The Effect of Nonlocal Vehicle Restriction Policy on Air Quality in Shanghai

In recent years, road space rationing policies have been increasingly applied as a traffic management solution to tackle congestion and traffic emission problems in big cities. Existing studies on the effect of traffic policy on air quality have mainly focused on the odd–even day traffic restriction policy or one-day-per-week restriction policy. There are few studies paying attention to the effect of nonlocal license plate restrictions on air quality in Shanghai. Restrictions toward nonlocal vehicles usually prohibit vehicles with nonlocal license plates from entering certain urban areas or using certain subsets of the road network (e.g., the elevated expressway) during specific time periods on workdays. To investigate the impact of such a policy on the residents’ exposure to pollutants, CO concentration and Air Quality Index (AQI) were compared during January and February in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Regression discontinuity (RD) was used to test the validity of nonlocal vehicle restriction on mitigating environmental pollution. Several conclusions can be made: (1) CO concentration was higher on ground-level roads on the restriction days than those in the non-restriction days; (2) The extension of the restriction period exposed the commuters to high pollution for a longer time on the ground, which will do harm to them; and (3) The nonlocal vehicle restriction policy did play a role in improving the air quality in Shanghai when extending the evening rush period. Additionally, some suggestions are mentioned in a bid to improve air quality and passenger health and safety.

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

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Li, Junjie
  • Li, Xiao-Bing
  • Li, Bai
  • Peng, Zhong-Ren
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 6p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality management; Carbon monoxide; Exhaust gases; License plates; Peak hour traffic; Traffic mitigation
• Uncontrolled Terms: Nonresidents
• Geographic Terms: Shanghai (China)
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Policy; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01698061
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-03608
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM