Set of Comparable Carbon Footprints for Highway Travel in Metropolitan America

Abstract

The writers describe the development of a set of carbon dioxide emissions estimates for highway travel by automobile, truck, bus, and other public transit vehicle movements within the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas in calendar year 2005. Considerable variability is found to exist across metropolitan areas when these greenhouse gas emissions are measured on a per capita and a per gross metropolitan product (GMP) basis. Least square and spatial error regression modeling show a relationship among emissions per capita and per GMP with truck traffic share, transit share, employment density, population dispersion within the metro area, and GMP per capita. As a result, many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas tend to have lower