Ecological Comparison of Domestic Travel by Air and Road Transport
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Abstract
The article describes issues related to the impact of transport means on the environment. These issues are currently very popular due to the increasing public awareness of the negative environmental and health effects associated with air pollution. The authors estimated specific emissions in passenger-kilometers, considering a domestic travel by air and road transport. The analyzed route is located between the Polish cities: Gdansk and Cracow. The selected route is long by domestic travel standards, but in that travel distance, the road transport is still competitive to the air transport. Selected means of transport belong to popular representatives in their classes. As a road vehicle, the authors selected a modern passenger car powered by a spark ignition engine, meeting the Euro 6 emission standard. Among the passenger aircrafts, an object which belongs small jet aircrafts, propelled with Rolls-Royce Tay 611C jet engines was selected. As the strength of this article, it is important to emphasize the use of reliable emission values obtained during empirical tests of a road vehicle carried out in real traffic conditions. The emission values for the aircraft were obtained from the EASA emission database and from literature. The EASA database contains the emission indicators obtained in the approval tests of aircraft engines, carried out on the ground. The analysis area in terms of exhaust emission covered the gaseous exhaust compounds: hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide. As part of the article, an analysis of passenger travel costs was also made. The costs base on current market ticket prices and costs related to passenger car travel, including fuel and highway tolls. Based on the obtained results, the authors formulated directions for further work and analysis.