals for sustainability

Major sporting events are merging one into another in the Global north, providing ongoing challenges to #urban #sustainability. After the final of the Euro 2024 football championship and the finals weekend at Wimbledon, the end of July 2024 will herald the launch of the Olympics in Paris.

The major global event will see 15 million spectators — including 2 million from abroad — join tens of thousands of athletes, journalists, volunteers, participants and organisers to watch three weeks of track and field and stadium events at facilities across the city. It provides the perfect arena to examine how the organisers have dealt with sustainability — as well as the athletes seeking to win gold and set new records.

The organisers have claimed this will be the greenest Olympics in history with a total carbon footprint half the size of those left by the London Olympics 2012 and the 2016 Rio Olympics. The greenest title is based on it offsetting more than will be emitted, making it the first international sporting event to do so.

The organisers of the London Olympics, watched by 11 million people, claimed its footprint came in at 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), slightly lower than the 3.4 million metric tons estimated in 2009. The Rio event broke the finishing tape at 3.6 million tons of which 2 million was offset through technological mitigation.

Paris’s case rests on its success in relying on 95% of existing or temporary venues for events such as the Stade France stadium, the National Velodrome for cycling, the Grand Palais on the Champ-de-Mars for judo and wheelchair rugby. It has built two new facilities, both in the relatively deprived outer-city banlieue of  Saint-Denis: an 8,000-seater stadium and the Olympic and Paralympic village. Two news subway lines will increase connections, including one to Orly international airport.

Of course, the Olympics deliver huge support to the other two pillars of sustainability other than the environment, namely social and economic benefits. If the event goes well, it will inject a feeling of civic pride among those Parisians who do not feel it is their home city. Investments such as the Saint-Denis venues and the new underground train lines will hopefully leave a positive legacy for residents and Paris citizens, respectively. The event will have provided much-needed income for hoteliers, restaurateurs, travel and transport firms and the city’s coffers.

Medal table

The issue, therefore, is how can one effectively evaluate the success of an Olympics’ sustainability without falling prey to organisers’ lavish public relations claims. Are the Olympics just business events that pay lip service to sustainability, or are they events that put into practice innovations to reduce emissions?

Six academics at Swiss universities and one from New York University sought to answer that question by designing a model that used nine indicators divided into three groups (to match the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainability) to evaluate 16 summer and winter games between 1992 and 2020.

They analysed each event according to its ecological footprint (the amount of new construction; the number of visitors; and the size of the event;), its social dimension (social safety; the level of public approval; and application of the rule of law), and the economics (budget balance; the degree of financial exposure; and its long-term viability) to produce a score between zero and 100 for least and most sustainable, respectively.

The results were not pretty. On average the events scored 48, just below halfway but some measures such as “budget balance” received the lowest score, doubtless reflecting frequent cost overruns, followed closely by “new construction” and “social safety”.

But the more worrying finding was that the sustainability score deteriorated over time. Indeed the winners of the gold, silver and bronze medals (and the other ones to score well above 50) were quite dated: Salt Lake City (2202), Albertville (1992) and Barcelona (1992), respectively. Rio in 2o16 came second from bottom, and London 2012 fourth worst. More pewter than gold.

What lessons do the researchers offer? Firstly, make the events smaller to reduce visitor numbers and the consequent emissions footprint. Secondly, the events should be rotated between the cities that show the highest sustainability performance, also minimising new construction needed. Lastly, the governance should be upgraded by setting up an independent body to establish, track and police sustainability standards.

These changes are unlikely without a reassessment of the economics of the Olympics. The current looks to maintain or grow, rather than the reduce the number of attendees in order to support corporate sponsorship, while the International Olympic Committee would doubtless resist losing its overseeing role. Having a smaller pool of cities may already be happening: only Paris and Los Angeles bid for the 2024 games, with the latter awarded 2028 without a competition. Brisbane was selected for 2032 under a new IOC process whereby its Future Host Commission identifies a preferred candidate.

In an idealised world, perhaps cities could compete to show which can deliver the most sustainable Olympics, thus earning a genuine gold.

It’s still not coming home, but sustainable stadiums must be the real winners

As the collective #Euro2024 heartbreak in England heals and the national delirium in Spain recedes, organisers must ensure the #cities hosting the next football championship promote genuine #sustainability.

A football stadium has immense potential to contribute to the sustainability of a city through the three pillars of the economy, society and the environment. The economic angle is easy to cover with ticket sales, hospitality and travel pulling wealth and activity into the area.

The social aspect is also often evident. The jobs created directly and indirectly by the stadium are a boost to the local labour force. But on top of that is the incalculable benefits of the feeling of local solidarity that matches create.

So, it is the environmental side that is harder to see as a positive. The construction of a stadium will create emissions embedded into the structure, waiting to be released at the time of redevelopment, while travel to and from games will add to that. But increasingly stadium owners have seen the potential to make the buildings and the surrounding activity less environmentally harmful and thus more sustainable.

A good place to start is the Berlin Olimpiastadion, where the 14 July Euro 2024 final was held. Just two months before the match its Green Globe Standard 1.7 certificate was renewed for a third time. This assessment of the sustainability performance of companies in the travel and tourism industry recognised the conversion of the roof lighting in favour of energy-saving LED lighting and the construction of a photovoltaic system on the stadium roof.

The stadium company has, appropriately, set itself “goals” of conducting business in an “ecologically, economically and socially sustainable way and using its resources responsibly, sustainably and sparingly”. It aims to minimise the use, and to conserve, resources of water, heat and electricity and has even set up bee hives within the stadium’s grounds.

While fans are unlikely to shun their club and switch allegiance to another because it fails to deliver sustainable outcomes, these benefits will be watched closely by local authorities and investors that have their own targets to hit.

Passing forward

For those reasons, perhaps, there has been a noticeable trend by stadiums in the UK and around the world to both implement — and broadcast — the sustainability gains they have achieved.

One to grab the most headline despite its League Two status is Forest Green Rovers in Nailsworth near Stroud, that is owned by green energy industrialist Dale Vince. It went fully vegan in 2016 and in 2018 became the first club in the world to be certified carbon neutral by the Climate Neutral Now initiative run by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is looking to build a new Eco-Park stadium made almost entirely of wood while more than 80 per cent of its energy will come from on-site solar and wind power.

At the other end of the football hierarchy is the Premiership’s Tottenham Hotspur whose stadium and training centre, that were completed in 2019, are powered by 100% renewable energy. The owners have established an ecological habitat at the training centre by planting hundreds of new and semi-mature trees and tens of thousands of new plants, hedges and flowers.

In the Netherlands, a country famous for its windmills, the Johan Cruijff ArenA, home to Amsterdam’s Ajax football club, is powered by a modern wind turbine north of the city and 4,200 solar panels on the stadium roof. Within the Global South, Brazil’s Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro stands out. It was upgraded ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup to include more than 1,500 solar panels on its roof. According to the consultancy CTE that was brought in to advise, it cut the use of drinkable water by 71 per cent by using entirely reused water for its toilets and urinals.

Sustainability game changers

These stadiums are exemplary but given the tens of thousands of similar facilities around the world, it will be essential that all new-build and renovated stadiums include similar guidelines in their construction.

There may be some way to go. Academic research found that while the green certification process had been a “game changer” with venues increasingly seeking such approval, there was still room for them to become public statements about achieving climate goals rather than just “awkward” structures.

In other words, it is not enough just to reduce the negative environmental impacts of their activities — noble as that is. They need to use their facilities and surrounding grounds to make positive contributions to both the environment and the local community. One example would be using the infrastructure as a venue not just for sporting events but, during times when it would otherwise be shut, as a platform for education and community-based initiatives and a hub for regeneration.

Hopefully individual initiatives such as Eco-Park’s wood-based construction, ArenA’s solar panels and Maracanã’s reusable toilet water can become part of a checklist that developers of new environmentally sustainable stadiums need to tick off. As UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said at 2002’s International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, athletes, managers and clubs can contribute towards tackling climate change.

Tournament organisers can also make their mark, as FIFA may have done at the Qatar 2022 World Cup where it said the estimated 3.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions has been entirely offset, a claim rejected by critics as greenwashing.

Football fans globally will now turn their eyes towards the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States, the latter often featuring in lists of the most sustainable stadiums. The final almost exactly two years away in the New York New Jersey Stadium must be a trophy for tackling climate change.