The government should allow large cargo trucks to drive on national freeways and major roads at the speed limit and during off-peak hours to curb carbon emissions, an Institute of Transportation study released on Tuesday said.
Institute transportation and planning division deputy director Wendy Yang (楊幼文) said that the institute — which is affiliated with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications — tested trucks, buses, motorcycles and small passenger vehicles to demonstrate the energy consumption of different vehicles in real-time road tests, taking into account road and weather conditions.
The results varied greatly from the energy performance indicators provided by the vehicle manufacturers, who often cited the highest level of efficiency recorded in laboratory tests.
Yang said that the study focused on large cargo trucks because they account for about one-third of the total fuel used nationwide, second only to small passenger vehicles.
The study showed that when driven on freeways, large cargo trucks moving at 60kph consume 1.08 times more fuel than those moving at 90kph, Yang said.
Researchers found that on average large trucks on provincial highways are driven at a speed of 45kph, with a fuel consumption 1.04 times than on national freeways, where trucks are driven at an average speed of 85kph.
Large trucks driven on gradients consume between 1.58 and 1.95 times more fuel than those driven on relatively flat roads, showing that the fuel conserved when driving down an incline does not offset the amount of fuel consumed when trucks are driven up an incline.
While it has been suggested that trucks driven on a gradual, consistent incline would consume less fuel than trucks driven on roads with sharp inclines and flat sections, Yang said that the tests showed that the opposite is true.
The institute found that large cargo trucks driven on arterial city roads consume 24 percent more fuel when driven in Taipei during peak-hour traffic than they do during off-peak hours because the average driving speed drops from 58kph to 22kph.
Highway and freeway authorities could also help enhance fuel efficiency by paying more attention to road design, Yang added.
The institute said that a truck driver could save about 14.3 liters of fuel driving on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) — which is about 370km from Keelung to Kaoshuing — maintaining a driving speed of 90kph, compared with trucks driven at 60kph.
Institute research Chang Yi-cheng (張益城) said freeway electronic toll collection data shows that 21.40 percent of large trucks on freeways are driven at speeds less than 80kph.
If all these trucks were driven at 90kph they would conserve a total of about 386,000 liters of fuel, Chang said.
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