Investigation of Vehicular Pollutant Emissions at 4-Arm Intersections for the Improvement of Integrated Actions in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs)

Abstract

Sustainable urban mobility planning is a strategic and integrated approach that aims to effectively address the complexities of urban transportation. Additionally, vehicle emissions are still a significant problem found in cities. Its greatest concentration involves intersections, as they have the highest number of stop-and-go operations, resulting in the highest engine load. Although electrification of vehicles is underway, the coming years and the energy crisis may cause the full transformation and fulfillment of the European Green Deal to be postponed. This state of affairs means that much effort should still go into possibly modifying the current infrastructure to make it more environmentally friendly. The article addresses the use of vertical road markings such as “stop”, “give way”, and also signal controllers signs, at four-arm X intersections. The modeling of intersection variants was carried out in the traffic microsimulation software VISSIM. The created model was calibrated according to real world data. The actual part of the work concerns the assumption of specific traffic flow scenarios, for which measurements of delay and emissions of harmful exhaust components such as NOx and PM10 were made. The results obtained can have practical application in proposals for creating unequal intersections. Based on the results, it can be concluded that below the traffic volume value of 1200 vehicles/h, an intersection can be considered with a yield sign and stop sign for two directions of traffic. However, for traffic volumes from 1200 vehicles/h to 2000 vehicles/h, an intersection with stop signs can be used for all traffic directions. The results may also provide some information on the location of the crosswalks and the improvement of strategies to be introduced into the SUMPs.