Set of Comparable Carbon Footprints for Highway Travel in Metropolitan America
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 6
Abstract
The writers describe the development of a set of carbon dioxide emissions estimates for highway travel by automobile, truck, bus, and other public transit vehicle movements within the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas in calendar year 2005. Considerable variability is found to exist across metropolitan areas when these greenhouse gas emissions are measured on a per capita and a per gross metropolitan product (GMP) basis. Least square and spatial error regression modeling show a relationship among emissions per capita and per GMP with truck traffic share, transit share, employment density, population dispersion within the metro area, and GMP per capita. As a result, many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas tend to have lower emissions per capita and per GMP than smaller and more recently developed metro areas.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to thank the Brookings Institution for funding the initial work on direct emissions measurement, and in particular, Dr. Andrea Sarzynski for providing the data on metropolitan area populations, gross metropolitan products, and a number of the urban form variables used in the analysis.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 137 • Issue 6 • June 2011
Pages: 426 - 435
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 1, 2009
Accepted: Dec 8, 2010
Published online: May 16, 2011
Published in print: Jun 1, 2011
Authors
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