On-road Remote Sensing of Vehicle Exhaust Emissions in Auckland, New Zealand

In order to inform policy and increase understanding of air pollution effects, there is a requirement for more information on the emissions of New Zealand\u27s vehicle fleet. The remote sensing campaign was implemented to establish the emissions profile for the on-road vehicle fleet. The data have been used to investigate the important factors that determine the fleet emission profiles. A total of 42,011 valid emissions measurements and 34,497 registration records of unique vehicles were obtained over a month-long campaign in April 2003. The fleet average emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitric oxide (NO) were 0.71%, 330ppm and 796ppm respectively. The emissions distributions of the total fleet were skewed, with the highest 10% of measurements responsible for 53%, 51% and 39% of the total CO, HC and NO emissions respectively. The findings suggest that policy targeting high emitters may be more effective than simply getting old vehicles off the road, or of testing and regulating all vehicles equally