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 Traffic Indicator from 6.00 to 22.55 - 9/9/2005. |
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Rome
Air Quality Improvement
The City of Rome, integrating its approach in on-going project MIRACLES inside the CIVITAS EU line
of DGTREN, adopts an ambitious approach where innovation mixes technology and policy with political
and behavioural support to reduce congestion, energy consumption, noise and air pollution according
to EU policies (Kyoto and Energy Green Paper).
The main objective of City Council is to achieve, through the implementation of suitable mobility
policies, an urban sustainable development as outlined by the Europe Council Program "For a durable
and sustainable urban development".
This main objective can be detailed in two general goals, i.e. to improve traffic mobility conditions,
increasing road safety and decreasing traffic related pollution and to re-qualify urban spaces,
rationalizing public space, safeguarding citizens’ health and life quality, and preserving historical
and architectural heritage. The City Administration is implementing long term and short term activities
in order to reach these objectives.
ATAC, the Mobility Agency of the city of Rome, whose activity is the analysis and regulation of the
private traffic and public transport in the city , it is committed in evaluating the impact of mobility
on the environment, especially on air quality. Important asset is the traffic control centre where
a prototype system creating an integrated traffic – environment chain was already tested in HEAVEN IST
project and where the full-scale system, called SICOTRAVIA, is under development.
Thanks to the analysis already performed on the traffic model algorithms (developed, implemented and
validated by ATAC) it has been possible to define a general “traffic indicator” by means of which
it is now possible to assess the impact on total traffic flow of specific events (e.g. road work
on main city corridor) and to assess city’s congestion level and to classify days week according
to traffic indicator values. It is defined by the sum of all traffic flows circulating on the network
in a specific time period.
Moreover, by means of system’s scenario module it is possible to perform analysis of previous days and
simulation scenarios.
Further analysis were developed also on the dispersion model results. Due to the lackness of a
background pollution model, evaluation was carried out on CO (Carbon monoxide) results on some
selected days, compared with values measured by the air quality monitoring stations.
The results showed a very good agreement with the so-called “residential stations”, i.e. not
directly subject to emission sources, while the agreement decrease when dealing with “traffic stations”,
directly receiving the impact of local emission sources.
The need of a nested approach also in urban environment was thus evident. The integration of canyon
subroutine &/or the nesting with downscaled ADMS run in hot spot sites, permitted to reach a good
agreement also in traffic sites.
Besides, the Municipality of Rome together with ATAC delivers the Air Quality Report every year.
It includes the current status of air quality in Rome, a description of the main measures to reduce
air pollution and studies aimed at predicting further reductions. While at the moment there are
unstructured mechanisms, based on the application of a Regional framework, that generate (short-term)
traffic measures based on air quality measurements, The new structured Municipal Environmental
Action Plan is taking advantage of the recent development above described. The new Plan was adopted
starting from the simulation results of the prototypal model chain and it will be improved once
SICOTRAVIA will enter in the routine process.
Anyway, there is the need to integrate information on air pollution, noise and safety. Presently,
the impact on air quality, noise nuisance and safety aspects of hazardous road transport are reported
and managed separately. In an urban environment, traffic is a major contributor to all three aspects
and hence, controlling air pollution by traffic measures may also favourably affect noise nuisance
and external safety.
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