Modeling reduced traffic emissions in urban areas: The impact of demand control, banning trucks, speed restriction and adaptive cruise control on vehicle emissions at a single intersection

In many countries traffic emissions have significantly increased during the last two decades due to the increased number of vehicles. As such, traffic emissions have become the main source of air pollution in urban areas, where breaches of the European Union (EU) limit values frequently occur. To reduce these emissions, local traffic measures can be implemented complementary to regional and national measures. In this paper the impact of various traffic measures at a single intersection is investigated using a traffic model and an emission model. The measures included are traffic demand control, banning Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDVs), speed restriction and Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC). It was found that reducing traffic demand by 20% led to about 23% reduction in terms of CO2, NOx and PM10 emissions. Banning HDVs led to a significant reduction of NOx and PM10 emissions. Although speed restriction reduced CO2 emissions by 7%, both NOx and PM10 emissions increased, especially from HDVs. ACC reduced both CO2 and NOx by 3%, but increased PM10 by 3%. Finally, the paper briefly discussed the approach of how cooperative road-vehicle systems can be used to reduce traffic emissions in urban areas.