Evaluation of Mobile Source Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Assessment of Traffic Management Strategies
Qinyi Shi and Lei Yu, Texas Southern University, August 2011, 85 pp. (161142-1)
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in investigating the air quality benefits of traffic management strategies in light of challenges associated with the global warming and climate change. However, there has been a lack of systematic effort to study the impact of a specific traffic management strategy on mobile source Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This research is intended to evaluate mobile source GHG emissions for traffic management strategies, in which a Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS) is used to collect the vehicle’s real-world emission and activity data, and a Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) based modeling approach is used as the basis for emission estimation. Three traffic management strategies are selected in this research, including High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane, traffic signal coordination plan, and Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). In the HOV lane scenario, CO2 emission factors produced by the testing vehicle using HOV lane and the corresponding mixed flow lane are compared. In the evaluation of traffic signal coordination, total CO2 emissions produced under the existing coordinated signal timing and the emulated non-coordinated signal timing along the same designed testing route are compared. In the study about ETC, total CO2 emissions produced by the testing vehicle around an ETC station and a Manual Toll Collection (MTC) station located on the same toll road segment are estimated and compared. The results demonstrated that HOV lane, well-coordinated signal timing, and ETC are all effective measures to reduce mobile source GHG emissions, although the level of effectiveness is shown to be different for different strategies.
Keywords: Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, Vehicle Specific Power (VSP), Traffic Management Strategy, Evaluation Method, Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS)
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