A National Assessment of the Air Quality and Health Impacts of Vehicle Travel and Electrification: Phase 1 Near Roadway Impacts and Equity Analysis

On-road vehicle traffic is one of the largest sources of hazardous air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Underserved communities are consistently found to bear a disproportionate share of exposure to on-road vehicle traffic emissions while they are also expected to be disproportionally impacted by climate change. Recent studies have also called more attention to the air quality impacts of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which emit significantly higher levels of air pollutants than light-duty vehicle traffic and are a known driver of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in exposure to air pollutants. While prior studies find that electrification of the on-road vehicle fleet can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improvement in air quality is far less certain. One challenge is that most national scale air quality analysis are too coarse to identify impacts within underserved communities or account for near-roadway exposures. Additionally, most studies have focused on endpoints, points in time when a large portion of vehicles are expected to be electric. The air quality impacts and environmental justice concerns during the transition period which could be long and uneven has received little attention. This research will address these limitations by using a refined near-roadway emission exposure surrogate that balances spatial precision and computational burden allowing the research team to estimate changes in exposure levels and health risks and the distribution of these burdens over time as EV adoption increases. The analysis will be carried out for every US census block over a 40-year transition period.

• Record URL:
  https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/project/national-assessment-air-quality-and-health-impacts-vehicle-travel-and-electrification-phase

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $147570
• Contract Numbers:

  DOT 69A3552348319

  DOT 69A3552344814

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of California, Davis

  1 Shields Ave
  Davis, California  United States  95616

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Project Managers:

  Iacobucci, Lauren

• Performing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Principal Investigators:

  Rowangould, Gregory

• Start Date: 20240101
• Expected Completion Date: 20241231
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality; Electric automobiles; Equity; Health; Heavy duty vehicles; Pollutants; Underserved communities
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01902415
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Sustainable Transportation
• Contract Numbers: DOT 69A3552348319, DOT 69A3552344814
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Dec 15 2023 2:42PM