Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

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Atmospheric Environment
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosenv

Trafc and emission simulation in China based on statistical methodology

Huan Liu a, b, *, Kebin He a, Matthew Barth b
a
b

Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China
Center of Environmental Research & Technology, University of California at Riverside, CA 91765, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 12 July 2010
Received in revised form
28 October 2010
Accepted 30 October 2010

To better understand how the trafc control can affect vehicle emissions, a novel TRafc And Vehicle
Emission Linkage (TRAVEL) approach was developed based on local trafc activity and emission data.
This approach consists of a two-stage mapping from general trafc information to trafc ow patterns,
and then to the aggregated emission rates. 39 trafc ow patterns and corresponding emission rates for
light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles considering emission standards classication are generated. As a case
study, vehicle activity and emissions during the Beijing Olympics were simulated and compared to BAU
scenario. Approximately 42e65% of the gaseous pollutants and 24% of the particle pollutants from cars,
taxies and buses were reduced. These results are validated by trafc and air quality monitoring data
during the Olympics, as well as other emission inventory studies. This approach improves the ability to
fast predict emission variation from trafc control measurements in several typical Chinese cities.
Comments related to application of this approach with both advantages and limitations are included.
2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords:
Trafc ow
Vehicle emission
Simulation
Olympic case

1. Introduction
Transportation has become a major source of air pollution in
Chinese cities (Streets and Waldhoff, 2000; Yi et al., 2007).
Increasingly strict vehicle emission regulations and the low sulfur
fuel program have reduced vehicle emission factors in China (Hao
and Wang, 2005; Cai and Xie, 2007). Nevertheless, there is
a concern that these strategies are not enough to curtail emissions,
considering the Chinas strong economic growth and continued
expansion of the transportation system. Therefore, government is
also seeking transportation system solutions. As such, better tools
are needed to evaluate vehicle emissions for different transportation system scenarios. These tools should include not only
emission models, but also corresponding vehicle activity models.
Traditional vehicle emission models can be classied into two
major types: top-down and bottom-up. Well known Top-down
models, such as MOBILE (Robinson et al., 1996), COPERT (Kouridis
et al., 2000; Ntziachristos, 2000), EMFAC and ARTEMIS (Keller and
Kljun, 2007), are widely used for transport environment planning
with static approaches to estimate total trafc emission, especially
scenarios analysis for future (Buron et al., 2005; Lumbreras et al.,
2008; Zhang et al., 2008). However, reliance on travel forecasting
models that are based on steady state hourly averages is incapable

* Corresponding author. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering,

Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China. Tel./fax: 86 10 62794331.
E-mail address: liuhuan00@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn (H. Liu).
1352-2310/$ e see front matter 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.10.051

of capturing the effects of trafc variations in the transportation

network (Nesamani et al., 2007). With recent concerns on
management of dynamic trafc emission, bottom-up emission
models have become a research focus due to their ner resolution, better accuracy and capability of evaluating emission
through dynamic trafc control and operations e.g. signal control
(Rakha et al., 2000; Li et al., 2004), dynamic trafc management
(Panis et al., 2006), and trafc calming (Ahn and Rakha, 2009).
The bottom-up emission models, e.g. MOVES project level function (EPA, 2009), IVE (Lents and Davis, 2004) and CMEM (An
et al., 1997; Scora et al., 2004), estimate vehicle emissions based
on instantaneous statues of individual vehicle on roads e.g.
vehicle speed, acceleration, engine performance index etc.
Unfortunately, getting instantaneous parameters by trafc survey
can be costly and time consuming; further, they often are unable
to project the effectiveness of future trafc measures. Thus static
trafc assignment models were used to derive vehicle activity
proles from more aggregate information. Researchers (Smit
et al., 2008; Bai et al., 2007; Nesamani et al., 2007) generated
speed distributions through trafc assignment models for
Amsterdam and California to improved emission inventories.
Hatzopoulou and Miller (2010) and Namdeo et al. (2002) developed emission modules to interfaces with trafc assignment
models for the Greater Toronto Area and a large UK city respectively. All the researches conrmed that using activity-based
transport models for air quality purposes is important but
models that have been developed along these lines are still scarce
(Beckx et al., 2009).

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

In addition to these methodology problems, another important

issue is that most well-developed models are primarily based on
vehicle tests in the U.S. or in Europe. Considerable differences in
emission factors can be found from the models vs. certication or
real-world status, which obviously vary between countries (Harley
et al., 2005; Yao et al., 2007; Chang and Ortolano, 2008; Wang et al.,
2008). Before using those models for China cases, several
researchers have calibrated part of emission factors with available
data sources (Cai and Xie, 2007; Guo et al., 2007). Therefore, theres
an important need for a comprehensive methodology that incorporates a localized emission module along with corresponding
vehicle activity module.
In this study, we have developed a TRafc And Vehicle Emission
Linkage (TRAVEL) methodology which combines the top-down and
bottom-up processes. This paper includes the following parts: (a)
Methodology and Database (b) Case study (c) Validation and (d)
Conclusion and Discussion. An outline for this paper is described in
supporting information (Fig. SI-S1).
2. Methodology and database
2.1. Framework and database
The structural diagram of the TRAVEL is provided in Fig. 1.
Because both the trafc and emission variation are too complex to
be estimated by analytical functions, two mappings are used as the

1155

major prediction components of emissions. Mapping stage I is the

top-down trafc simulation, from aggregated trafc information to
trafc ow patterns (referred to as use ow patterns, described
below), Mapping stage II is the bottom-up emission calculation
process to aggregated emission rates. A more specic description is
included in sections 2.2e2.4.
On-road tests were conducted in China during 2004e2008 to
develop TRAVEL database. More than 200 h trafc video tapes,
4,500,000 seconds of GPS data, 7500 in-use vehicle records,
dynamometer test data and 75 on-board emission tests were
gathered to support the mappings (Table SI-S1). The methodology,
data analysis, and validation for data collections are described in
previous papers (Liu et al., 2007, 2008aec, 2009; Yao et al., 2007).
2.2. Mapping I: ow patterns development
The mapping stage I starts with statistical information on
Chinese cities and becomes more complex because it involves key
distinctions between different ow patterns. Fig. 2 shows a corrected diurnal pattern of trafc volumes based on 200 h trafc
records. In city group I (Beijing and Shanghai), a typical trafc ow
density during the daytime (indicating by vehicle number per lane
per hour) varies from 750 to 1350 on highway and 250e750 on
arterial or residential roads. For city group II (e.g. Tianjin and Xian),
trafc ow density is lower. From the diurnal patterns, it can be
found that during nighttime (10 pm to 6 am), the trafc ows on all

Fig. 1. Framework for TRAVEL approach.

1156

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

Traffic Volume
(Vehicle/Lane/h)

City group I

1400

Hwy
Art
Res

1200
1000
800
600
400

based on different segments: before morning peak hour/ after

afternoon peak hour, non-peak hours, peak hours and extremely
rush hours. Average trafc volume for each segment is calculated.
For each trafc volume class, trafc was dened as congestion or
free ow. A total of thirty-nine different ow patterns were developed as basic trafc ow descriptions in Chinese cities (Table 1). For
example, H1 to H4 (capitalized) represent four congestion-ow
patterns of light-duty vehicle on highway in city group I. H5-H8
represent four free-ow patterns on highway in city group I.

200
2.3. The linkage: vehicle running patterns

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Hour of Day

Traffic Volume
(Vehicle/Lane/h)

City group II

1400

Hwy
Art
Res

1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0

8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Hour of Day

Fig. 2. Trafc ow variation in 24 h.

roads are very low and can be treated as free ows. Trafc ow
variation through dynamic trafc control is more related to day
time trafc. Basically, roads are dened as one of the three types:
highway (Hwy), arterial (Art) and residential (Res). Vehicles are
classied into either light-duty or heavy-duty in all cities. Then the
diurnal patterns (6 am to 10 pm) are divided into hourly segments
to provide multiple trafc ow patterns. Trafc ow classication is

Each ow pattern has a corresponding empirical vehicle

running pattern to represent typical driving behaviors. In the
TRAVEL, vehicle running pattern is described by a combination of
30 vehicle running bins (VRB). VRBs are composed by ten Vehicle
Specic Power (VSP) classes and three Engine Stress (ES) groups
(Fig. SI-S2). Previous research suggests that VSP is signicant in
explaining the variability of transient pollutants concentration
(Clark et al., 2002; Huai et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2008a; Zhai et al.,
2008; Bapat and Gao, 2010). More and more bottom-up emission
models accepted VSP-based approach (Van Mierlo et al., 2004),
e.g. MOVES, CMEM, IVE. However, there is no direct accounting for
emission history effects in VSP-based approach. In other words, the
past historical operational activity (e.g., 10 to 20 s) of the vehicle
was not accounted. It has been shown that the tailpipe emissions
do indeed change based on immediate prior activity. Thus, Engine
stress (ES) is introduced to modeling vehicle emissions as a historical parameter. ES is calculated based on the past 25 s of vehicle
running parameters (Davis et al., 2005). The denition and calculation of VSP and ES were previously reported (Liu et al., 2007).
A total of 4,500,000 GPS data records were measured on-road
using GPS equipped vehicles to describe vehicle running characteristics. Each hour of GPS records is classied into one of the 39
established ow patterns by using the matched trafc video results
(Liu et al., 2007). Averagely, there are 30e50 hourly samples for
each trafc ow pattern. The velocity difference among samples for
each ow pattern is smaller than 3 km h1. Then for each ow
pattern, all GPS records were used to calculate a frequency distribution of VRBs. The VRB percentages for all ow patterns are
provided in the supporting material (Table SI-S2). Comparing the

Table 1
39 trafc ow patterns in Chinese cities.
City

Vehicle

Roads

Trafc Flow vehicle/h/lane

Flow patternsa

Group I

Light-duty vehicle

Freeway

Volume
Congestion
Free
Volume
Congestion
Free
Volume
Congestion
Free
Volume

750e950
H1
H5
250e350
A1
A4
250e350
R1
R3
250e350
B1

950e1150
H2
H6
350e450
A2
A5
350e450
R2
R4
350e450
B2

Volume
Congestion
Free
Volume
Normal
Volume
Normal
Volume
Normal

450e550
h1
h4
200e300
a1
<100
r1
200e300
b1

550e650
h2
h5
300e400
a2
100
r2
300e400
b2

Arterial

Residential

Group II

Heavy-duty vehicle

Arterial

Light-duty vehicle

Freeway

Arterial
Residential
Heavy-duty vehicle
a

Arterial

Flow patterns refer to a classication of different trafc ow types in this research, represented by H1-b4.

1150e1250
H3
H7
450e550
A3
A6
450e550

1250e1350
H4
H8
550e750

R5
450e550
B3

550e750
B4

650e800
h3
h6
400e500
a3

500e600
a4

400e500
b3

500e600
b4

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

vehicle running patterns between congested ow (e.g. H1-H4) and

free-ow (e.g. H5-H8), distinct differences can be found. Average
speeds varied from 26 to 30 km h1 in congestion ow and from 31
to 45 km h1 in free ow. The low-VRB (VRB1-10) percentage in
congestion ow is much higher than in free ow (20e30% vs.
10e20%), reecting more stops and slow speed running episodes in
congestion ow. Beside this, the low-VRB percentage increased
with the trafc volume, reected as the increasing from H1 to H4
and from H5 to H8. As an attempt to analyze the uncertainty of this
ow pattern classication, an F-test was done for the speeds in
congested and free-ow conditions (Table SI-S3). 33% ow patterns
have higher values of P (P > 0.15). There are two major reasons: (1)
average speed could only vary within a certain range. Even though
the ow patterns are different, the average speeds could have only
tiny difference, which increased the P value. (2) This statistical
analysis is only based on the speed values without considering the
VRB distribution patterns. The next step of this research will
include uncertainty analysis from VRB distributions.

PVRB30
BERP

VRB1

1157

Ei t i;P

(1)

SP

BERP is basic emission rates for trafc ow pattern P, g km1; Ei is

emission rates for VRBi, g s1; i stands for VRBs from 1 to 30; ti, P is
vehicle running time in VRBi for trafc ow pattern P, s; SP is total
distance travelled for ow pattern P, km.
Table 2 displays BERs of the 39 ow patterns, including four
pollutants for four vehicle emission classes (before Euro1, Euro 1 to
Euro 3, abbreviated as E0, E1, E2 and E3). For heavy-duty vehicle
ow patterns (B1eB4 and b1eb4), the BERs are based on heavyduty diesel vehicles; for other ow patterns, the BERs are based on
light-duty gasoline cars. The emission rates provide detailed
emission characteristics for various trafc conditions in Chinese
cities.
3. Case study of the Beijing Olympics
3.1. Key factors associated with Olympic emissions

2.4. Mapping II: ow patterns to basic emission rates (BERs)

This second mapping uses a bottom-up approach, aggregating
emission rates of VRBs to basic emission rates (BERs, g km1) of ow
pattern (Eq. (1)). Average emission rates and uncertainty of 30 VRBs
by vehicle category were reported in previous work (Liu et al., 2009).

As an important measure to promote good air quality during the

Beijing Olympics, a two-month vehicle control strategy was introduced (Xinhua, 2008). This strategy was multi-faceted: 1) from July
20 through Sept. 20, 2008, vehicles with even and odd plate
numbers were ordered to stay off the road in turn; 2) use of vehicles

Table 2
Basic emission rates (g km1) for 39 different ow patterns.
HC

H1b
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
H7
H8
A1
A2
A3
A4
A5
A6
R1
R2
R3
R4
R5
h1
h2
h3
h4
h5
h6
a1
a2
a3
a4
r1
r2
B1
B2
B3
B4
b1
b2
b3
b4
a
b

CO

PM

NOx

E0a

E1

E2

E3

E0

E1

E2

E3

E0

E1

E2

E3

E0

E1

E2

E3

1.88
1.87
2.16
2.17
1.38
1.50
1.56
1.92
3.39
2.92
3.17
2.20
2.51
2.49
2.98
3.53
2.16
2.47
2.65
1.92
2.14
2.42
1.60
1.67
1.61
2.13
2.53
2.67
2.96
3.40
3.67
2.81
3.26
3.75
4.57
3.23
3.46
3.65
3.87

0.27
0.27
0.31
0.31
0.21
0.22
0.23
0.28
0.47
0.41
0.44
0.32
0.35
0.35
0.42
0.49
0.30
0.34
0.37
0.27
0.31
0.35
0.23
0.24
0.23
0.31
0.37
0.38
0.43
0.50
0.53
2.45
2.79
3.11
3.68
2.82
3.04
3.15
3.29

0.13
0.13
0.15
0.15
0.10
0.11
0.11
0.14
0.23
0.20
0.22
0.16
0.17
0.17
0.21
0.24
0.15
0.17
0.18
0.13
0.15
0.17
0.11
0.12
0.11
0.15
0.18
0.19
0.21
0.25
0.26
1.80
2.06
2.30
2.73
2.07
2.24
2.34
2.44

0.12
0.12
0.14
0.14
0.09
0.10
0.10
0.13
0.20
0.18
0.19
0.14
0.16
0.16
0.19
0.22
0.13
0.15
0.17
0.12
0.13
0.15
0.10
0.11
0.10
0.14
0.16
0.17
0.19
0.22
0.23
1.32
1.48
1.64
1.94
1.52
1.65
1.71
1.76

15.50
15.20
17.02
16.78
11.89
12.47
12.99
15.55
25.40
22.25
23.89
16.51
19.63
19.55
22.85
26.90
16.63
18.71
20.16
14.67
16.84
19.03
11.63
12.86
11.80
14.81
17.87
19.07
20.79
23.84
25.96
19.13
20.96
23.63
28.78
21.41
21.63
22.32
23.84

2.24
2.15
2.35
2.25
1.92
1.86
1.87
2.26
2.91
2.74
2.84
2.07
2.46
2.45
3.05
3.52
2.16
2.38
2.53
1.67
2.13
2.46
1.44
1.65
1.40
1.82
2.15
2.22
2.38
2.86
2.99
5.92
6.22
6.74
8.01
6.75
6.95
6.84
7.05

1.33
1.31
1.47
1.45
1.02
1.09
1.12
1.35
2.14
1.89
2.03
1.46
1.67
1.66
1.98
2.29
1.40
1.59
1.72
1.25
1.46
1.65
1.06
1.13
1.04
1.38
1.64
1.71
1.88
2.20
2.34
3.70
4.14
4.60
5.49
4.21
4.40
4.54
4.77

1.37
1.37
1.56
1.57
1.02
1.12
1.15
1.41
2.33
2.03
2.18
1.58
1.77
1.76
2.11
2.46
1.50
1.72
1.85
1.33
1.53
1.75
1.16
1.20
1.14
1.56
1.85
1.92
2.14
2.53
2.65
2.36
2.69
3.00
3.58
2.72
2.95
3.06
3.18

0.012
0.012
0.013
0.013
0.010
0.010
0.010
0.012
0.017
0.016
0.017
0.013
0.014
0.014
0.017
0.019
0.012
0.013
0.014
0.010
0.013
0.015
0.009
0.010
0.009
0.012
0.014
0.015
0.016
0.019
0.020
0.702
0.744
0.770
0.863
0.822
0.938
0.938
0.924

0.008
0.008
0.009
0.008
0.007
0.007
0.007
0.008
0.011
0.010
0.011
0.009
0.010
0.009
0.011
0.013
0.008
0.009
0.010
0.007
0.009
0.010
0.006
0.007
0.006
0.008
0.010
0.010
0.011
0.013
0.013
0.308
0.331
0.342
0.384
0.343
0.350
0.350
0.359

0.008
0.008
0.009
0.008
0.007
0.007
0.007
0.008
0.011
0.010
0.011
0.009
0.010
0.009
0.011
0.013
0.008
0.009
0.010
0.007
0.009
0.010
0.006
0.007
0.006
0.008
0.010
0.010
0.011
0.013
0.013
0.213
0.230
0.244
0.280
0.239
0.247
0.249
0.256

0.004
0.004
0.005
0.004
0.003
0.003
0.004
0.004
0.006
0.006
0.006
0.005
0.005
0.005
0.006
0.007
0.004
0.005
0.005
0.004
0.005
0.005
0.003
0.004
0.003
0.004
0.005
0.005
0.006
0.007
0.007
0.074
0.081
0.086
0.099
0.084
0.091
0.092
0.093

1.67
1.69
1.94
1.93
1.24
1.37
1.42
1.71
2.99
2.58
2.80
1.98
2.25
2.23
2.63
3.08
1.88
2.16
2.33
1.72
1.94
2.22
1.46
1.52
1.46
1.94
2.31
2.42
2.69
3.11
3.32
3.63
4.16
4.71
5.67
4.10
4.31
4.51
4.82

0.87
0.86
0.95
0.93
0.70
0.73
0.75
0.89
1.28
1.16
1.23
0.94
1.04
1.04
1.25
1.41
0.86
0.97
1.07
0.78
0.95
1.08
0.69
0.74
0.66
0.90
1.06
1.08
1.18
1.41
1.46
7.78
8.54
9.17
10.64
8.80
9.11
9.24
9.62

0.16
0.16
0.18
0.18
0.13
0.14
0.14
0.17
0.24
0.22
0.23
0.18
0.20
0.20
0.24
0.27
0.16
0.18
0.20
0.15
0.18
0.20
0.13
0.14
0.13
0.18
0.21
0.21
0.23
0.28
0.29
7.19
7.96
8.56
9.91
8.16
8.61
8.80
9.06

0.09
0.09
0.10
0.10
0.07
0.08
0.08
0.09
0.13
0.12
0.13
0.10
0.11
0.11
0.13
0.15
0.09
0.10
0.11
0.08
0.10
0.11
0.07
0.08
0.07
0.10
0.12
0.12
0.13
0.16
0.16
7.27
8.00
8.47
9.68
8.23
8.71
8.86
9.06

E0, E1, E2, E3 represent vehicles classied by emission standards: before Euro 1, Euro 1, Euro 2 and Euro 3.
H1-b4 are the ow patterns generated in this research to dene trafc ow types.

3.2. Vehicle activity estimation

Trafc volume of BAU was obtained by on-road monitoring,
while the reduction of trafc volume for the Olympic scenario was
estimated based on the reduction of VKT. We assumed that trafc
volume on Hwy, Art, and Res would be reduced by the same
percentage as the VKT reduction. Trafc volume was reduced from
850 to 650 vehicles/lane/h on Hwy, from 340 to 240 on Art and from
300 to 220 on Res. Then the rst-stage mapping in TRAVEL was used
to generate the ow patterns, including average speed and VRB
distribution. Compared with BAU, average speed for cars on Hwy,
Art, and Res reached 33 km h1, 21 km h1 and 19 km h1, which
increased 34%, 19% and 23% during the Olympics. Fig. 3 summarizes
daily vehicle running time in each VRB. The total time vehicle
operated in low-VRBs (e.g. VRB1-5) was reduced mostly, reecting
an improvement of trafc ow on all kinds of roads. As an example,
with the average highway speed increased by 11 km h1, the
running time happened in VRB 1-5 reduced about 11%.
3.3. Vehicle emission reduction during the Olympics
The second-stage mapping in the TRAVEL was then used to
estimate emissions from cars, taxies and buses. The reduction for
HC, CO, NOx, CO2 and PM (ne particulates) reached as much as
59%, 65%, 42%, 39% and 24% from buses, cars and taxies (Fig. 4). Not
only the total amount, the emission share by vehicle types also
changed during the Olympics. Different than BAU, cars are not the
predominate source of PM, NOx and HC any more.

800

Highway-BAU

600

Highway-Olympic

400
200
0

Daily vehicle running

time (10^6s)

11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0

Arterial-BAU
Arterial-Olympic

1
Daily vehicle running
time (10^6 s)

which failed to meet European 1 emission standards were banned;

and 3) seventy percent of government vehicles were ordered off
the road during the event. Taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles
were not restricted.
As a case study, this approach was applied to evaluate the
emission reductions achieved from cars, taxies, and buses during
the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The TRAVEL was used to estimate
vehicle activity and emissions for two scenarios: a base-case (BAU)
scenario with routine trafc ow; and a second case (Olympic) was
run with all trafc controls. On-road vehicle number was calculated
based on vehicle control policy. Single vehicle operation is based on
vehicle activity survey conducted before and during the Games. To
be distinguished from single vehicle operation, Vehicle Kilometers
Traveled (VKT) refers to the total daily mileage of all vehicles. It was
found that VKT was reduced by 26% during the Olympics (Table 3).
Among those, there was a 41% reduction of VKT on cars and 10e30%
increase of VKT on taxies and buses.

Daily vehicle running

time (10^6s)

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

4000

Residential-BAU
Residential-Olympic

3000
2000
1000
0
1

Daily vehicle running

time (10^6 s)

1158

11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

1000
800
600
400
200
0

BusBAU

BusOlympic

11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
Vehicle Running Bins

Fig. 3. Vehicle running time distribution by VRBS before and during the Olympics.

3.4. Driving force analysis of vehicle emission reduction

Emission reductions were due to the reductions of both emission factors and VKT. To distinguish with BER of each ow pattern
for each vehicle type, the eet average emission factors as an output
of TRAVEL are called Actual Emission Rates (AER). As mentioned in
section 3.1, VKT was reduced by 26% based on the vehicle activity
survey. Due on the smoother trafc ow and the cleaner vehicle
eet, during the Olympics, the gaseous AERs were 23e53% lower
than BAU (HC: 45%, CO: 53%, NOx: 23%). This reduction is equal or
more signicant than the VKT reduction of 26%. This result indicates
that smoothing trafc ow could be a really important way to
reduce emission, as well as trafc control.
4. Validation

Table 3
Vehicle population and VKTa under BAU and Olympic Scenarios.
Taxi

Bus

2,513,911
1,151,864
54

66,600
66,600
0

47
61

400
520

Total

20,489
20,489
0

2,601,000
1,238,953
52

400 e
439 e

Single Vehicle
Operation
(km/day/
vehicle)

BAU
Olympic

VKT (km/day)

BAU
1,17,856,949 26,640,000 8,195,600 1,52,692,549
Olympic
69,965,440 34,621,918 8,993,792 1,13,581,150
Variation
41
30
10
26
(%)

The TRAVEL was initially evaluated by comparing simulated

trafc results with on-road vehicle driving measurements, which
Vehicle Emissions (ton/day)

Car
On-road Number BAU
(vehicles)
Olympic
Variation
(%)

4.1. Trafc results validation with observation data

600
500

Car

Taxi

Bus

400
300
200
100
0
BAU Olympic BAU Olympic BAU Olympic BAU Olympic BAU Olympic
HC
CO
NOx
PM*100
CO2/100

VKT is Vehicle Kilometers Travelled, reecting the total daily kilometers travelled for one kind of vehicles.

Fig. 4. Total emission reductions during the Beijing Olympics.

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

1159

Fig. 5. Model validation with average speed and VRB distribution.

were carried out by this team during the Olympics. This Olympics
vehicle activity measurement is an independent survey and none of
these data is used for developing TRAVEL database. A three days
survey, including vehicle running activity, trafc volume and onroad vehicle eet, were conducted during the Olympics. The
experimental method is the same as mentioned in section 2.1. Good
correlation between approach results and observation values are
shown for average speed and VRB distribution (Fig. 5). Error bars
(one-direction) are used to show the difference between simulation
results with observation values. Simulated speed is very close to the
measured result. The difference is only 7% (3.5 km h1) for Hwy
and 2% (0.5 km h1) for Art. VRB simulation result is also in
a reasonable range (20%) compared with the on-road value. The
trafc density estimate agreed with the observed value within <20%
while the peak hour forecast is limited to 1 h difference (Fig. SI-S3).
Note that model result reects the average vehicle behavior, further
uncertainty study with more trafc and vehicle emission tests data
would be helpful to improve the approach application.
4.2. Emission results validation with eld data and others
Our results are compared with three kinds of results during the
Olympics: source emission reduction; air pollutants concentration

reduction; trafc video analysis (Table 4). Both our results

(research #1) and Zhous results (Zhou et al., 2010) (research #2)
are emission inventory developed by emission models. The
difference of those two researches is that trafc data in Zhous
research is from trafc survey while we use TRAVEL simulated
result. These two studies have similar HC and NOx reduction
results, but PM reduction is higher in Zhous research. The reason
of this difference is mainly from the difference of target vehicles.
Our inventory is based on passenger vehicles. Trucks are not
included in this research because of the large uncertainty from
both the driving activity and the on-road running population.
However, our result including PM can match with all the roadside
air quality researches and one mobile laboratory research, listed as
#3, #4 and #5 (Wang, 2009a,c; Wang and Xie, 2009). In research
#3, #4 and #5, the air quality monitoring sites are either along the
ring road or on a trailer which was driven on 4th ring road. Thus,
the concentration variation is able to be used to infer emissions
changes from on-road vehicles (Kear and Niemeier, 2006).
Research #6 and #7 (Liu et al., 2008b,c) are the trafc volume
researches published based on 24 hours trafc video analysis by
ofcial Beijing Olympic department. TRAVEL shows a similar VKT
reduction (26% vs. 23% vs. 18e38%) with trafc monitoring and
survey results reported by research #6 and #7.

Table 4
Results validation by comparing this research with other studies.
Researches

HC reduction (%)b
CO reduction (%)
NOx reduction (%)
PM reduction (%)
CO2 reduction (%)
VKT reduction (%)
Vehicles
Method

Trafc data
Emission data

Denition

Intervals
Area lower-limit
Area up-limit

#1

#2

59
65
42
24
39
26
Car, taxi, bus

56
57
46
52

Top-down
simulation
Bottom-up
emission
inventory
Hourly
Road
City

32
LDV, taxi, bus,
LDT, HDT, HDVc
Survey
Bottom-up
emission
inventory
Daily
1  1 km grid
City

#3

28

#4

#5

31

54
41
18

#6

#7

23
Car, taxi,
bus, truck
Monitor

18e38
PV, taxi,
truck, bus
Survey

Roadside
air quality

Roadside
air quality

On-road
air quality

Daily
1/4 of the city
City

Weekly
Road

Hourly
Road
Road

Daily
e
City

Daily
e
City

a
Research #1 refers to this research, and research #2 to #6 are other researches including emission inventory, environmental concentration and trafc volume monitoring
results.
b
Pollutants reduction(%) refers to emission reduction for #1 and #2 emission inventory studies and road-side environmental concentration reduction for #3 and #4
monitoring studies.
c
LDV: Light duty vehicles; LDT: Light duty trucks; HDT: Heavy duty trucks; HDV: Heavy duty vehicles; PV: Passenger vehicles.

1160

H. Liu et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1154e1161

5. Conclusions and discussion

The result shows that the TRAVEL could expand current
understanding of how trafc volume and road type impact emission factors and total emissions on freeway, arterial and residential
roads. This approach can generate vehicle running patterns without
a large-scale trafc survey, rather using the top-down trafc estimation function. The simulation is based on matrix of roads types
(including trafc volume variation) and vehicle types. Thus,
this model can be applied to city level to calculate emission benets
from new road construction or trafc control measures. The
TRAVEL also improves the temporal and spatial resolution of
inventories into 1 h and street level.
In brief, TRAVEL improves the ability to fast predict the emission
variation from trafc control management. This tool is useful for
mega-cites, e.g. Beijing, where that trafc control is one of the most
frequently used strategy to improve short-term air quality.
It should be noted that the TRAVEL approach does not include
mountainous cities where road slope and vehicle running
patterns are distinct from other cities. A correction of VRB
distribution for each trafc ow pattern will be necessary for the
mountainous cities. Additionally, rural roads are not included in
this version of TRAVEL which limits the application of regional
simulation.
Acknowledgements
The work at Tsinghua University was supported by Chinas
National Basic Research Program (2005CB422201), Chinas National
High Technology Research and Development Program
(2006AA06A305), and the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (20625722).
Appendix. Supplementary data
A detailed description of the model database, denitions, and
additional model validation results are presented. Supplementary
data associated with this article can be found in the online version,
at doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.10.051.
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