Environmental safety of city transport systems: Problems and influence of infrastructure solutions

Abstract

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. Improving the economy and environmental friendliness of transport is one of the main directions of transition to a low-carbon economy. The article indicates that road transport has a significant negative impact on the environment. An assessment of the negative impact and benefits of motor vehicles’ transition to alternative fuels is provided. The main directions of transition to the vehicles run on alternative fuels are overviewed in the article. Approaches to reduce environmental damage from motor vehicles are analyzed. The article presents the research results on the example of the bottlenecks of the city road network. The developed simulation model for choosing the optimal configuration of the road network is presented. When constructing the simulation model, the data of full-scale surveys of the structure and intensity of the city traffic flows were used. These surveys were performed together with measurements of the quality of atmospheric air. The ecological effect of the proposed measures is calculated. It is noted that the improvement of the road infrastructure provides the greatest effect of reducing the negative impact on the environment at comparable costs.