New Mexico on the Road: Impact of CO2 from NM Cars

Team: 104

School: NNMC

Area of Science: Environmental Science

Interim: Problem Definition:
The automobile is an essential part of daily life in New Mexico. The transportation system in our state is not the most adequate, and encourages individuals to use personally owned, and inefficient vehicles instead. Consider the greenhouse gas emissions and oil cost. The automobile’s main contribution comes from the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted as the engine burns fuel. While the contribution of a single car emission is minimal, the collective contribution may become a problem of vast scale. Moreover, the fact that the amount of CO2 associated with cars is the product of factors such as travel distances and type of cars, the problem may be aggravated by the low-efficient cars used by most New Mexicans and the large amount of driving distances. Furthermore, as a state that imports oil from other countries and states, the overall cost may be very high.
In this project, we plan to: (i) provide a detailed snapshot of carbon emissions and fuel consumption from factual traffic data and automobile stock from New Mexico; and (ii) present a model for carbon emissions and fuel consumption in the state, considering variables such as annual average daily traffic, vehicle population by automaker, and fuel economy. The project will permit us to better understand the carbon emissions and fuel consumption problems by decomposing and analyzing the main factors involved, namely, fuel use per mile or fuel economy of the cars, and aggregate vehicle travel distance. The latter is a determining factor in New Mexico, where the transportation heavily depends on automobiles.

Problem Solution:
A relevant part of the project consists of the data collection of traffic flow (i.e., automobiles) in the state, and the automobile stock results by automaker, including estimates of the number of vehicles in service and their average on-road fuel economy. The first one is fundamental to know the Aggregate Vehicle Travel Distance (AVTD), while the second is indispensable to compute the Fuel Consumption Rate (FCR) of automobiles. AVTD and FCR are the two main factors behind carbon emission and fuel consumption.

Progress to Date:
We have already studied an specific but important spot of New Mexico, namely, the I25 Interstate route between mile 230 (Albuquerque) to mile 283 (Santa Fe). We have obtained raw data of traffic flow and classified relevant information such as annual average daily traffic and vehicle travel distances. We have modeled this part of the I25 as a simple linear network topology, where the flow conservation constraint may be violated to avoid modeling entry and exit points.

Team Members:

  Kaitlyn Dow
  Dulce Avitia
  Annaleah Dow
  Jeremy Salazar
  Angela Gomez

Sponsoring Teacher: Jorge Crichigno

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