Overview
The increase in the number of Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDV) is inherently accompanied by increase in congestion, pollutant emissions, noise and energy use as well as infrastructure overuse, all of which have broad societal implications. In addition to affecting the environment, contributing markedly to global warming, significant implications for the health of many residents living along traffic corridors as well as increases in the cost of infrastructure maintenance are logical consequences.
Using individual vehicle data, the footprint project (ASTRA 2004/020, ASTRA 2004/008, ASTRA 2010/019) has shown that within every vehicle category there are those with a very high combined footprint considering noise, dynamic load and pollutant emissions. Up to now the Swiss heavy vehicle fee (LSVA) based on the environmental differential charging, has been very successful in reducing the impact of pollutant emissions at source and to the more economical transport of goods.
The aim of this follow up project is to develop new instruments to encourage vehicles with a low total footprint. Specifically, to develop methods include noise as a parameter in the differential charging of LSVA. This will be achieved in parallel within a new European project Eureka Ecovehicle (E!7219).