Congestionamento de tráfego de veículos e emissões de poluentes atmosféricos veiculares: uma análise das suas interrelações no município de São Paulo

Abstract

Currently the major cities are in poles of activities primarily commercial and services. These urban centers have become generators of numerous trips transporting people and goods, which cause an accumulation of vehicles on its road system, resulting in a traffic congestion of vehicles in some slots throughout the day which contributes to the increase of pollutants in atmosphere of these cities. This study aims to investigate a possible relationship between traffic congestion and concentration of certain air pollutants emitted by these vehicles, in São Paulo. Since the approach of this data, a secondary source, the information concerning the extent of congestion and those related to pollutants were removed. The data for the period 1996-2009, were obtained from the Company and Traffic Engineering (CET), through observations and measurements of congestion on roads monitored in the capital, and the Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo (CETESB) where information is related to the following pollutants: Inhalable particles that are smaller than 10 microns (PM10), Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and climatological data , as minimum temperature and average humidity , pulled together to monitoring stations. In the results, we observed a linear increase in the extent of congestion and an inverse behavior with respect to pollutants except for ozone. There was no direct correlation observed between the measured pollutants to the extent of congestion queue. Obtaining the following correlation coefficients R = -0.056 for PM10 -0.057 to SO2, NO2 to -0.20, -1.33 to -0.017 for CO and O3. This result raises some considerations about the factors that may have influenced the same as the technological development applied to the automobile industry, as well as actions of governmental nature that gradually lower the emission limit values of pollutants were established in the new production vehicles. The result also stimulated a new literature review, which, despite a lack of literature on the subject, similar cases of lower layer of pollution were reported over large cities. Factors that may have contributed to these findings are the technological advances in the reduction of vehicle emissions, climatic factors, geographical factors and technical limitations in measuring both the extensions of traffic, as the exposure to pollutants, also highlighting public policy control of vehicular emissions. We conclude that, despite the increased volume of vehicles and consequently the extent of congestion, the concentrations of pollutants in the atmosphere, decreased over the period, not showing a direct relationship between the increase in congestion and concentration of pollutants.