WIT Press


The Environmental Impact Of Urban Transport: A Case Study For A New Road In Catania Province

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

96

Pages

11

Published

2007

Size

2,206 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/UT070661

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

F. Patania, A. Gagliano, F. Nocera, A. Galesi & A. D’Amico

Abstract

The opening of a new road to car traffic could represent a symbol of socioeconomic growth for a country, but in the meantime it could also cause significant impact to the local ecosystem in the absence of a preliminary study into the environmental impact which is able to forecast if it is necessary to carry out additional works to control the immissions into the atmosphere of the polluting exhausts of motor vehicles. The estimation of impact caused by the transit of motor vehicles is quite complex because it needs to know both the state of pollution at the present time and the forecasting of further immissions of polluting gasses caused by traffic on the planned future road. To achieve this, research evaluated the effect of the construction of a provincial road \“S.P. Misterbianco-Nicolosi” in order to have both an experimental validation of a dispersion code for such an outdoor environment full of anthropic obstacles as well as to evaluate the respect of the limits of polluting gaseous concentrations fixed by current Italian regulations. This paper, therefore, intends to show the results of research and the adopted rules of procedure. Keywords: air pollutants, exhaust by vehicular traffic. 1 Introduction Atmospheric pollution from exhaust gasses of road haulage is produced essentially by carbonic oxide, coming from gasoline engines, and particulate matters, coming from diesel engines. Carbon oxide emissions during the run of a vehicle is about ten times higher in comparison with other polluting substances contained in gasoline exhaust gasses. The ultrafine dusts that can be inhaled (PM10) and the ones that can be breathed (PM 2,5 and PM 1,0) originate from diesel exhaust gasses and reach

Keywords

air pollutants, exhaust by vehicular traffic.