Improvement of Default Local MOVES Input Data for the 2011 National Emissions Inventory

The Coordinating Research Council (CRC) sponsored a project to develop improved inputs for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA’s) Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES), for use in the 2011 U.S. National Emissions Inventory (NEI). Under contract with CRC, Eastern Research Group (ERG) identified the most promising MOVES inputs for improvement, and performed a detailed review of candidate data sources for each. ERG then developed improved defaults for passenger car and light truck age distributions and populations and long-haul truck vehicle miles travelled (VMT) allocations. Age distributions and vehicle populations were developed for every county in the U.S. based on vehicle registration data purchased from IHS, Inc. The age distributions showed an average age range of 4 to 16 years for cars and trucks vs. MOVES national default of 9 years. Long-haul truck VMT allocations were derived from the 2007 Freight Analysis Framework (FAF), producing unique allocations by region of the country, urban/rural and interstate/non-interstate, and are intended to replace the uniform long-haul allocations currently used in MOVES. The updated long-haul fractions for combination trucks varied by region of the country, road type and urban/rural area, ranging from around 30 percent on urban unrestricted roads, to up to 90 percent for some rural restricted roads, in comparison to a static MOVES default of 59 percent. These updates will be used in the 2011 NEI, and provide a resource for emissions modelers at the federal, regional, state and municipal levels to improve local inventory and air quality modeling.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC20 Transportation and Air Quality.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Koupal, John
  • DeFries, Timothy
  • Palacios, Cindy
  • DenBleyker, Allison
  • Perez, Heather
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality; Counties; Data collection; Passenger vehicles; Pollutants; Trucks; Vehicle characteristics; Vehicle miles of travel
• Identifier Terms: Freight Analysis Framework; Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES); National Emissions Inventory
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I15: Environment; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01554269
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-5124
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 26 2015 9:49AM