Assessment of trafc-related air pollution in the urban streets before

and during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games trafc control period
Ting Wang, Shaodong Xie
*
College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 29 March 2009
Received in revised form
15 July 2009
Accepted 20 July 2009
Keywords:
Air pollution
Trafc pollution
Street canyon
OSPM
2008 Olympic Games
a b s t r a c t
In order to investigate the air quality and the abatement of trafc-related pollution during the 2008
Olympic Games, we select 12 avenues in the urban area of Beijing to calculate the concentrations of PM
10
,
CO, NO
2
and O
3
before and during the Olympic trafc controlling days, with the OSPM model.
Through comparing the modeled results with the measurement results on a representative street, the
OSPM model is validated as sufcient to predict the average concentrations of these pollutants at street
level, and also reects their daily variations well, i.e. CO presents the similar double peaks as the trafc
ow, PM
10
concentration is inuenced by other sources. Meanwhile, the model predicts O
3
to stay less
during the daytime and ascend in the night, just opposite to NO
2
, which reveals the impact of photo-
chemical reactions. In addition, the predicted concentrations on the windward side often exceed the
leeward side, indicating the impact of the special street shape, as well as the wind.
The comparison between the predicted street concentrations before and during the Olympic trafc
control period shows that the overall on-road air quality was improved effectively, due to the 32.3%
trafc ow reduction. The concentrations of PM
10
, CO and NO
2
have reduced from 142.6 mg m
3
,
3.02 mg m
3
and 118.7 mg m
3
to 102.0 mg m
3
, 2.43 mg m
3
and 104.1 mg m
3
. However, the different
pollutants show diverse changes after the trafc control. PM
10
decreases most, and the reduction effect
focusing on the rst half-day even clears the morning peak, whereas CO and NO
2
have even reductions to
minify the daily uctuations on the whole. Opposite to the other pollutants, ozone shows an increase of
concentration. The average reduction rate of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
and O
3
are respectively 28%, 19.3%, 12.3% and
25.2%. Furthermore, the streets in east, west, south and north areas present different air quality
improvements, probably induced by the varied background pollution in different regions around Beijing,
along with the impact of wind force. This nding suggests the pollution control in the surrounding
regions, not only in the urban area.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The air quality of Beijing during the 29th Olympic Games attracts
wide attention fromthe public. It is even the reason that Beijing has
once been challenged for, as the concentrations of PM
10
and NO
2
in
Beijing in 2004 were 146 mg m
3
and 70.2 mg m
3
respectively
(Beijing EPA, 2004), both substantially exceeding the WHO air
quality guideline limits (20 mg m
3
for PM
10
, for which the Iinterim
target-1 is 70 mg m
3
, and 40 mg m
3
for NO
2
) (WHO, 2006); and the
ozone concentration also increased rapidly through recent years
(Fang et al., 2009), which caused concerns on the athletes health.
The vehicle has become an important pollution source of Beijing
(Cai and Xie, 2007), and also major reason of severe secondary
pollution. In order to improve the air quality, Beijing government
has applied comprehensive measures these years to control the
vehicle pollution, i.e. adopting stricter emission standard, control-
ling heavy-exhaust vehicles, and developing the public trans-
portation. Furthermore, from July 1, 2008 to September 20, 2008,
Beijing conducted phased reduction of its road-traveling automo-
biles, primarily by restricting automobiles of government ofces,
public institutions, army and police, and enterprises in the Beijing
municipal administrative regions, and conducting the strict
Olympic trafc demand management (TDM) of odd-even day
vehicle operation since July 20, 2008 (Wu and Zhang, 2008).
Due to these TDM measures, the road-traveling automobiles
reduced about 1.95 million a day during the Olympic Games (Mao,
2008). However, the improving effect on air quality remains to be
proved. Westerdahl et al. (2008) measured the on-road and
ambient pollutant concentrations during the four-day trafc
control experiment conducted by the Beijing Government from
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 10 62755852/62751925; fax: 86 10 62751927.
E-mail address: sdxie@pku.edu.cn (S. Xie).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
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j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ at mosenv
1352-2310/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2009.07.034
Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690
August 17 to 20, 2007, and found it effective in reducing extreme
concentrations. In this article we intend to reveal the trafc-related
pollution during the Olympic Games, assess the air quality
improvement for the rst time by modeling, and also evaluate the
reduction effect of these trafc management measures. Based on
this intention, we focus on the air quality inside urban street
canyons, which are not only intensively polluted areas, but also
overwhelmingly inuenced by the trafc emission.
There are a few models applied to simulate the pollution in
urban streets, i.e. STREET, CPBM, CAR (Mensink and Lewyckyj,
2001; Vardoulakis et al., 2002a,b, 2003; Yamartino and Wiegand,
1986; Ha rko nen et al., 1995, 1996). We choose the Operational
Street Pollution Model (OSPM, by National Environmental Research
Institute, Denmark), as it is designed for simulating the dispersion
of particulates and gases, mainly emit from vehicles, inside the
street canyon, which can present us the micro-environment trafc
pollution situation (Berkowicz, 2000). On the other hand, this
model is simple but sufcient, even to estimate ozone concentra-
tion, as it has been validated in many countries (Berkowicz et al.,
2002; Karppinen et al., 2000; Gokhale et al., 2005; Vardoulakis
et al., 2007; Ketzel et al., 2000; Ghenu et al., 2008; Bihan et al.,
2002; Ziv et al., 2002; Kukkonen et al., 2003), including China (He
et al., 1999; Fu et al., 1999), and basically estimated the on-road
concentrations fairly well.
In the following chapters we calculate the concentrations of
PM
10
, CO, NO
2
and ozone before and during the Olympic trafc
control days. Then these simulation results, as well as the trafc
ow data, are compared to nd the air quality improvement and
the reduction effect of trafc control measures. In advance, we
validate the accuracy of OSPM in forecasting the on-road pollutant
concentrations in Beijing by comparing with the measurement
results on a representative street.
2. Methods
2.1. OSPM model
The OSPM model, developed by Hertel (1989), Hertel and Ber-
kowicz (1989), is a practical street pollution model based on
a simplied description of ow and dispersion conditions in street
canyons. Concentrations of on-road exhaust gases can be divided
into two parts: the direct contribution fromstreet trafc, computed
by a plume model; and the recirculation part of pollutants,
computed froma box model. The total receptor concentration sums
them up and adds the background concentration, caused by
emission sources other than automobiles. This simplied parame-
terization in a street canyon has been deduced from extensive
analysis of experimental data and model tests (Berkowicz et al.,
1996, 1997). In addition, the model includes the basic chemical
reactions involving NO, NO
2
, O
2
and O
3
(Kukkonen et al., 2001).
2.2. Input data
2.2.1. Trafc and emission
OSPM calculates the vehicle source emission with trafc ow
data and emission factors computed by default COPERT model.
However, the default trafc eet share le and emission factors
based on European vehicle and fuel lists may not be suitable for
Beijing. As the new version of WinOSPM accepts the total emission
le (*.TEM) provided by the user, we take this advantage, to
calculate the total emission on each selected street, based on the
Chinese trafc eet composition of 10 vehicle types, and corre-
sponding emission factors derived from researches done in China
(Xie et al., 2005, 2006; Song and Xie, 2006; Wang et al., 2001;
Fu et al., 1997, 2000; Wang and Ding, 2002; Li et al., 2003).
The Chinese eet composition types and applied emission factors
are listed in Table 1.
The hourly trafc ow data (total number of vehicles, h
1
) on
selected streets before and during Olympics are provided by
Environment Monitoring Centre, EPB Beijing. The trafc eet
composition of each street comes from on-spot survey and docu-
mentation. Additionally, we include in the trafc le the long-short
vehicle ratio to furnish the trafc induced turbulence. The average
velocities of long vehicles and short vehicles are respectively set
25.0 kmh
1
and 30.0 kmh
1
during nighttime (22:00next 06:00),
15.0 kmh
1
and 20 kmh
1
in daytime (06:0022:00). In this paper
the cold-start emission is not taken into account.
2.2.2. Meteorology and background
Wind speed and wind direction are the most important
meteorological factors, which inuence the whole dispersion
mode and ambient turbulence. Temperature and total solar
radiation are needed as input values for the chemical reaction
(Hertel, 1989; Hertel and Berkowicz, 1989). Furthermore, the
meteorology and background data le contains the hourly
measured concentrations, for comparison, of PM
10
(mg m
3
) CO
(mg m
3
) and NO
2
(mg m
3
). As done in many researches (Chan
and Yao, 2008; Guinot et al., 2006; Chan et al., 2005; Song et al.,
2006), we apply the measurement values in Ding Ling Tomb,
a national monitoring site in rural area, as background concen-
trations. These hourly meteorology and measurement data is all
from Beijing Meteorology Bureau and Environment Monitoring
Centre, EPB Beijing. As ozone is not an ofcially monitored
species on national monitoring sites, the O
3
background
concentration comes from measurement in Beijing Iron Tower (a
regional background monitoring site) by Atmospheric Physics
Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
2.2.3. Streets geometry
Street conguration is also an important parameter for the
dispersion computation. We selected 12 avenues as the targets of
evaluation, from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ring roads around Beijing
urban area, covering East, West, South and North sides on each ring
road. These streets are all expressways and arterial roads, with
steady trafc ow and available measurement data. The main
trafc network of Beijing, including 2nd6th ring roads, is shown in
Fig. 1 and the selected 12 avenues are coloured in white. The names
and orientations of these streets are presented in Table 2.
The street geometry data, including the average height of the
buildings, the width and the length of each street, are totally
from on-site measurement. The receptor height sets at 2 m. The
orientation of roads on East and West sides is regulated at 180

north, and 90

for those on North and South sides, approximately

the true state. The street conguration of Qianmen East Avenue,
applied in the model validation, will be specied in the validation
part rstly.
Table 1
The Chinese eet composition types and applied emission factors (g km
1
$vehicle).
Trafc eet types PM
10
NO
X
CO
Passenger Car 0.0153 1.3 12.5
Light Truck 0.0537 2.8 19
Coach 0.146 1.56 23.4
Double-bin Coach 2.24 4.66 9
Motorcycle 1.15 0.1 14.8
Heavy Truck 4.67 3.36 4.65
Articulated Truck 8.44 10.11 5.63
Single-bin Bus 2.94 2.54 5
Double-bin Bus 6.03 10.11 5.63
Tractor 1.9 4 2
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5683
3. Results
3.1. OSPM model validation
We apply the intensive measurement results from Jul 1st to Jul
31st, 2004, on Qianmen East Avenue, to validate the OSPM model.
This avenue locates inside the 2nd Ring, nearly center of Beijing,
including the pavements, cycle paths, green belts and eight vehicle
lanes. It ranges from Qianmen (39

54
0
06
00
N/116

23
0
57
00
E) to Zhen-
gyi road (39

53
0
58
00
N/116

24
0
00
00
E), with the length 529 m, width
62.5 mand orientation 6.5

east by north. The average height of the

buildings on the south side is 23.4 m and 16.3 m on the north side.
3.1.1. Modeling the average concentrations
The measured and modeled hourly averaged concentrations of
PM
10
, CO, NO
2
at the street level, during the intensive measurement
period are shown in Fig. 2ac.
The model predicts NO
2
concentration best, as Fig. 2c shows,
and only a minor fraction of data points are located outside the
factor of two lines. Consequently the model predicts fairly well
the secondary pollutants. Considering the PM
10
and CO concen-
trations (Fig. 2ab), the scatter plots are almost symmetrical, thus
the model can also be evaluated as acceptable in predicting these
pollutants. However, there are still a few data points deviated from
the factor of two area, especially the PM
10
concentrations in
Fig. 2a. The reason might be the special street canyon shape of
Beijing. The wide canyon causes the dispersion mode different
fromthe default mode in even canyon, and results in the deviation
between measurement and prediction.
Anyhow, the model estimates well the average concentrations,
of both primary pollutants and secondary pollutants, at the street
level. The accuracy even exceeds the former validation research on
the same street (Fu et al., 1999), probably because we adopted
Chinese emission factors and the total emission amount as the
input data.
3.1.2. Modeling the daily variation
Whether the model reects the daily variation of the air quality
in Beijing is also one of our concerns. Accordingly, we selected 4th
July as a representative day to calculate the concentrations of PM
10,
CO, NO
2
on both sides of the street, hour by hour, using the
meteorology parameters showed in Table 3. The measured and
modeled concentration values in time sequence are plotted in
Fig. 3ac. In addition, we also computed the hourly ozone
concentrations, shown in Fig. 3d.
FromFig. 3a we discover that the daily variations of the modeled
and measured concentrations are almost the same for PM
10
, though
the modeled value reaches the peak at 6pm, earlier than the
measured. The predicted concentration of CO(Fig. 3b), especially on
the leeward side, also presents the similar variation as the
measured, including the peaks at 7am and 6pm. However, during
the noontime (11am2pm) the predicted concentration is much
higher and creates another peak. The predicted NO
2
concentration
is relatively higher than the measured (Fig. 3c), but it reects the
basic trend of peaks at 7am, 3pm, 6pm and bottom value at 8pm
with tiny time differences, especially for the leeward side. Thus we
conclude that the daily variation of predicted concentration from
OSPM model basically coincides with the measured concentration,
with acceptable difference in concentration value and time.
Compared with the daily variation of the trafc ow in Fig. 3e,
the daily variation of pollutants could be better interpreted. The
measured CO concentration shows the closest trend to the trafc
Fig. 1. The main trafc network of Beijing, including 2nd6th ring roads. The selected 12 avenues are in white. The city center, North Orient and the orientations of Tianjin and
Langfang are also shown.
Table 2
The names and orientations of the selected twelve streets.
East West South North
2nd Ring Chaoyangmen Avenue Guanganmen Binhe Road Yongdingmen East Binhe Road Deshengmen East Avenue
3rd Ring East 3rd Ring South Road West 3rd Ring North Road South 3rd Ring West Road North 3rd Ring East Road
4th Ring East 4th Ring Mid-Road West 4th Ring Mid-Road South 4th Ring Mid-Road North 4th Ring Mid-Road
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5684
(Fig. 3b), with peaks around 7am9am and 6pm7pm, though the
peak values are not signicantly high. This similarity proves that
CO, a typical primary pollutant, is decisively from the trafc emis-
sion on-road. PM
10
(Fig. 3a), however, deviates the double-peak
mode of the trafc and only holds one peak. As PM
10
has complex
sources, i.e. secondary aerosol, long-range transport and trafc
dust, we presume that the trafc ow can not dominate its
concentration and on that day the other sources, e.g. a massive
regional transport, might yield the evening peak. The measured
and predicted NO
2
concentrations both ascend during the day, and
stay lower in the dawn and night (Fig. 3c), when the solar radiation
is weaker. To the opposite, O
3
concentration keeps low at the
daytime (Fig. 3d), as it reacts with NO, emitted from the vehicles,
and generates NO
2
, by the catalyzing of radiation and high
temperature. Consequently ozone stays light from sunrise to
sunset, while NO
2
accumulates.
3.1.3. The inuence of wind and street conguration
As Table 3 shows, the prevailing wind direction on that day is
north. Since the Qianmen East Avenue runs east-westward, the
south side of the street is windward while the north side leeward.
The monitoring site locates on the north (also leeward) side of the
street.
Fig. 3a and 3b showthe measured and computed concentrations
of PM
10
and CO on both sides of the street. From them we discover
that the modeled results on the north side (leeward) have better
Fig. 2. (ac). Comparison between measured and predicted hourly concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
, July 2004, on Qianmen East Avenue, for the validation of OSPM model. The lines
showing an agreement of predictions and data by a factor of two are also presented. N is the number of data points.
Table 3
Hourly wind speed (ms
1
) and wind direction (

) at roof level, July 4th, 2004, Beijing.

Hour Wind speed Wind direction Hour Wind speed Wind direction Hour Wind speed Wind direction
1 1.7 0 9 1 0 17 2.1 147
2 0.9 0 10 1.6 4 18 1.3 157
3 0.8 0 11 1.7 38 19 1.9 208
4 0.6 3 12 1.2 37 20 4.8 13
5 0.3 0 13 1.2 171 21 3.1 0
6 1.5 0 14 1 183 22 3.4 0
7 0.2 0 15 1.3 156 23 1.1 0
8 0.3 0 16 1.2 149 24 1.5 0
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5685
similarity with the measurement results, which coincides the
location of the measuring site on the north side. Besides, the pre-
dicted windward concentrations often exceed the measured values
much, different from the research in Guangzhou, China (Xie et al.,
2003). This phenomenon is probably caused by the wide street
canyon shape of Qianmen East Avenue, with a 62.5 m width and
only near 20 m height.
The ow regimes inside the street canyon are functions of
aspect ratio (H/W, height/width) (Sini et al., 1996; Berkowicz
et al., 1997). In wide streets (H/W< 0.3) the ow elds associated
with the buildings do not interact, resulting in the isolated
roughness regime. As H/W increases (0.3 < H/W< 0.7), the wake
created by the upwind building is disturbed by the downwind
building and forms a downward ow along the windward face,
named wake interference ow. In narrow streets (H/W > 0.7)
a stable vortex is established and the ambient ow, as a skim-
ming ow, is separated from the street ow. The H/W of the
selected street is 0.32, a border value between wake interference
ow (WIF) and isolated roughness ow (IRF), in favor of a sinking
airow inside the canyon (IRF) or on the windward face of the
building (WIF). In both cases the pollutants accumulate in the
windward side, and consequently achieve higher concentrations
than the leeward side, as the measured and modeled results
show.
Fig. 3. (ac). 24-h daily variation of the measured and predicted concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
. (d) 24-h daily variation of predicted concentration of O
3
(e). 24-h daily variation of
the trafc ow (vehicles$h
1
), on Qianmen East Avenue. The predicted data series include the computed results on the windward (south) and leeward (north) sides. The repre-
sentative day is July 4th, 2004.
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5686
Similarly in Fig. 3c and 3d, the estimated concentration of NO
2
and O
3
on the windward side also exceeds the leeward side, as well
as the measured data from the leeward monitoring site.
Furthermore, wind speed is also considered a vital factor to
inuence the modeled concentrations. On the representing day
we found that the concentration values of PM
10
, CO and NO
2
,
either measured or predicted, all dropped at around 8pm, most
possibly because the wind speed soared, boosted the dispersion
and diluted the pollution with the ambient air at that time.
Meanwhile, the peaks of ozone at 810pm and 6am could also be
attributed to the high wind speeds in these two periods
(4.8 m s
1
and 1.5 m s
1
, respectively; Table 3). The ozone
concentration in the background air is higher than inside the
canyon (Xie et al., 2003), thus when the ow intensies, more O
3
is brought into the street canyon, resulting in the concentration
peaks.
3.2. Pollution modeling before and during the Olympic trafc
management period
Applying the validated OSPM model, we predicted the pollutant
concentrations on the selected 12 avenues, respectively the 2nd,
3rd and 4th ring roads in Beijing urban area (see Table 2), before
and during the Olympic trafc demand management (TDM) period.
Fig. 4ae shows the daily variation of the average trafc ow, and
predicted concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
, and O
3
in 24 h. In order
to clarify the air quality improvement in different areas, as well
as the inuence of wind force, the average trafc ow and
Fig. 4. (a). The daily variation of the trafc owand the special hourly average trafc ows for east, west, south and north roads. Fig. 4be. The daily variation and the special hourly
average predicted concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2,
and O
3,
for east, west, south and north roads. The calculated time periods are Jul.10thJul. 19th (before TDM) and Jul.20th
Jul.30th (during TDM).
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5687
concentrations on the streets in each region (east, west, south and
north) are assembled and shown, respectively.
3.2.1. Trafc ow reduction during the Olympic TDM period
From Fig. 4a, we conclude that the Trafc Demand Management
policy takes obvious reduction effect on the hourly trafc ow, with
an average reducing rate 32.3%.
The special trafc reducing rates for the roads on east, west,
south and north side are 24.6%, 27.2%, 34.6% and 42.8%, respectively.
The roads in the north area, where the Olympic sports park
(including the National Stadium, the National Aquatic Center, etc.)
is situated, show the largest trafc ow reduction, as during the
Olympic Games the trafc control in that area is the strictest.
On the other hand, considering the diurnal variation, the trafc
management does not change the double-peak mode thoroughly,
and shows the reduction effect more signicantly during the rush
hours. However, the morning peak is delayed for 23 h, probably
because many institutes and enterprises have given their
employees a holiday for the Olympic Games.
3.2.2. Various changes in the concentrations of different pollutants
The average predicted concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
, and O
3
before and during the Olympic TDM days are shown in Table 4,
while the daily concentration variations before and during the
Olympic TDM days are plotted in Fig. 4be. From themwe consider
that the concentration reductions during the Olympic TDMdays are
generally promising, yet vary among different pollutants, and not
exactly the same as the trafc reduction.
The previous concentration of PM
10
is 142.6 mg m
3
, over the
Grade I National Air Quality Standard of 50 mg m
3
and close to the
Grade II limit of 150 mg m
3
(National Ambient Air Quality Stan-
dard, 1996). It shows remarkable reduction, with an overall
reducing rate 28%, and the daily variation totally converses after the
trafc control (Fig. 4b). Since the reduction concentrates in the rst
half-day (before noontime, 0 am12pm), the morning rush hour
from 8am to 10am is erased and only the evening peak left. During
the second half-day the reduction effect is not distinct, for which
the reason might be: the regional transport contributes to PM
10
concentration a lot (Streets et al., 2007), and the transport process
often happens after noon, as we discussed in 3.1.2, such that the
reduction effect caused by TDM has been counteracted.
In contrast, the reduction effect of CO expresses averagely over
the whole day (Fig. 4c), remaining the former daily variation mode
though minor signicance during the rush hours, and shows the
most proximal trend as the trafc ow reduction. Since there are
few other sources of CO in the streets, except for the trafc
Fig. 4. (continued).
Table 4
Average predicted concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
, and O
3
before (pre-TDM) and during the Olympic TDM days and the Reduction Rate (RR %) over Four Regions (East, West,
South and North).
PM
10
(mg m
3
) CO (mg m
3
) NO
2
(mg m
3
) O
3
(ppb)
Pre-TDM TDM RR % Pre-TDM TDM RR % Pre-TDM TDM RR % Pre-TDM TDM RR %
East 136.1 105.8 22.3 2.98 2.79 6.30 122.7 114.1 7.00 4.99 5.36 7.38
West 164.5 103.6 37.0 3.41 2.49 26.9 106.6 92.4 13.3 5.31 6.81 28.2
South 128.5 96.7 24.8 2.55 1.97 22.5 116.5 101.2 13.1 7.00 8.54 21.9
North 141.5 102.0 27.9 3.13 2.46 21.4 129.0 108.7 15.8 4.63 6.63 43.1
Total 142.6 102.0 28.0 3.02 2.43 19.3 118.7 104.1 12.3 5.48 6.83 25.2
T. Wang, S. Xie / Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 56825690 5688
emission, it is natural that CO concentration reects similar daily
variation and reduction effect with the trafc ow. On the whole,
during the TDM period the concentration of CO in the street stays
safely belowthe Chinese National Air Quality Standard of 4 mg m
3
.
The average concentration of NO
2
presents a moderate double-
peak mode here (Fig. 4d), with the higher concentration through
the daytime, as in the validation part 3.1.2. The reduction of NO
2
is
also average and close to the trafc ow trend, however, the
reduction effect is not that signicant as PM
10
and CO, with the
average reducing rate only 12.3%. After the trafc control the daily
NO
2
concentration (104.1 mg m
3
) is still higher than the Grade II
National Air Quality Standard of 80 mg m
3
, though the hourly
concentrations are almost within the Grade II National Standard of
120 mg m
3
and WHO limit of 200 mg m
3
. It indicates the trafc
control has not decided its reduction exclusively, for the concen-
tration of NO
2
, a secondary pollutant, is inuenced by many other
factors, i.e. the solar radiation, the temperature and the background
ozone concentration, etc.
Compared with the other pollutants, ozone shows the opposite
change trend: the concentration has not been reduced, but
increased during the trafc management days (Fig. 4e). This
phenomenon can be interpreted by the same reason as we dis-
cussed in 3.1. Since ozone basically reacts with NO, the emitted
pollutants of vehicles, when the trafc emission is controlled, the
amount of NO is reduced, while ozone accumulates. Therefore, we
can conclude that the trafc demand management of odd-even day
vehicle operation has not obtained the desired effects in controlling
ozone pollution. The on-road photochemical reaction with NO is
also the reason that the ozone concentration in the street is always
lower than in the rural area, and also far from the Grade I National
Air Quality Standard of 120 mg m
3
.
3.2.3. Regional differences of air quality improvements
Before the trafc management, the trafc ows of the streets in
the east, west and north are relatively high, while in the south the
lowest. Accordingly, the pollution in these three areas is more
severe, showing a positive correlation with the trafc emission. In
the most crowded West 2nd Ring, North 3rd Ring and East 4th Ring,
where the daily trafc ow over 200,000, the daily concentrations
of PM
10
and COall exceed the Grade II National Air Quality Standard
of China (150 mg m
3
and 4 mg m
3
).
During the Olympic trafc controlling days, we nd that the
pollution reduction effects are reected more signicantly in the
west and north regions of Beijing, than in the east and south, which
is not exactly the same as the trafc ow reduction effects (in east,
west, south and north the reduction rates are respectively 24.6%,
27.2%, 34.6% and 42.8%, as shown in 3.2.1).
The different background pollution can be one of the reasons for
the regional difference of the reduction effect. The east and south
areas are inuenced by the pollutants transport from Tianjin and
Langfang (Fig. 1), thus the composition of pollution sources is more
complicated. In comparison, the rural areas in the west and north
contributes less in the background contribution, hence the trafc
emission takes more signicant effect in deciding the on-road
pollutant concentration.
In addition, the wind force accelerates this difference. Due to the
prevailing south-east wind in the summertime in Beijing, with the
average wind direction 115.5

, the east and south areas more

expose to the disturbance from the long-range transport, and
perform not exactly the same as the trafc variation.
From this point of view, to achieve the air quality improvement
the Beijing government should not only rely on the trafc
management, but also make efforts in other aspects, for example
control the pollution in the surrounding regions and abate the
pollutant transport. The similar conclusion has been achieved by
Streets et al. (2007), when they simulated the concentrations of ne
particulate matter and ozone over the Beijing region with the US
EPAs Models-3/CMAQ model, and found about 34% of PM
2.5
on
average and 3560% of ozone during high ozone episodes could be
attributed to sources outside Beijing, especially from Neighboring
Hebei Provinces and the Tianjin Municipality (Fig. 1).
4. Conclusion
In this paper we apply the OSPM model to calculate the on-road
concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
and O
3
before and during the
trafc controlling days in Beijing, to assess the trafc-related
pollution situation and evaluate the air quality improvement over
the Olympic Games period.
From the validation of OSPM model, we conrm that the model
estimates well the average concentrations, of both primary
pollutants and secondary pollutants, at the street level. The daily
variation of the concentrations inside streets are also reected, i.e.
CO present double peaks as the trafc ow, PM
10
has compound
sources, NO
2
accumulates during the daytime. The unique variation
of O
3
, which ascends through the night and stays at a low amount,
deserves more attention. In addition, the modeling results on the
leeward side are more accurate and on the windward side often
overestimate, which shows the inuence of wind force and the
special street geometry.
During the Olympic trafc management period, the trafc ow
shows an average reducing rate of 32.3%, a good illustration to the
positive reduction effect of the TDM policy. However, the trafc
control brings various changes between different pollutants. The
concentrations of PM
10
, CO, NO
2
and O
3
have changed from
142.6 mg m
3
, 3.02 mg m
3
, 118.7 mg m
3
and 5.48 ppb to
102.0 mg m
3
, 2.43 mg m
3
, 104.1 mg m
3
and 6.83 ppb, respectively.
PM
10
reduces most and even sacrices the daily variation mode,
possibly attributed to the regional transport, whereas the reduction
effects of CO and NO
2
express more evenly over the whole day,
without major changes on the diurnal variations. The ozone
concentration has not been reduced as desired, just opposite to the
trafc emission and NO
2
concentration change again, as a result of
the photochemical reactions. In conclusion, the air quality in the
street after the trafc control meets the Grade II Chinese National
Air Quality Standard and the WHO Guideline (except PM
10
).
On the other hand, the air quality improvement shows regional
difference among the east, west, south and north streets, which is
probably induced by the diverse background pollution on the
different directions around Beijing, along with the impact of wind
force. This nding reveals that to achieve the air quality improve-
ment, the pollution control in the surrounding regions and the
pollutant transport should also be taken into consideration, though
the trafc control policy takes favorable effects in cutting down the
trafc-related pollution in the urban streets.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank all the mentioned institutes for
providing the raw data. This work was supported by the nancial
support from the Research on Optimizing the Stationing of Moni-
toring Sites for Urban Ambient Air Quality (No. 200709001), from
the US Energy Foundation, and from the Sino-Italian Cooperation
Program for Environmental Protection.
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