The Impact of Pedestrian and Nonmotorized Vehicle Violations on Vehicle Emissions at Signalized Intersections in the Real World: A Case Study in Beijing

Abstract

Emission around intersections has become an issue in the urban traffic network. This paper aims to investigate the impact of pedestrian and nonmotorized vehicle violations on emissions at mixed-traffic flow intersection based on the volumes of vehicles, nonmotor vehicles, and pedestrians. Also, it focuses on the arterial and collector intersections with high vehicle volume and limited space. Running red light and crossing intersection diagonally are two critical violations, accounting for 91.75% of effective violations (interference with vehicles’ operation). In this context, a violation blocking model is developed to estimate the blocking probability for each vehicle based on the volumes of pedestrians and nonmotor vehicles. The model includes two scenarios. (1) Through phase: the violation blocking model of running red light is developed based on the survival curve (the relationship between waiting time and running red light probability). (2) Left-turn phase: the violation blocking model at this phase includes two parts: (i) crossing the intersection diagonally model is developed for the first vehicle and (ii) running red light model is developed for subsequent vehicles. The existing emission model can estimate the emissions based on the blocking positions. In the case study, emissions increase with the vehicle volume approaching the saturated flow rate and the volumes of nonmotor vehicles and pedestrians increasing. Results show that the maximum emission increase of CO (carbon monoxide) for through phase and left-turn phase can reach 16.7% and 36.4%.