Impact of Traffic Congestions on Energy Consumption and Emissions

Road traffic contributes a major share of emissions and energy consumption. A shift to other transportation modes is often seen as an approach to combat the emissions. A shift is not always possible in some regions where other transportation modes are not sufficiently developed due to low population density or other reasons. This paper discusses possibility of combating emissions and energy consumption by optimization of traffic management. Traffic microsimulation models were used to obtain vehicle trajectories for calculation of emissions. It has been shown that traffic volume and management have significant impact on vehicle emissions. A possibility of application of an emissions model and of vehicle specific power (VSP) model was used in a case study. The VSP has several benefits over conventional emission models in cases where vehicles are powered by alternative drive-trains.