Research On The Urban Road Congestion And Air Pollution

With the development of society and economy,the demand for road transportation and the number of urban vehicles in cities have increasing dramatically,resulting in serious road traffic congestion.Heavy road traffic congestion not only reduces the efficiency of social and economic activities,but also led to serious traffic pollution emissions and deteriorates the urban living environment.Analyzing urban traffic development and road pollution is the key way to analyze the status quo of urban road traffic development,explore the bottleneck of road traffic development,and get out of the plight of the transportation industry.This article first studied the statistical correlation between road congestion and air pollution and analyze the impact of road congestion on air pollution by selecting appropriate instrumental variables from the perspective of solving endogeneity.In addition,from the perspective of the transportation supply side,this article explores the effect of urban road construction on pollution reduction by taking the road area rate index as the quality of road construction.After splitting the road area rate index into urban road network density and road width,we find that it is the road network density that affect pollution and improve the road environment.Finally,from the perspective of the traffic demand side,we then analyze the emission reduction effects of different vehicle restriction policy from the transportation supply side.In addition,different mediating variables were used to test the mediating effects of policies’ pollution impacts,and analyze the influence path of pollution reduction.The results show that urban road congestion does increase the level of urban air pollution.After considering the endogenous of Congestion Delay Index,the impact of traffic congestion on air quality is still significantly positive.For traffic supply,the increasing the road area rate have a positive impact on air quality,that is urban transportation infrastructure and air quality are gradually improved by increasing road area rate.The effects are still significant after considering the effect of spatial spillover.In addition,from the perspective of urban road construction and planning,the increase in urban road network density may be the main reason for improving urban air quality,while the increase in road width has no significant impact on air quality.From the perspective of traffic demand control,both general restriction policies and special restriction policies have significant impacts on urban air quality,and the latter is more effective.beisides,the long-term continuous general restriction policy has a positive impact on air quality by reducing residents’ demand for and purchase of motor vehicles.Short-term special restriction policies ease the emission of motor vehicle pollutants by alleviating road congestion and increasing traffic flow.Therefore,in the future,local governments should strengthen the joint prevention and control of urban traffic congestion and traffic pollution.Together with improving urban road planning and road network system construction,governments should also strengthen traffic demand management and public transportation construction to alleviate road congestion and traffic pollution.