Pollutant emissions have been a topic of interest in the last decades. Not only environmentalists but also governments are taking rapid action to reduce emissions. As one of the main contributors, the transport sector is being subjected to strict scrutiny to ensure it complies with the short and long-term regulations. The measures imposed by governments clearly involve all the stakeholders in the logistics sector, from road authorities and logistic operators to truck manufacturers. The improvement of traffic conditions is one of the perspectives in which the reduction of emissions is being addressed. Optimization of traffic flow, avoidance of unnecessary stops, control of the cruise speed, and coordination of trips in an energy-efficient way are necessary steps to remain compliant with the upcoming regulations. In this study, we have estimated the CO2 and NOx emissions in heavy-duty vehicles while traversing signalized intersections, and we examined the differences between various behavioral scenarios. We found a consistent trend indicating that avoiding a stop can potentially reduce CO2 and NOx emissions by up to 0.32kg and 1.8g, respectively. Furthermore, an upper bound for the yearly CO2 savings is provided for the case of The Netherlands. A reduction of 3.2% of the total CO2 emitted by heavy-duty vehicles is estimated. These results put traffic control in the main scene as a yet unexplored dimension to control pollutant emissions, enabling authorities to more accurately estimate cost–benefit plans for traffic control system investments.
Pollutant emissions have been a topic of interest in the last decades. Not only environmentalists but also governments are taking rapid action to reduce emissions. As one of the main contributors, the transport sector is being subjected to strict scrutiny to ensure it complies with the short and longterm regulations. The measures imposed by the governments clearly involve, all the stakeholders in the logistics sector, from road authorities and logistic operators to truck manufacturers. Improvement of traffic conditions is one of the perspectives in which the reduction of emissions is being addressed. Optimization of traffic flow, avoidance of unnecessary stops, control of the cruise speed, and coordination of trips in an energy-efficient way are necessary steps to remain compliant with the upcoming regulations. In this study, we have measured the CO2 and NOx emissions in heavy-duty vehicles while traversing signalized intersections and we examined the differences between various scenarios. We found that avoiding a stop can reduce CO2 and NOx emissions on 0.32 kg and 1.8 g, respectively. These results put traffic control in the main scene as a yet unexplored dimension to control pollutant emissions, enabling the authorities to more accurately estimate cost-benefit plans for traffic control system investments. Fuel Consumption, CO2 and NOx EmissionsDepending on the degree of development of the country, domestic logistics costs account for 5% to 20% of a country's GDP of which about 60% are transportation costs [Havenga and Pienaar 2012, Ittmann andKing 2010]. Although the global road to rail modal split ratio is estimated to be 60:40, this varies significantly from one country to another. Specifically, in Latin America and China, the percentage of rail transport is below 25% and it is under 40% for the United States Kaack et al. [2018]. The European Union is more heterogeneous; the estimations of the road-rail modal split vary from 34% Kaack et al. [2018] to 17% [Blauwens et al. 2006]. Rail dominates in a few countries that share certain characteristics, i.e., they span large areas with very irregular population distribution as Australia, Russia and Canada. Furthermore, in the last ten years, the share of road freight activity showed to be increasing with respect to rail freight worldwide [Kaack et al. 2018].At the same time, the transport industry is a significant source of NO x emission as well as greenhouse gases such as CO 2 . As of 2015, the transportation sector was responsible for 7% of the total CO 2 energy-related emissions [Kaack et al. 2018]. In the European Union, transportation overall is responsible for 14% of CO 2 emissions as well as a main contributor to the overall NO x emissions [Dekker et al. 2012]. Road and rail transport emissions together account for 32% of the total NO x of the United States [Bickford 2012, Hwang andOuyang 2013].Furthermore, freight transport, which is highly dominated by trucks, constitutes 25% of U.S. total CO 2 emissions [Ang-Olson and Ostria 2005, Hwang and Ouyang 2013]....
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