Urban Transportation Energy Consumption Calculation Model And Scenario Analysis

Urban transportation supports the economic and social activities in cities. With rapid development in China, infrastructure construction and vehicle amount increase give rise to some problems including the rapid increase of urban transport energy consumption. As large, complicated and interactive urban transportation system is, related researches and statistics are not sufficient. Nationwide level transport energy consumption estimation researches and influential factor analysis are furthermore limited.Energy consumption characteristics during motorization periods in developed countries are meaningful cases to study. International comparison on transportation energy consumption among the United States, Japan and China is the first part in this paper. Energy consumption in transportation sector in the United States and Japan illustrates that travel behaviors, like travel share rate of private cars and vehicle energy efficiency, play significant roles in energy consumption.On the basis of qualitative investigation, accurate quantitative urban energy consumption calculation model is necessary. As major part in urban transportation is passenger vehicles, from three aspects- vehicle holding, vehicle usage and energy efficiency, the model sets vehicle amount, vehicle on road rate, vehicle miles traveled per day and energy consumption per vehicle-kilometer as four independent variables. To acquire vehicle on road rate, vehicle miles traveled and energy consumption per vehicle-kilometer, a nationwide online questionnaire investigation in China is conducted. Based on the calculation model, an estimation of urban transportation energy consumption in China from 2012 to 2030 is proposed under nine scenarios, which is the combination of three different residents’ travel behaviors and three energy efficiency conditions. The results of scenario analysis show that urban transportation energy consumption holds about half of total transportation energy consumption. Effective measures in urban planning, transportation planning and traffic management is significant to transportation energy consumption control.The paper moreover analyses influential factors for urban transportation energy consumption changes from two aspects- vehicle holding and usage and residents’ travel behavior, by LMDI(Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index) method. The result reveals that the increase of vehicle number is the immediate cause of urban transportation energy consumption rise, while the change of private car share rate is the primary cause.Based on international comparison, scenario analysis and influential factor analysis above, the paper lastly provides some strategies for urban transportation energy consumption control in China.