Environmental Strategies for Selecting Eco-Routing in a Small City

Abstract

This research aims to find the most ecological itineraries for urban mobility in a small city (eco-routes), where distances are rather short, but car dependence is really high. A real life citywide survey was carried out in the city of Caceres (Spain) with almost 100,000 inhabitants. Research was done on alternating routes, traffic, times of day, and weather conditions. The output of the study was to assess fuel consumption, CO2, and regulated pollutant emissions for different type of vehicles, routes, and drivers. The results show that in the case studied, urban roads had fewer emissions (CO2 and pollutants) but there was an increase in the population affected by pollutants. On the contrary, bypasses reduced travel time and congestion but increased fuel consumption and emissions. Traffic conditions had a greater influence on fuel consumption in petrol vehicles than diesel ones. Therefore, there must be a balanced distribution of traffic in order to minimize congestion, and at the same time to reduce emissions and the number of people affected by harmful pollution levels. There should be a combination of regulatory measures in traffic policies in order to achieve that balance by controlling access to city centres, limiting parking spaces, pedestrianization, and lowering traffic speeds in sensitive areas.