Development of SIDRA-TRIP Integrated GPS Model to Evaluate Fuel Consumption/Emission on Expressway and Alternative Road

Factors that influence travel planning and route choice decision include route attributes, personal characteristic, trip characteristics, and environment condition. To inform road users with the travel information, a travel planning system requires advanced computers, electrical technologies and robust traffic models. Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are one of the limited responses remaining to reducing traffic congestion in conjunction with collecting traffic data. This study evaluates route attributes which include travel time, travel distance and fuel consumption/emission. Global Positioning System (GPS) was adapted for data collection on an elevated expressway and alternative road. Six probe vehicles were equipped with GPS and data-logger to gather second-by-second travel data such as speed, time and location. The vehicles were also governed to travel on the selected parallel route. Besides riding quality, the paper also examined travel time and distance trajectories and driving cycle to estimate instant fuel consumption and pollutant emissions using the a SIDRA-TRIP integrated GPS model. Second-by-second fuel consumption and pollutant emissions were then estimated. The results showed that fuel consumption and emission outputs travelled on the expressway route were lower than those travelled on the at-grade route. However, the SIDRA-TRIP model is required careful calibration and validation to replicate Thailand’s traffic conditions.