Abstract
One of the elements of strategy aimed at minimizing the impact of road transport on air quality is the introduction of its reorganization resulting in decreased pollutant emissions to the air. The aim of the study was to determine the optimal strategy of corrective actions in terms of the air pollutant emissions from road transport. The study presents the assessment results of the emission reduction degree of selected pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, and NOx) as well as the impact evaluation of this reduction on their concentrations in the air for adopted scenarios of the road management changes for one of the street canyons in Krakow (Southern Poland). Three scenarios under consideration of the city authorities were assessed: narrowing the cross-section of the street by eliminating one lane in both directions, limiting the maximum speed from 70 km/h to 50 km/h, and allowing only passenger and light commercial vehicles on the streets that meet the Euro 4 standard or higher. The best effects were obtained for the variant assuming banning of vehicles failing to meet the specified Euro standard. It would result in a decrease of the yearly averaged PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by about 8–9% and for NOx by almost 30%.
Highlights
Air quality in Krakow, the capital of Malopolska voivodeship (Southern Poland), has failed for many years to meet legal air quality standards in force in the European Union [1]
Similar expected emission reduction for these variants was observed in terms of primary emission (VE) and secondary emission (SE) of the analyzed air pollutants originating from road transport in relation to Variant v0 (Figure 6), for Variant v2 the modeled actual average traffic speed results in slightly higher emission of PM10, PM2.5, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from vehicles (VE) compared to Variant v1
This is due to the circulation effect observed in the street canyon which is taken into account in the OSPM model [26,27,28], as well as to the relatively high air pollution in Krakow both in terms of the PM10 and PM2.5 particulate matter and NOx observed at the urban background stations in 2017 [2], which directly affects the background pollution adopted for calculations (Table 1)
Summary
Air quality in Krakow, the capital of Malopolska voivodeship (Southern Poland), has failed for many years to meet legal air quality standards in force in the European Union [1]. Automatic urban traffic air quality monitoring stations in Krakow located within street canyons have been detecting for many years the exceedances of permissible levels of the annually and daily averaged concentrations of the PM10 particulate matter and the annually averaged concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2 [2,3,4]. According to the project of the new Air Protection Program for the Malopolska Voivodeship from 2020 [5], the road vehicle emissions in Krakow are responsible for approximately 20–35% of the background PM10 levels and, on average, for about 43% of the background NO2 concentrations, increasing to 75% in the vicinity of roads. The impact of road transport on air quality in Krakow is majorly determined by the permanently increasing number of cars on the city streets for many years.
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