Methods for assessing the role of traffic management in mitigating the environmental impacts of urban road transport: an overview

The role of transport is significant in the environmental sustainability challenge of European cities. In this framework, traffic congestion in modern cities is considered a major contributor to the problems of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for urban traffic management can reduce traffic congestion and decrease the environmental impacts of the transport systems. This paper reviewed several scientific articles evaluating the ITS technology examined, the impact analyzed, and the methodology applied to assess potential environmental benefits. Microscopic traffic simulation and qualitative approaches are the most commonly chosen methods. The impacts analyzed are equally distributed through air quality, GHG emissions, and congestion. Finally, the collected results are discussed, highlighting different approaches’ potentials and limitations (for example, typical scenarios, required input data, and achieved outputs).