This paper describes tailpipe emission results generated by the Vehicle Performance and Emissions Monitoring system (VPEMS). VPEMS integrates on‐board emissions and vehicle/driver performance measurements with positioning and communications technologies, to transmit a coherent spatio‐temporally referenced dataset to a central base station in near real time. These results focus on relationships between tailpipe emissions of CO, CO2, NOx and speed and acceleration. Emissions produced by different driving modes are also presented. Results are generally as one would expect, showing variation between vehicle speed, vehicle acceleration and emissions. Data is based upon a test run in central London on urban streets with speeds not exceeding about 65 km/h. The results presented demonstrate the capabilities of the system. Various issues remain with regard to validation of the data and expansion of the system capability to obtain additional vehicle performance data.

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The vehicle emissions and performance monitoring system: analysis of tailpipe emissions and vehicle performance

This paper reviews recent changes to transport policy in the UK. This is discussed within the context of changes from policies of “predict and provide” to an integrated transport policy and the role of new knowledge on induced travel effects. New assessment procedures including the move towards strategic environmental assessment and how this could best be practiced in the transport sector are discussed. These issues are viewed in terms of proposed ideal assessment procedures which would focus on the objectives of transport policy and how this is clearly linked to changes in accessibility and economic effects as shown by simple urban economic theory. A brief case study review of new assessment procedures in practice is provided with critical comments on whether these have led to improvements in decision making, especially from an environmental perspective as well as from stated government policy goals. Finally, these issues are discussed in the context of lessons for improving transport and air quality planning in Mexico City.

Transport Policy and Assessment Procedures in the United Kingdom: Lessons for the Federal District of Mexico City

Problems posed by the environmental impact of transport are serious, growing and constitute a major challenge to policy makers at all levels. The current array of technological, institutional and planning tools available to deal with these problems are inadequate and need urgently to be upgraded. A key feature of these problems is that they arise from the interaction of human behavioural systems and physical systems. Thus, to improve our understanding of environmental and health problems associated with vehicle emissions, it is necessary to combine data on both travel and traffic behaviour with environmental data. This requires simultaneous data on travel, traffic and environmental variables. There are currently no such integrated databases available in the United Kingdom, and the inability to collect self-consistent traffic, travel and environmental data is a major impediment to the development of the necessary scientific underpinning for effective policy interventions. This paper presents a high level description of a real-time global positioning system based vehicle performance and emissions monitoring system currently under development in the UK, to contribute to the realisation of the data requirements highlighted above.

Ruthven Evans

Papers

Monitoring real-time vehicle performance and emissions