Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Using Congestion Pricing to Reduce Carbon Emissions

Research on Urban Road Congestion Pricing Strategy Considering Carbon Dioxide Emissions (20 page pdf, Yitian Wang, Zixuan Peng, Keming Wang, Xiaolin Song, Baozhen Yao, and Tao Feng, Sustainability, Aug. 6, 2015)

Today we review research into models of congestion pricing to reduce both traffic congestion and the emissions that are produced by stop and go traffic- something that is not usually considered when planning congestion pricing because of the difficulty in measuring actual road emissions. The fact that road emissions make up 80% of transportation GHG emissions makes this assessment very important when emission reduction, especially in cities, is the goal. Results indicate that achieving both objectives is feasible with emissions falling by 19%, and modal car use falling from 70% to 56% with increased use of public transit. congestion pricing and ghgs  

Key Quotes:

“traffic congestion affects the efficiency and quality of life, such as lengthening travel time, increasing travel delays and resulting in traffic accidents…. [also]aggravates environmental pollution, such as reducing the use of fuel, increasing energy consumption and increasing pollutant emissions reduction

 “emissions of motor vehicles are high in cases of stop-and-go traffic and in high-speed situations.”

“congestion pricing strategy has been recognized as one of the most effective countermeasures of traffic demand management (TDM) to mitigate traffic congestion.. can effectively transfer the car users to the public transportation and mitigate traffic congestion”

“In 2008, road emissions accounted for 80% of the total emission in the transportation sector, which has since then increased continuously…carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on roads in urban centers substantially affect global warming.”

“Comparing the carbon emissions before and after the implementation of congestion pricing..the total carbon emission reduces from 121.22 (ton/h) to 98.31 (ton/h), which falls 18.9%. This is because traffic congestion pricing can increase the total cost by car, transfer the car users to the public transportation and reduce the car traffic flow reduce dramatically”

“The share rate of bus increases from 30.1% to 43.7%, while the share rate of car decreases from 69.9% to 56.3%.”

 ‘the scheme proposed in this paper can mitigate traffic congestion and reduce carbon emissions more effectively than the other two schemes. This is because traffic congestion pricing considering the carbon emissions costs can adjust the structure of urban traffic and thus to create a low carbon city.”

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