IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/itsrrp/qt5670921q.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Life-cycle Assessment of Passenger Transportation: A Detailed Methodology for Energy, Greenhouse Gas and Criteria Pollutant Inventories of Automobiles, Buses, Light Rail, Heavy Rail and Air v.2

Author

Listed:
  • Chester, Mikhail
  • Horvath, Arpad

Abstract

The passenger transportation modes of auto, bus, heavy rail, light rail and air are critical systems relied upon for business and leisure. When considering their environmental effects, most studies and policy focus on the fuel use of the vehicles, and ignore the energy and other resource inputs and environmental outputs from the life cycles of necessary infrastructures, fuels, and vehicles. The goal of this project is to develop comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) models to quantify the energy inputs and emissions from autos, buses, heavy rail, light rail and air transportation in the U.S. associated with the entire life cycle (design, raw materials extraction, manufacturing, construction, operation, maintenance, end-of-life) of the vehicles, infrastructures, and fuels involved in these systems. Energy inputs are quantified as well as greenhouse gas and criteria air pollutant outputs. Inventory results are normalized to effects per vehicle-lifetime, VMT, and PMT. Current results show that total energy and greenhouse gas emissions increase by as much as 1.6X for automobiles, 1.4X for buses, 2.6X for light rail, 2.1X for heavy rail, and 1.3X for air over operation. Criteria air pollutant emissions increase up to 30X for automobiles, 7X for buses, 10X for light rail, 29X for heavy rail, and 9X for air. This working paper is superceded by UCB-ITS-DS-2008-1, the Ph.D. dissertation of Mikhail Vin Chester.

Suggested Citation

  • Chester, Mikhail & Horvath, Arpad, 2008. "Environmental Life-cycle Assessment of Passenger Transportation: A Detailed Methodology for Energy, Greenhouse Gas and Criteria Pollutant Inventories of Automobiles, Buses, Light Rail, Heavy Rail and ," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt5670921q, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt5670921q
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5670921q.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Small, K.A. & Kazimi, C., 1994. "On the Costs of Air Pollution from Motor Vehicules," Papers 94-95-3, California Irvine - School of Social Sciences.
    2. David Levinson & David Gillen, 1997. "The Full Cost of Intercity Highway Transportation," Working Papers 199704, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    3. Fels, Margaret Fulton, 1978. "Breakdown of rapid rail energy costs: A study of three systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 507-522.
    4. Verhoef, Erik, 1994. "External effects and social costs of road transport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 273-287, July.
    5. Schipper, Youdi, 2004. "Environmental costs in European aviation," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 141-154, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ganson, Chris, 2008. "The Transportation Greenhouse Gas Inventory: A First Step Toward City-Driven Emissions Rationalization," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt8255z4qb, University of California Transportation Center.
    2. Daniel Rey Aldana & Francisco Reyes Santias & Pilar Mazón Ramos & Manuel Portela Romero & Sergio Cinza Sanjurjo & Belén Álvarez Álvarez & Rosa Agra Bermejo & Francisco Gude Sampedro & José R. González, 2021. "Cost and Potential Savings of Electronic Consultation and Its Relationship with Reduction in Atmospheric Pollution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-16, November.
    3. Luca D’Acierno & Matteo Tanzilli & Chiara Tescione & Luigi Pariota & Luca Di Costanzo & Salvatore Chiaradonna & Marilisa Botte, 2022. "Adoption of Micro-Mobility Solutions for Improving Environmental Sustainability: Comparison among Transportation Systems in Urban Contexts," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-20, June.
    4. Ali Enes Dingil & Federico Rupi & Domokos Esztergár-Kiss, 2021. "An Integrative Review of Socio-Technical Factors Influencing Travel Decision-Making and Urban Transport Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-20, September.
    5. Morten Simonsen & Hans Jakob Walnum, 2011. "Energy Chain Analysis of Passenger Car Transport," Energies, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-28, February.
    6. Gassner, Andreas & Lederer, Jakob & Kanitschar, Georg & Ossberger, Markus & Fellner, Johann, 2018. "Extended ecological footprint for different modes of urban public transport: The case of Vienna, Austria," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 85-99.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Forkenbrock, David J., 1999. "External costs of intercity truck freight transportation," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 33(7-8), pages 505-526.
    2. Levinson, David & Chang, Elva, 2003. "A model for optimizing electronic toll collection systems," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 293-314, May.
    3. Parry, Ian W. H., 2002. "Funding transportation spending in metropolitan Washington, DC: the costs of alternative revenue sources," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 362-390, September.
    4. West, Sarah E., 2004. "Distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 735-757, March.
    5. Caplan, Arthur J. & Acharya, Ramjee, 2019. "Optimal vehicle use in the presence of episodic mobile-source air pollution," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 185-204.
    6. Kazimi, Camilla, 1997. "Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Alternative-Fuel Vehicles," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 163-185, June.
    7. Damart, Sébastien & Roy, Bernard, 2009. "The uses of cost-benefit analysis in public transportation decision-making in France," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 200-212, August.
    8. Byers, Steven & Cutler, Harvey & Davies, Stephen P., 2004. "Estimating Costs and Benefits of Economic Growth: A CGE-Based Study of Tax Incentives in a Rapidly Growing Region," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 34(4), pages 1-20.
    9. Jochem, Patrick & Doll, Claus & Fichtner, Wolf, 2016. "External costs of electric vehicles," MPRA Paper 91602, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Parry, Ian, 2001. "How Should Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Finance Its Transportation Deficit?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-12, Resources for the Future.
    11. Lei Zhang & David Levinson, 2005. "Road Pricing with Autonomous Links," Working Papers 200506, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    12. Sujitra Vassanadumrongdee & Shunji Matsuoka & Hiroaki Shirakawa, 2004. "Meta-analysis of contingent valuation studies on air pollution-related morbidity risks," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 6(1), pages 11-47, March.
    13. Alcaraz Carrillo de Albornoz, Vicente & Molina Millán, Juan & Lara Galera, Antonio & Muñoz Medina, Belén, 2022. "Road speed limit matters – Are politicians doing the right thing?," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. repec:kbb:dpaper:2012-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Greening, Lorna A., 2004. "Effects of human behavior on aggregate carbon intensity of personal transportation: comparison of 10 OECD countries for the period 1970-1993," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-30, January.
    16. Ian W. H. Parry & Antonio Bento, 2001. "Revenue Recycling and the Welfare Effects of Road Pricing," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 103(4), pages 645-671, December.
    17. Shewmake, Sharon & Jarvis, Lovell, 2014. "Hybrid cars and HOV lanes," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 304-319.
    18. Delucchi, Mark A. & McCubbin, Donald R., 2010. "External Costs of Transport in the U.S," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt13n8v8gq, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    19. Ando, Amy Whritenour & McConnell, Virginia D. & Harrington, Winston, 1999. "Costs, Emissions Reductions, and Vehicle Repair: Evidence from Arizona," Discussion Papers 10915, Resources for the Future.
    20. Parry, Ian W.H. & Fischer, Carolyn & Harrington, Winston, 2004. "Should Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards Be Tightened?," Discussion Papers 10605, Resources for the Future.
    21. E T Verhoef & J C J M van den Bergh & K J Button, 1997. "Transport, Spatial Economy, and the Global Environment," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(7), pages 1195-1213, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt5670921q. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.