Truck transport emissions model

Abstract

In the past, transportation related economic analysis has considered agency related costs only. However, transportation managers are moving towards more holistic economic analysis including road user and environmental costs and benefits. In particular, transportation air pollution is causing increasing harm to health and the environment. Transport managers are now considering related emissions in transport economical analyses, and have established strategies to help meet Kyoto Protocol targets, which specified a fifteen percent reduction in Canada's emissions related to 1990 levels within 2008-2012.The objectives of this research are to model heavy vehicle emissions using a emissions computer model which is able to assess various transport applications, and help improve holistic economic transport modeling. Two case studies were evaluated with the model developed.Firstly, the environmental benefits of deploying weigh-in-motion systems at weigh stations to pre-sort heavy vehicles and reduce delays were assessed. The second case study evaluates alternative truck sizes and road upgrades within short heavy oilfield haul in Western Canada. The model developed herein employed a deterministic framework from a sensitivity analysis across independent variables, which identified the most sensitive variables to primary field state conditions. The variables found to be significant included idling time for the weigh-in-motion case study, road stiffness and road grades for the short heavy haul oilfield case study.According to this research, employing WIM at weigh stations would reduce annual Canadian transportation CO2 emissions by nearly 228 kilo tonnes, or 1.04 percent of the Canadian Kyoto Protocol targets. Regarding direct fuel savings, WIM would save from 90 to 190 million litres of fuel annually, or between $59 and $190 million of direct operating costs.Regarding the short heavy oil haul case study, increasing allowable heavy vehicle sizes while upgrading roads could decrease the annual emissions, the fuel consumption, and their associated costs by an average of 68 percent. Therefore, this could reduce each rural Saskatchewan municipality's annual CO2 emissions from 13 to 26.7-kilo tonnes, which translates to 0.06 and 0.12 percent of the Canadian Kyoto Protocol targets or between $544,000 and $ 1.1 million annually. Based on these results, the model demonstrates its functionality, and was successfully applied to two typical transportation field state applications. The model generated emissions savings results that appear to be realistic, in terms of potential Kyoto targets, as well as users cost reductions and fuel savings.