Abstract
One of the policies adopted to reduce vehicular emissions is subway network expansion. This work fitted interrupted regression models to investigate the effects of the inauguration of subway stations on the mean, trend, and seasonality of the NO, NO2, NOx, and PM10 local concentrations. The regions investigated in the city of São Paulo (Brazil) were Pinheiros, Butantã, and St. Amaro. In Pinheiros, after the inauguration of the subway station, there were downward trends for all pollutants. However, these trends were not significantly different from the trends observed before. In Butantã, only regarding NO, there was a significant reduction and seasonal change after the subway station’s inauguration. In St. Amaro, no trend in the PM10 concentration was noted. The absence of other transportation and land use policies in an integrative way to the subway network expansion may be responsible for the low air quality improvement. This study highlights that the expansion of the subway network must be integrated with other policies to improve local air quality.
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All data is available on São Paulo’s Environmental Agency web platform (https://qualar.cetesb.sp.gov.br/).
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Funding
This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior under Grant 1808525; the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico under Grant 308378/2021–0; and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo under Grant 2018/04654–9.
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Luciana Ferreira Leite Leirião, conceptualization; data curation; investigation; roles/writing, original draft; and writing, review and editing. Ana Flávia Barbosa Gabriel, investigation; data curation; and roles/writing, original draft. Airlane Alencar, data curation; formal analysis; funding acquisition; methodology; resources; validation; roles/writing, original draft; and writing, review and editing. Simone Georges El Khouri Miraglia, funding acquisition; project administration; resources; supervision; validation; roles/writing, original draft; and writing, review and editing.
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Leirião, L.F.L., Gabriel, A.F.B., Alencar, A.P. et al. Is the expansion of the subway network alone capable of improving local air quality? A study case in São Paulo, Brazil. Environ Monit Assess 195, 1104 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11736-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11736-2