Integration Modeling Framework for Estimating Mobile Source Emissions

Abstract

Transportation network improvements are commonly evaluated by estimating average speeds from a transportation/traffic model and converting them into emission estimates using an environmental model such as MOBILE or EMFAC. Unfortunately, recent research has demonstrated that average speed, and perhaps even simple estimates of the amount of delay and the number of vehicle stops on a roadway, is insufficient to fully capture the environmental impacts of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) strategies such as adaptive traffic signal control. Specifically, for the same average speed, one can observe widely different instantaneous speed and acceleration profiles, each resulting in very different fuel consumption and emission levels. In an attempt to address this limitation, the paper presents the