Traffic, air quality, and health impacts resulting from transport interventions using a regional-scale agent-based transportation system model

Transport interventions offer opportunities to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of traffic. However, the impacts on vehicle activities, emissions, air quality, and health outcomes are often assessed in silos and focused on aggregated effects. Current practice lacks a scalable, open-source, and modular tool that can efficiently simulate personal and vehicular travel and the resulting environmental impacts of a regional transportation system at high resolution. This paper presents a newly developed integrated assessment framework based on a high-resolution, agent-based transportation model for regional traffic simulations, emission modeling, pollutant exposure and health assessment. The integrated model is demonstrated for four transport intervention scenarios (Cordon Zone, Telecommuting, Walk/bike Incentives, and Free Transit) in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlighting different magnitudes and distributions of the multifaceted impacts across space and population. The tool can be extended to other regions and a variety of policy levers to inform sustainable, efficient, and effective transportation planning.