Improving local air quality in cities by reducing nitrogen dioxide pollution from road traffic

“Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati, Faculty of Engineering, Galati, Romania

^* Corresponding author: sparaschiv@ugal.ro

Abstract

Trucks and buses play a major role in our lives, transporting goods and thousands of people to cities every day. But these vehicles, although in a much smaller number than the car generates a significant amount of air pollutants. The daily NO₂ concentrations measured by a traffic monitoring station over a period of two years are used to identify the temporal variation of NO₂ pollution as a result of measures to ban the circulation of trucks that do not meet the EURO 6 standard on Stresemannstrase Street in Hamburg. The data shows a decrease in NO₂ concentration due to the measure taken so that in January 2017 the maximum daily NO₂ concentration was 86 µg/m³ compared to 63 µg/m³ in 2019. There was also a difference between the daily minimum concentrations during the same period, being approximately 28 µg/m³ in 2017 and 10 µg/m³ in 2019. The daily NO₂ observations show a significant decrease in concentration since May 2018 when the non-EURO 6 trucks were banned. The largest decrease in daily concentrations was recorded in March 2019 compared with levels in March 2018, with a lower concentration for 28 days. A different situation was observed in October 2018, when compared to October 2017, showed an increase in concentration for 23 days.