ESTIMATION OF VEHICULAR POLLUTION GROWTH AND THEIR IMPACTS ON AIR QUALITY: A MODEL STUDY

The city of Hyderabad is expanding at a tremendous pace and the urban growth is reflected in the traffic intensities on the roads. At present, there are around 13 lakh vehicles moving on the roads of the city and the growth rate observed in the traffic in the recent past is around 16 percent per annum on an average. With the potential increase in tourism industry, Andhra Pradesh State Youth Advancement Tourism and Cultural Department has proposed to develop Buddha Purnima Project Area at Hussain Sagar lake front by various developmental activities like Tourist center, Promenade & food courts, people's plaza, amusement park, IMAX theater, rail cum bus transportation etc., mainly located on the vacant land on NTR Marg and Necklace road. In this paper, existing vehicular traffic flow on the Necklace Road and NTR Marg, and the projected increase in traffic loads due to these activities were estimated for different scenarios. From these data, the projected values on any eventful day representing peak load are found not to exceed more than 2-3 units in log scale, and as such they do not significantly alter the resultant ambient air quality. Further even for the eventful day peak load scenario, considering the air pollutants released by the increased traffic volumes by these four activities in Buddha Purnima Project area, the ambient air quality with respect to SPM, SOX, and NOX is estimated to be well within the CPCB residential area standards while for CO and HC in residential areas there are no standards prescribed by CPCB. There will be marginal increase in CO and HC content in air which will however not be harmful from health point of view. Pre project maximum predicted GLC values for CO, NOX, HC are 0.8 mg/ m3 , 17.5 mg/ m3 and 0.9 ppm and post project maximum predicted GLC values are for CO 1.2 mg/ m3 , NOX 25.5 mg/ m3 and HC 8.3 ppm respectively. A better option for controlling the air pollution loads from increased traffic volume is switching from petrol to CNG for entire Hyderabad city as it showed good results in Delhi. As two wheelers are the maximum contributors for HC, Necklace road and NTR marg may be considered, further for introduction of public transit system with alternate fuels for improving the air quality