Environment

Life-Cycle Environmental Inventory of Passenger Transportation in the United States

Chester, Mikhail V
2008

Energy use and emission factors for passenger transportation modes typically ignore the total environmental inventory which includes vehicle non-operational components (e.g., vehicle manufacturing and maintenance), infrastructure components, and fuel production components from design through end-of-life processes. A life-cycle inventory for each mode is necessary to appropriately address and attribute the transportation sector’s energy and emissions impacts to reduction goals instead of allowing tailpipe emissions to act as indicators of total system performance.

The contributions...

2001: An Airspace Odyssey Summary Proceedings of the 2001 Airport Noise Symposium and Airport Air Quality Symposium

Gosling, Geoffrey D.
2001

These proceedings summarize the presentations made at the 16th Airport Noise Symposium and 2nd Airport Air Quality Symposium, organized by the Technology Transfer Program of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and held in San Diego, California, from February 25 to March 2, 2001. The presentation slides for many of the presentations at both symposia are available on the ITS Technology Transfer Program website at. The symposia were organized in conjunction with the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal...

Zero-Emission Vehicle Exposure Within U.S. Carsharing Fleets and Impacts on Sentiment Toward Electric-Drive Vehicles

Shaheen, Susan
Martin, Elliot
Totte, Hannah
2020

Reducing carbon emissions from the United States (U.S.) transportation sector has emerged as a priority action to combat climate change. Carsharing and zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) could be integral to creating a more sustainable transportation system. This paper presents the results of a study that evaluated the impacts of ZEV exposure on U.S. carsharing users. Surveys were administered to control and experimental groups of carsharing members that used shared PHEVs or EVs. Results showed that users who drove shared PHEVs or EVs more frequently were more likely to exhibit improved ZEV...

Using Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) to Form High-Performance Vehicle Streams: Simulation Results Analysis

Liu, Hao
Kan, Xingan (David)
Shladover, Steven E.
Lu, Xiao-Yun
2018

This document contains detailed simulation results analysis and discussion for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) project entitled Using Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) to Form High-Performance Vehicle Streams. The objective of this study is to obtain authoritative predictions of traffic impacts of ACC and CACC at various market penetrations and define the CACC operation strategies that create the most capacity and throughput improvement in the freeway traffic stream. A microscopic traffic simulation environment has been developed for...

Travinfo Evaluation (Technology Element) Traveler Information Center (TIC) Study: Operator Interface Component-Phase IV: Institutional Analysis

Miller, Mark
Loukakos, Dimitri
1998

TravInfo is a Field Operational Test of advanced traveler information systems for the San Francisco Bay Area, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The project involves a public/private partnership which seeks to compile, integrate and broadly disseminate timely and accurate multi-modal traveler information through commercial products and services. The public sector component centers on the Traveler Information Center (TIC), which collects and integrates both static and dynamic traveler information. The TIC began operations in September 1996 and operates as an FOT through...

Potential Drivers of Urban Green Space Availability in Latin American Cities

Bakhtsiyarava, M
Moran, M
Ju, Y
Zhou, Y
Rodriguez, DA
Dronova, I
de Pina, M
de Matos, V
Skaba, D
2024

Urban green spaces play a critical role in regulating air temperature, reducing air pollution and enhancing people’s well being. Yet, existing data and research on potential drivers of urban green space availability in Latin America are limited. Here, focusing on 371 large cities in 11 countries in Latin America, we described the total and per capita variability of urban green space, its spatial configuration and green urban parks across the categories of cities’ natural, built and socioeconomic environments. We tested the relative importance of geographic (climate) versus city-level...

Giving Cycling the Green Light: An Overview of Transportation in Ireland and the Design of the National Cycle Network

Manton, Richard
2013

Similarly to the US, driving a car to work continues to gain ground in Ireland and the country is presented with major challenges in environment and health as a consequence. In safety, at least, Ireland has had some major successes. In 40 years, the number of fatalities has fallen from 640 to 162, a drop of 75%. Such improvements in road safety have been attributed to a combination of education, enforcement and engineering. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have each fallen by 66% in 20 years, however, this could be attributed to the lower numbers of people walking and cycling....

Sharing Strategies: Carsharing, Shared Micromobility (Bikesharing and Scooter Sharing), Transportation Network Companies, Microtransit, and other Innovative Mobility Modes

Shaheen, Susan
Cohen, Adam
Chan, Nelson
Bansal, Apaar
2019

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. It includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, scooter sharing, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit. Included in this ecosystem are smartphone “apps” that aggregate and optimize these mobility options, as well as “courier network services” that provide last mile package and food delivery. This chapter describes different...

An Improvement on the End-of-Life of High-Speed Rail Rolling Stocks Considering CFRP Composite Material Replacement

Rungskunroch, Panrawee
Kaewunreuen, Sakdirat
Shen, Zuo-Jun
2019

It is undeniably true that transportation systems positively impact human life but, the use of transportation systems also emits green house gasses in the environment which leads to global warming. In this day and age, various technologies are being combined with transportation systems, aimed at reducing the global impact of greenhouse gas emissions. The high-speed rail (HSR), which is well-known for low CO2emissions, has continually been improved, especially its model. In this study, the material replacement method is taken to account for a feasibility study on the next model of the HSR....

Joint PEV Charging Network and Distributed PV Generation Planning Based on Accelerated Generalized Benders Decomposition

Zhang, Hongcai
Moura, Scott J.
Hu, Zechun
Qi, Wei
Song, Yonghua
2018

Integration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) with distributed renewable power sources will reduce PEVs' well-to-wheels greenhouse gas emissions, promote renewable power adoption, and defer power system investments. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary approach to jointly plan PEV charging stations and distributed photovoltaic (PV) power plants on a coupled transportation and power network. We formulate a two-stage stochastic programming model to determine the sites and sizes of: 1) PEV charging stations and 2) PV power plants. This proposed method incorporates comprehensive models of...