The Impact of Different Organizational Forms of Road Public Transport on Distance Covered and Atmospheric Pollution

The operation of road public transport services that minimize pollutants emissions plays a key role in improving air quality in urban areas, so that considerable financial resources are employed to buy buses with innovative propulsive systems. However municipalities in poorer countries might not have sufficient funds to endow their fleets with such vehicles. This paper assesses the possibility of lowering distances traveled and emissions by changing the organizational form of the service. The paper considers a traditional bus service and a demand responsive service using buses or vans, and the paper identifies the best system for every combination of levels of demand and of service quality, as concerns travels and emissions minimization. The analysis is repeated for different urban patterns and street networks. Results indicate that the use of a demand responsive service can lower distances covered when the demand is quite low but a good quality is required, provided that service requests are known in advance. Furthermore, the utilization of smaller vans with lower emission factors can give substantial benefits concerning atmospheric pollution, with an increase of kilometers traveled that is often negligible.

• Corporate Authors:

  World Conference on Transport Research Society

  Secretariat, 14 Avenue Berthelot
  69363 Lyon cedex 07,   France 
• Authors:
  • Diana, Marco
  • Pronello, Cristina
• Conference:
  • 10th World Conference on Transport Research
  • Location: Istanbul , Turkey
  • Date: 2004-7-4 to 2004-7-8
• Publication Date: 2004

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: 10th World Conference on Transport Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air pollution; Air quality management; Bus traffic; Bus transit; Bus transportation; Demand responsive transportation; Diesel engine exhaust gases; Exhaust gases; Paratransit services; Public transit
• Subject Areas: Motor Carriers; Public Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01088032
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 30 2008 11:54AM