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Assessing the Impact of Urban Transformations on Exposure to Air Pollutants in the City of Bogotá: Cable Car implementation and Renewal of the BRT System Fleet
DANIELA MENDEZ, Ricardo Morales Betancourt, Olga Lucia Sarmiento, Juan Manuel Rincón, Boris Galvis, Universidad de los Andes
Abstract Number: 552
Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract
Assessing personal exposure to air pollutants in large cities is particularly relevant as commuters are often exposed to higher aerosol particle concentrations than those reported by central monitoring sites. In this work, we analyzed the potential impacts on personal exposure of two urban transformations that took place in Bogota, Colombia, between 2018-2019. A cable car system was built to connect peripheral neighborhoods to the bus rapid transport-system (BRT). Simultaneously, a new bus fleet replaced almost 1400 18-year-old diesel buses with a mix of CNG and DPF equipped EURO-V diesel buses. For this, 136 personal exposure measurements spanning 408 hours were carried out. The measurements were performed before and after the intervention for both, the cable car system, and the completion of the BRT renewal process. A 50% decrease in the concentration of PM2.5, eBC and CO was observed after the fleet renewal process, each species decreasing from 176 to 92 µg/m3, from 90 to 45 µg/m3 and from 4.8 to 3.3 ppm, respectively. Commuters in the BRT system were exposed to much higher concentrations when riding vehicles with more than 682 thousand vehicle kilometers traveled. In the cable car implementation, significant differences (p-value <0.05) among concentration in the different transport modes analyzed were observed, with those of the cable cabins being the lowest. When carrying out a classification analysis through binary trees, it was observed that BC exposure for commuter that were walking or inside the cable car cabins were exposed to the lowest concentrations (11.1 µg/m3). On the other hand, commuters in another motorized transport mode were exposed to higher concentrations (30.9 µg/m3). This work demonstrated the substantial reductions achieved when implementing urban interventions that involve cleaner transportation modes, can be used as input for decision-makers.