Air Quality Performance Measures – Investigating the Use of STARS II in Mobile Source Air Quality Modeling (2015)
This memorandum summarizes work performed by Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) staff in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 on investigating the use of Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) Statewide Traffic Analysis and Reporting System II (STARS II) for mobile source air quality modeling and related uses. STARS II comprises a database of traffic activity and a web-based geographic information system (GIS) that can be used to search for and download traffic count data. This report provides a brief overview of the STARS II system, and discusses the importance of traffic data for air quality research. Our study methodology involved a structured brainstorm session among Air Quality and Transportation Engineering professionals to generate an expansive list of ideas for how STARS II data could be used in Air Quality studies. The study team then selected one of these ideas to perform a case-study. The case-study involved Truck traffic on the I-35 corridor between Laredo, TX and San Antonio, TX, and tested the ability of STARS II to provide data suitable for addressing a “real world” air quality problem. The conclusions from the study are that STARS II offers an important and currently underused data resource for air quality studies.