How do road grade, road type and driving aggressiveness impact vehicle fuel consumption? Assessing potential fuel savings in Lisbon, Portugal

The transportation sector contributes significantly to energy consumption with inherent consequences in terms of emission of local pollutants, which is associated with air quality deterioration. Considering that driving behavior significantly influences fuel consumption, this work goal was to assess how driving aggressiveness is influenced by the type of road and by the road grade, and consequently their impacts on fuel consumption. For that purpose, 47 drivers were monitored in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area during 6 months, allowing building an extensive 1 Hz real world driving database (∼33,000 trips, totalizing 28.9 million seconds). This database provided distinctive and representative data, allowing assessing the impacts on fuel consumption rates. Results showed that both road context and aggressive driving behavior impact fuel consumption rates significantly. However, for non-aggressive driving behavior fuel consumption rates increased more with road grade increments (up to 3 times) than for aggressive driving behavior (up to 2.3 times). Furthermore, this study results demonstrated that aggressiveness influences fuel consumption differently across road grades. Aggressiveness impacts are higher for lower road grades, with increased fuel consumption rates by up to 255%. The key findings associated to this research work are that aggressiveness on roads with lower grades tends to correlate with higher percent increase on fuel consumption for all speed ranges. Moreover, aggressiveness seems to correlate with higher fuel consumption on urban streets. Consequently, a reduction in driving under these conditions can offer significant savings in fuel consumption.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.04.016
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136192091831157X
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/13619209
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Faria, Marta V
  • Duarte, Gonçalo O
  • Varella, Roberto A
  • Farias, Tiago L
  • Baptista, Patrícia C
• Publication Date: 2019-7

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 148-161
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
  • Volume: 72
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 1361-9209
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13619209

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Fuel consumption; Highway grades; Types of roads; Urban highways
• Candidate Terms: Aggressive driving
• Geographic Terms: Lisbon (Portugal)
• Subject Areas: Energy; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01704961
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 21 2019 11:06AM