Freight Shipments, Greenhouse Gases and Polluting Emissions: Implications for California and the U.S.

Measuring greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other emissions (especially diesel particulates) is an increasingly important basis for regional policy analysis. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2010), the transportation sector contributed 27.2 percent of total GHG emissions in 2008, and 50 percent of these were from truck operations. This research focuses on measuring GHGs and other emissions (e.g. PM) from freight movements on highways in California (a prototypical example because of its leadership in air quality policy making). The research also takes into account concurrent economic effects of various regulation scenarios. In this way, questions related to sustainability, environmental policy, and efficiency in freight transportation are addressed. The research will build the Freight Analysis Framework (FAF), an important commodity origin-destination database that provides information on interregional freight movements throughout the U.S. for 2002-2035. These data will be used to estimate the economic and environmental consequences of various regulatory and economic scenarios by applying TransNIEMO, an internally developed interregional trade model that involves an interregional economic trade equilibrium that is consistent with a highway network equilibrium. The estimate of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), in turn, will be used as inputs to the EMFAC2007 model to estimate GHGs and other emissions. It will be demonstrated that TransNIEMO can be an important bridge between the FAF data and models like EMFAC. It is expected that many of the other states will follow California's lead in developing and using models like EMFAC. The results will be useful not only for measuring GHGs and other emissions based on estimated freight flows, but also for evaluating economic and environmental impacts of policy alternatives.

• Record URL:
  http://www.metrans.org/research/11-03-freight-shipments-greenhouse-gases-and-polluting-emissions-implications-california

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $89312.00
• Contract Numbers:

  11-03

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research

  University of Southern California
  650 Childs Way, RGL 107
  Los Angeles, CA  United States  90089-0626
• Project Managers:

  Valentine, Victoria

• Performing Organizations:

  National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research

  University of Southern California
  650 Childs Way, RGL 107
  Los Angeles, CA  United States  90089-0626
• Principal Investigators:

  Gordon, Peter

• Start Date: 20101201
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20110801
• Source Data: RiP Project 27261

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality management; Diesel engine exhaust gases; Environmental policy; Freight traffic; Freight transportation; Greenhouse gases; Particulates; Pollutants; Truck traffic
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Vehicles and Equipment; I15: Environment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01461207
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research
• Contract Numbers: 11-03
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 1:41PM