Abstract
The specific objective of the study presented in this paper was to realistic emphasize, by means of a demonstrative case study, the evolution trend of the road traffic mobile source impact on street level ambient air quality in Bucharest central area, taking into account the progressive harmonization in the last decade (2000-2010) of the Romanian national legislation with the EU directives related to the emission standards, automotive fuel quality and ambient air quality. In this way, there is a possibility to assess the actual vehicle fleet emission patterns under real driving conditions, and also to carry out the trend analysis of the emission levels taking into account the expected improvement of the emission performance, due especially to the rapid year-after-year fleet penetration of modern catalyst cars. The main conclusion is related to the fact that the inter-annual evolution of the road traffic impact on street level air pollution is marked by a continue and progressive reduction in the last decade, trend mainly due to the rapid fleet penetration of new generation motor vehicles with superior emission performances replacing on a very large scale the older big polluter vehicles, but also to the very significant improvements in automotive fuel quality.
Keywords: traffic pollution, mobile laboratory, air quality, emission levels, trend analysis