George Mintsis

Analyzing Heavy Goods Vehicle Data Collected on Main Road Network in Greece

The work described concerns the first major study on heavy goods vehicles operating on the trans-European links in Greek territory. The study period coincides with a period in which major development in the national road network took place that required the support by specific studies concerning pavement design, road management, and toll collection. Data were collected at seven specific sites on the main axes of the main national roads. A total of about 3,053,116 records at all sites were collected concerning all vehicle categories. Data were collected using permanent weigh-in-motion (WIM) instrumentation with either rigid or flexible sensors. In addition, comparison measurements were taken from high-speed and low-speed WIM systems to examine the validity of the above systems to be used in law enforcement for overloaded vehicles. Analysis of the data revealed that the initial sets included a series of counts that were not reliable. False data were detected by imposing various physical or technical filters. The consistency of the remaining good-quality data was examined by using simple analysis techniques. In the final stage of the work much emphasis was given in the development of a comprehensive database of WIM measurements. This database is unique for the Greek national road network and is a necessary step in order to provide useful information and support future actions in the area of pavement design and maintenance.

The use of a transport simulation system (AIMSUN) to determine the environmental effects of pedestrianization and traffic management in the center of Thessaloniki

Traffic congestion in urban areas results in increased energy consumption and vehicle emissions. Traffic management that alleviates traffic congestion also mitigates the environmental effects of vehicular traffic. This study uses the transport simulation model AIMSUN to evaluate the environmental effect of a set of traffic management and pedestrianization schemes. The effects of the pedestrianization of specific sections of roads, converting two-way roads into one-way roads for traffic and changing the direction of flow of traffic along one-way roads were simulated for different areas of Thessaloniki’s city centre network. The assessment of the environmental effect was done by determining the predicted fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and air pollutants. Fuel consumption and the environmental indicators were quantified directly using the fuel consumption and emissions model in AIMSUN. A typical weekday morning peak period, between 09:00am–10:00am, was simulated and the demand data obtained using a macroscopic traffic assignment model previously developed for the wider area of Thessaloniki. The results presented in this paper are for network-wide simulation statistics (i.e. fuel consumed, carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM)).