Exploring impacts of road transportation on environment: a spatial approach

This paper presents a comprehensive spatial model for exploring the interaction between road transportation and environment. The potential negative impacts of transportation on environment can be listed as degradation of air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, increased threat of global climate change, degradation of water resources, noise and habitat loss and fragmentation. Within this interaction, of particular importance is the relationship between urban structure and transport emissions, since it is the urban structure that fundamentally determines transportation demand. Due to the spatial nature of the interaction, Spatial Information Sciences (SIS) has many advantages compared with other systems. The developed model integrates data and methods on spatial bases, detects changes, encompasses monitoring and analyzes the interaction. In order to verify the developed concepts, a pilot project was conducted at the southeast part of Istanbul Metropolitan Area, where the development of motorway and its effects to land use categories between 1987 and 2001 period was analyzed. Within the study area, the road transportation network had been doubled, whereas the construction sites were tripled within the years of 1987–2001. A significant decrease was observed at barren and agricultural land classes. Using the suggested model an integrated framework for exploring the interaction was constituted and the results were discussed.

This study describes a newly developed approach, which explores the interaction between transport, land-cover/use and air quality. Combining these activities will enlighten the complex task of decision makers, since the common approach has been to consider these activities as exogenous information that has loose or no connection. The integration was performed on spatial information, where all these activities have spatial and temporal characteristics. The relationship between land-use activities and air quality assessments due to transportation infrastructures were emphasized. The approach proposed in this study provides an integrated environment, which not only simulates land-use and transportation interactions and estimates vehicle emissions, but also serves for determining the impact of traffic on the urban air quality. For the study area, urban areas sharply increase between 1987 and 2001, likewise the increase in the total length of road network. The air quality in the study area has been worsened from 1990 to 2000 since CO, HC, NO2, particulates and SO2 show a positive trend in this period. These results illustrated that development of transportation infrastructures created an attraction in this region and urban areas expanded rapidly, in