Area-Wide Environmental Capacity (AWEC) is defined in this paper as: `the maximum amount of traffic activities that may occur in a given area during a certain period of time, under fixed physical conditions, without causing environmental detriment'. The underlying concept, the model variables including traffic, meteorological and layout variables, as well as the criteria to be used in the development of the empirical models are discussed. As a first application of the model concept to the data of Sydney metropolitan area, under a number of meteorological scenarios, the basic relationship between traffic activities and CO pollution concentrations are being built and discussed in the paper. Analyses show that meteorological factors play an important role in these relationships. The ventilation rate is introduced as an appropriate parameter to explain most of the meteorological variables. The 8-hour averaging time seems to be a suitable time unit for planning purposes when dealing with AWEC based on CO pollution concentrations, The AWEC is designed to be a useful evaluation tool for strategic regional land use/transport planning and areawide traffic management purposes. (A)
Abstract