The Estimation of CO₂ Emission from Road Vehicles by Traffic Macro-Simulation

Abstract

Remarkable growth of population and mobility needs in the last century, especially in urban areas, is associated with air pollution. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from road vehicles is the main concern about the sustainability of road transport. The main factor derived from anthropogenic activities that contribute to increased greenhouse effect is CO₂. This is the main product resulting from the combustion process that occurs during operation of thermal self-propelled vehicle. In this paperwork is estimated the volume of CO₂ from road vehicles depending on speed. The case study is conducted for a medium sized city in Romania, Bistrita. The average speed of the vehicles on urban road network, the structure and volume of traffic flow were determined by transport modeling macro-simulation of road traffic using PTV-VISUM specialized software. The variation curves of CO₂ volume according to the average speed used in this application has been validated for the structure of national fleet in the document Romania—Technical assistance for the elaboration of the General Transport Master Plan. These were determined according to CORINAIR methodology agreed by European Environment Agency, for the following categories: cars, light trucks, medium trucks and heavy trucks. Applying the methodology of calculation of CO₂ based on average travel speed integrated with traffic modeling (knowing the average travel speed and the number of vehicles of existing categories on each segment of road network) allows the estimation of the volume of CO₂ from mobile sources (vehicles) on any road network segments analyzed.