Impact of car free day on foyer building environment

Abstract

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia has been organizing the car-free day (CFD) on the campus since 2016 among others to reduce air pollution and improve environmental awareness among campus community. This study aims to determine the effect of the car-free day on two foyer’s building environment with three objectives; to determine the variation of traffic volume, to assess the CO2 concentration and noise level variation, and to evaluate the impact of traffic volume variation on CO2 concentration and noise level in building. Two different locations of building are selected; inside and outside CFD. Traffic volumes on the nearby roads are counted and CO2 concentration and noise level at the foyer of the selected building are recorded i.e 8:00-3:00 pm, both during CFD and NCFD at each location. The significant impact of traffic compositions on CO2 and noise level variation are evaluated by using the statistical method including T-test, simple and multiple regression analysis with R2 and ANOVA test, with significant level of 5%. The results show that the implementation of CFD has good and adverse impacts on building environment. The good is CFD reduces traffic volumes up to 80%, and significantly reduce both CO2 and noise level at building located in car free zone. At the selected site, the reduction of CO2 is 13.57±4.87 ppm per hour and the reduction of noise level is 4.7±1.74dBA. During CFD, the concentration of CO2 is significantly governed by the volume of the bus while noise level is significantly correlated with the total volume of traffic. Reduction of noise level is significantly related with decrease of volume of lorries on road. On the other hand, CFD causes adverse impact on building environment as there is significant increase in traffic volume, noise level and CO2 concentration at a selected site outside of CFD zone. The traffic volume increase up to 82% which dominantly characterized by car and motorbikes. These results in increment of noise level by 1.77 ±1.37 dBA and sharp increase of CO2 more than 9999 ppm after the first 3 hours of CFD and remain the same values until end of CFD which may be not acceptable for human comfort. Result from this study shows that CFD improve the environment in building located at CFD zone but worsen the building environment in NCFD.