The Effect of Nonlocal Vehicle Restriction Policy on Air Quality in Shanghai

Abstract

Abstract:In recent years, road space rationing policies have been increasingly applied as a traffic management solution to tackle congestion and traffic emission problems in big cities. Existing studies on the effect of traffic policy on air quality have mainly focused on the odd-even day traffic restriction policy or one-day-per-week restriction policy. There are few studies paying attention to the effect of nonlocal license plate restrictions on air quality in Shanghai. Restrictions toward nonlocal vehicles usually prohibit vehicles with nonlocal license plates from entering certain urban areas or using certain subsets of the road network (e.g., the elevated expressway) during specific time periods on workdays. To investigate the impact of such a policy on the residents' exposure to pollutants, CO concentration and Air Quality Index (AQI) were compared during January and February in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Regression discontinuity (RD) was used to test the validity of nonlocal vehicle restriction on mitigating environmental pollution. Several conclusions can be made: (1) CO concentration was higher on ground-level roads on the restriction days than those in the nonrestriction days; (2) the extension of the restriction period exposed the commuters to high pollution for a longer time on the ground, which will do harm to them; and (3) the nonlocal vehicle restriction policy did play a role in improving the air quality in Shanghai when extending the evening rush period. Additionally, some suggestions are mentioned in order to improve air quality and passenger health and safety.

Evaluating Signalization and Channelization Selections at Intersections Based on an Entropy Method

“…In the meantime, the policies are various in restrict scopes and guidelines as in Table 1 , which not only causes inconvenience to local residents, but also causes great trouble to vehicles from other cities [ 38 ]. Traffic delay and emissions have a strong connection, which means that reducing delay could reduce emissions [ 39 , 40 , 41 ]. Different route selections and stop strategies could reduce bus emissions [ 42 ].…”

Using Smart City Tools to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Low Emissions Zone in Spain: Madrid Central

“…• Polynomial regression is applied to evaluate the general trend in the air pollution concentration or levels of noise with and without the implementation of the road traffic restrictions in Madrid Central. Although is one of the simplest methods for analysis and estimation of time series, yet it is frequently used in the related literature [12,35,38] In this article, two polynomial regression methods are studied: linear and polynomial of grade 10.…”

“…Overall, authors found positive effects on the improvement of public health. More research had been performed addressing the LEZ analysis in China [36][37][38].…”

Using Smart City Tools to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Low Emissions Zone in Spain: Madrid Central

“…Overall, the authors found positive effects on the improvement of public health. More research had been performed addressing the LEZ analysis in China [36][37][38].…”

“…Polynomial regression is applied to evaluate the general trend in air pollution concentration or levels of noise with and without the implementation of the road traffic restrictions in Madrid Central. While it is one of the simplest methods for analysis and estimation of time series, it is frequently used in the related literature [12,35,38] In this article, two polynomial regression methods are studied: Linear and polynomial of grade 10.…”