Policies for better air quality

A new review sheds light on the effectiveness of policies across the globe in reducing traffic emissions. They studied a total of 1,139 policy scenarios from 376 articles. The studied policy interventions were classified under 21 categories, where alternative fuel technology was the most frequently studied intervention, followed by vehicle emission regulation. A general finding was that while there are several policies implemented or studied in urban areas that are expected to reduce emissions, the associated evidence varies. The authors also note that there are fewer studies of strategies that are more interdisciplinary in nature, such as behavioural and land-use strategies, in favour of supply-side measures typically implemented by transport authorities. Likewise, it was found that there were relatively few studies in rapidly urbanising middle- and low-income countries, where one could assume that the need for measures is greatest.

The authors have created an open-access interactive tool to enable policymakers to assess the impact of different policies.

The tool can be found here: https://tableau.tamu.edu/t/TTI/views/SEMDataVisualizationV2/SEMVisualiza...