Urban CO Concentrations and Vehicle Emissions

The effect of the general growth of CO vehicular emissions in urban areas on the CAMP station measurements in downtown areas, where vehicular traffic is saturated is considered. With the assumption that the street-level CO concentration is derived from the sum of an urban background term and a local street-effect term, the urban background CO concentration is computed with a diffusion model by introducing a simple area source distribution. The local street-effect term is taken to be constant at a saturation emission level corresponding to a saturation traffic density when the emission per vehicle-mile and meteorological conditions are fixed. The present analysis indicates that the local street-effect term, AC, has a major role in determining street-level concentrations for pollutants, such as CO, whose air quality standard is based on maximum concentrations with averaging times of 1 hour and 8 hours. The relevance of this analysis to the abatement requirements of the Clean Air Amendments and to the driving cycle adopted is discussed.