Estimation and Analysis Method for Road Carbon Emissions in Urban Agglomeration Transportation Planning

Urban agglomeration is becoming an important form of urbanization in China. The national Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) proposes that urban agglomeration is an urgent priority, and short- and long-term plans should be developed. A suitable method of estimating and evaluating the carbon emissions of the road network in urban agglomeration-oriented transportation planning is needed. For measuring and evaluating the carbon emission of road network, suitable methods that use the basic data of different sources are lacking. With data on fuel sales, vehicle ownership, transportation planning modeling, and urban population, methods of calculating the carbon emission based on vehicle kilometers of travel (VKT) were designed in this work. Three methods based on fuel sales data, vehicle ownership, and transportation planning modeling were designed for current VKT estimation. As for the future, two VKT prediction methods were designed that are separately based on transportation planning modeling and the urban population. A method of calculating carbon emissions was designed based on the estimation and prediction of VKT. Then, the data sources, advantages, limitations, and the reflected subject of the methods were compared. With a comprehensive application of these methods, we established a method of calculating the carbon emissions of urban agglomeration-oriented transportation planning; this method is sensitive to traffic parameters. Then, a case study was used as an example of the road network transportation planning of Chengdu-Chongqing city agglomeration to demonstrate the application of the method. The results of the case analysis can prove that under the current existing data, the carbon emission of transportation in urban agglomeration could be calculated and quantitatively analyzed with the comprehensive application of these methods, thereby possibly providing support for transportation decision-making.