Asessment Of Smoke Emissions Generated From Freight Vehicles At Idling Conditions In The City Of Addis Ababa

Vehicles are the major sources of air pollution. In the developing world old agedrnvehicles are one of the main reasons why vehicles emit pollutant gases to thernenvironment. The poor transport planning and traffic management systems leading torntraffic congestion and hence idling, on the other hand, is the other major reasonrnaggravating emission from vehicles. Vehicle related emissions are known to causernstroke, cancers including childhood leukaemia, lower IQ levels in children and adversernreproductive outcomes, low birth weight and premature birth and respiratory diseasesrn(Suglia et al., 2007).rnThe objective of this research was to quantify the smoke emissions from tailpipes ofrndiesel powered freight vehicles when they idle because of congestion & red light trafficrnstopping in the city of Addis Ababa; and the relation of these emissions with vehiclesrnage. Considering the patterns of freight movements in the city of Addis Ababa, freightrnvehicles that entered through the Djibouti Mojo corridor during the year 2015 were usedrnfor the analysis as 95% of import commodities is through this route.rnThe major freight destinations in the city were identified to asses and analyze the idlingrnsituation on the routes from the entry point to the different freight destinations in the city.rnAn empirical model was developed that combined data of Average Annual Daily Trafficrnof Freight Vehicles, freight destinations of the vehicles, idling times spent by vehicles onrnthe selected freight routes of Addis Ababa and smoke densities of smoke emissionsrnfrom freight vehicles.rnFor the completion of analysis, two types of field measurements were performed. Onernwas to quantify the idle times on the different routes towards the major freightrndestinations and another was to simulate actual road traffic idling at a measurement siternand measure the smoke produced from sample freight vehicles per idle situations;rnreferred as „stop and go‟ scenarios, by the use of a smoke measuring instrument calledrnopacity meter .rnIt was found that the age of the freight vehicles in the city of Addis Ababa is a majorrnfactor for the emission of smoke from tailpipes. Vehicles‟ age was correlated with smokernemission with a high correlation constant of -0.8. Average opacity values of 80%, 73%rn21 % and 8% were obtained for the model year groups of 1959-1991, 1991-2000, 2000-rniiirn2010 and 2010-2014 respectively from which the opacity values for the vehicles of prern1991 vehicles resulted in much higher values than the standards of the USrnEnvironmental Protection Agency i.e. 50 %. The computed average smoke density fromrnthe freight vehicles resulted in a value of 7.6 meter -1 which is very much higher than thernthreshold set by the standard of the European Union (EU VI). The result from the smokernemission due to idling on each of the routes to the freight destination computed by thernempirical model was found to have increased with 93% from the calculated value on thernempirical model using the threshold set by the standard of the European Union (EU VI).rnIt was concluded that the level of smoke emissions from freight vehicles in the city ofrnAddis Ababa is very high to cause deleterious impacts on the health of the city dwellersrnand also on the environment. To tackle the problem, old aged vehicles should bernbanned from import, optimized traffic management systems should be effected,rnintegrated traffic and environmental laws should be formulated and implemented andrnstringent laws on smoke emissions should also be formulated and executed.

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