Greener Roads: Comparing Intelligent Transportation Systems to Construction-Phase Options to Reduce Emissions and Fuel Use

摘要

The research presented in this paper compares the direct emissions and fuel consumptionsavings of five different strategies for greener roads. Specifically, savings from anIntelligent Transportation System (ITS), which is the integrated application of technologyand management strategy to improve traffic flow and safety, is compared to savings fromstrategies focused on the construction phase including; using regionally providedmaterials, reducing fossil fuel use, reusing pavement, and using warm mix asphalt. Thecomparison was performed for a 10 mile segment of a key urban interstate in SouthCarolina. The analysis revealed that, in less than four years of operation, an ITS systemfocused on incident management will generally surpass the emissions and fuelconsumption reductions of the construction-phase strategies. For an eight year repavingschedule, the ITS strategy provides fuel savings over 30 times larger and reduces carbon-dioxide emissions over five times more than any of the construction-phase strategies.These results suggest that policies and rating systems for more sustainable roads shouldweight ITS strategies considerably more than individual construction-phase strategies.