THE ASSESSMENT OF POLLUTANTS EMISSIONS WITHIN SUSTAINABLE URBAN FREIGHT TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT The Case of Novi Sad

Assessment of pollutant emissions is a prerequisite for planning and development of sustainable urban transport systems. Majority of extant studies on sustainable urban transport is focused on pollution caused by urban passenger transport, with marked paucity of literature on the impact of urban freight transport. To partly bridge this gap, the paper objective is the impact assessment of selected regulative measures, i. e. fleet renewal on freight transport emissions. We used the case of Novi Sad to estimate the potential impact of selected restrictive measures on the external freight transport air pollution. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies on impact of urban freight transport on the air pollution in the cities in the Balkan region. Several research findings are of interest. Firstly, the analysis of particular gas emissions reveals expected overall positive effects of the fleet renewal in most of cases. Still, the total amount of same emissions hardly increase, so this particular measure is not enough to reach the ambitious EU strategy goals concerned with sustainable urban freight transport. Further, some negative impacts of restrictive measures on gas emissions were also recorded and discussed. The observed complex impact of restrictive measures on urban freight air pollution indicates that urban freight transport planning and modeling requires a comprehensive database, clear goals and higher priority of environmental criterion in trail fic planning. Our results and recommendations may be useful for scholars, urban transport planners, policy makers, and practitioners.