MODALES was present at the ITS European Congress in Toulouse from 30 May to 1 June 2022, with a project area on the ERTICO stand, a Special Interest Session and a Technical paper.
The Special Interest Session on 31 May, entitled “How can green driving solutions contribute to clean air policies?” featured speakers from MODALES partners ERTICO and LIST, and CEREMA the CARES project represented by the ICCT, as well as the European Commission.
MODALES Coordinator Andrew Winder from ERTICO introduced the session and gave an overview of MODALES and its achievements to date, including exhaust, brake and tyre emission monitoring and ranking of driver behaviour factors.
Salima Abu Jeriban, Project Officer from the European Commission’s CINEA (Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency) provided an overview of topic “Reduction of transport impact on air quality”, where the challenge is to better understand and reduce the contribution of transport to poor air quality and health impact. To this end, CINEA funds five key projects: MODALES, CARES, uCARe, TUBE and GVI.
Yoann Bernard from the ICCT (International Council on Clean Transportation) presented the CARES project (City Air Remote Emission Sensing – https://cares-project.eu) , which includes remote sensing by open path techniques, plume chasing and point sampling. He gave the preliminary results from the project’s remote sensing campaign in Milan, a city with a low-emission zone from which LPG and CNG-fuelled vehicles are exempt. It was noted that there is a significant share of LPG powered vehicles (bi-fuel) in Milan relative to other cities and high CO emissions were detected from LPG vehicles as well as high methane emissions from CNG vehicles. Emission monitoring is also ongoing in Krakow and Prague. Finally, he provided a brief overview of the uCARe project (You Can Always Reduce Emissions – https://www.project-ucare.eu), running parallel to CARES and MODALES, in which the ICCT is also a partner.
Ramiro Camino from LIST (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology) gave and overview of the MODALES low-emission driving app which is paired with an OBD (On-Board Diagostics) dongle and provides a simple interface so as to minimise driver distraction. The app builds on experience of previous projects (e.g. ecoDriver in 2016 which focused on CO2 rather than pollutant emissions) and other proprietary systems (also mostly oriented to CO2 and fuel saving). This app is further described in a technical paper (see below).
Guillaume Saint Pierre from Cerema in Toulouse outlined the MODALES approach to evaluation of the low-emission driving app. This task is just starting as the on-road trials are currently taking place, but will focus on performance indicators for low-emission driving behaviour (with respect to exhaust, brakes and tyres) as well as eco-driving (fuel/CO2) and driver feedback/acceptance.
A discussion then covered the effects (in terms of emissions reduction) and user acceptance of green and low-emission driving solutions. MODALES is aimed principally at older ICE vehicles, as it relies on the OBD to gather data (electric vehicles do not have an OBD port). The app can however be further developed as sensors change and eventually integrated into vehicles by manufacturers. Previous projects like ecoDriver found that the potential impact of such apps is greater on rural roads, where speeds are higher and more variable. Regarding safety, eco/low-emission driving is generally also safer, as it implies smoother and slower driving.
The question on whether cities or states with low-emission zones could require such eco-driving support was discussed. There is a risk that such actions to improve driving style could be counter-productive because authorities may then feel less pressure to implement stronger measures like bans of (certain types of) vehicles.
Remote sensing is a potential tool for cities to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of low-emission / clean air zones, or other eco-/traffic management measures. Yoann Bernard said that the cost of sensors from the CARES project are about 100 000 euro, but should be worth it for the results they bring.
You can download the presentations in this session by clicking on the name of the speaker down below.
Andrew Winder
Guillaume SAINT PIERRE
Ramiro CAMINO
Yoann Bernard
Salima Abu Jeriban
In addition a Technical Paper, authored by MODALES experts from LIST and CERTH entitled Low-Emission Driving Assistants: Experience from MODALES was presented in a different session by Ramiro Camino from LIST. The paper is available here.