Exemplary calculations for necessary traffic changes through behavioral changes in order to achieve the EU emission limits using the example of Potsdam

Kurzfassung

Climate change, exceedances of pollutant thresholds, growing cities and the resulting increased traffic load are still global challenges. Although the German Environment Agency reports that in 2024, for the first time, the nitrogen dioxide loads of all measurement stations remained within the threshold values, improvements are still necessary until the planned tightening of the threshold values in 2030. In the MaaS L.A.B.S. project, a small group of test subjects in Potsdam near Berlin was tested to see what motivates people to switch to public transportation. A tracking app with incentive options was used for this purpose [Sauerländer-Biebl et al., 2023]. Motivated by the feedback from the test subjects that even the knowledge of how much CO2 they had saved by taking an alternative means of transportation (public transport, bicycle or on foot) was enough to make them give up their car. This leads to the question how much more non-car tips does it take to measure a change in emission output. By using statistic data, it can be estimated how many more people need to be motivated to switch to reach the EU threshold values, or how much more time residents would have to spare if they did not drive a car and used the current alternatives.