Integrated modeling of car/motorcycle ownership, type and usage for estimating energy consumption and emissions

Devising effective management strategies to relieve dependency on private vehicles, i.e. cars and motorcycles, depends on the ability to accurately and carefully examine the effects of corresponding strategies. Disaggregate choice models regarding the ownership, type and usage of cars and motorcycles are required to achieve this. Consequently. this study proposes integrated car and motorcycle models based on a large-scale questionnaire survey of Taiwanese owners of cars and motorcycles, respectively. Incorporating gas mileage and emission coefficients for different types of cars and motorcycles into the proposed models can enable the estimation and comparison of reductions in energy consumption and emissions under various management strategies. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed integrated models, scenarios involving 10% and 30% increases in gas prices are analyzed and compared. The results indicate that gas price elasticities of cars and motorcycles are low, ranging from 0.47 to 0.50 for cars and 0.11 for motorcycles. Additionally, a high ratio of discouraged car users shifting to use of motorcycles neutralizes the effects of increased gas price in reducing energy consumption and emissions. Pollution of CO and HC even slightly increased because motorcycles are much more polluting in terms of CO and HC. At last, the reductions of energy consumption and emissions under 10% and 30% increase (or decrease) in other manipulating variables are also estimated and compared. The countermeasures for reducing ownership and usage of cars and motorcycles are then recommended accordingly. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.