Quantitative analysis of pollutant emissions in the context of demand responsive transport

Abstract

Nowadays, transport contributes significantly towards environmental problems (about 50% of the total CO and NOx). To date, most environmental issues due to transport have focused on general transportation methods. On the other hand, a popular approach of transport - Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) - has been studied for various aspects but rarely from the perspective of environmental issues. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of DRTs on pollutant emissions. For this purpose, we adapt a method established by European research co-operation - Methodologies for Estimation of Emissions from Transport (MEET). We create a specific model to estimate the pollution of a DRT system (GREEN-DRT) adapted from the MEET. We simulate DRT operation on three overlapping territories in France. The results show that optimising the DRT induces a significant decrease of pollutant emission due to the reduction of vehicles and travelled distances. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.