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EHSS (Ayeze et al.).pdf (1.49 MB)

Urban Planning: Correlation between the business development areas and traffic emissions

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posted on 2018-02-21, 06:48 authored by Andre Cao, Ayeze Hassan, Nameera Azim, Pearl Clam

The chief objective of this study is to investigate a major source of air pollution, traffic emissions, in order to deduce a reason for the large amount of vehicle volume in certain areas and to find solutions to aid in reducing it. Data obtained from the Toronto Open Data supported our hypothesis that a staggering number of vehicles make their way towards the business development zones in the Greater Toronto Area every day. This inevitably leads to escalated traffic congestion on the highways and roads heading towards the financial districts, causing those areas, as well as neighbouring residential areas, to have a significantly high amount of air pollutants. For our research, we have decided to focus on nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as it is one of the dominating air pollutants and has significant health and environmental concerns. Moreover, in order to support this theory, we have generated graphs comparing the volume of vehicles at various intersections spread across the GTA over a period of 8 hours on a specific date with the estimated NO2 production in surrounding areas, the volume of vehicles at various intersections compared to the business development areas, and the concentration of NO2 in various areas. A fourth graph demonstrates the positive correlation between NO2 production between 2011 and 2016, and the number of asthma patients, which supports the fact that NO2 leads to health hazards and environmental issues, since other factors affecting asthma are fairly constant since the time period is relatively short. Finally, we have proposed solutions which may reduce the need for people to commute such long distances, in turn reducing traffic congestion.

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