Abstract
Unlike their counterparts that are used for container or municipal solid waste hauling, or their peers of taxies and other commercial vehicles, construction waste hauling trucks (CWHTs) are heterogeneous in that they transport construction waste from construction sites to designated disposal facilities. Depending on the intensity of the construction activities, there are many CWHTs in operation, imposing massive impacts on a region’s transportation system and natural environment. However, such impacts have rarely been documented. This paper has analyzed CWHTs’ freight characteristics and their carbon emission by harnessing a big dataset of 112,942 construction waste transport trips in Hong Kong in May 2015. It has been observed that CWHTs generate 4544 daily trips with 307.64 tons CO2-eq emitted on working days, and 553 daily trips emitting 28.78 tons CO2-eq on non-working days. Freight carbon emission has been found to be related to the vehicle type, transporting weight, and trip length, while the trip length is the most influential metric to carbon emission. This research contributes to the understanding of freight characteristics by exploiting a valuable big dataset and providing important benchmarking metrics for monitoring the effectiveness of policy interventions related to construction waste transportation planning and carbon emission.
Highlights
By transporting goods, freights play a crucial role in a nation’s economy
Inspired by the success of administrative record data in measuring freight performance, this paper aims to probe into the freight performance and carbon emission of construction waste hauling trucks (CWHTs) based on “waste transaction” big data in Hong Kong
The results reveal the following: (a) average daily CWHTs’ trip was 4544 on working days and 553 on non-working days; (b) medium and heavy trucks are commonly used for transporting construction waste; (c) the majority of
Summary
Freights play a crucial role in a nation’s economy. This is true with the increase in e-commerce, logistics, and supply chains around the globe. In 2018, 600 million tons of construction waste were generated in the US, which is more than twice the amount of generated municipal solid waste [4]. In 2016, 66.2 million tons of non-hazardous construction waste were generated in the UK [5]. In 2019, the generation of construction waste in Hong Kong doubled since 2008, hitting nearly 18 million tons per annum [6]. Owing to its non-combustible nature, construction waste normally ends up in disposal facilities, such as public fills or landfills [7,8]. A large number of construction waste hauling trucks (CWHTs) have been mobilized to transport such construction waste to various disposal facilities [9]
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