Advocating Green Personal Transportation Practices to Assist the Green Cincinnati Plan

Abstract

By Benjamin Silcox, Environmental Studies; Michael Hannewald, Environmental Studies; Kolt Morris, Environmental Studies

Advisor: Amy Townsend-Small

Presentation ID: PM_ATRIUM35

Abstract: This project is focused on assisting the implementation of personal transportation aspects of the Green Cincinnati Plan, a plan passed in 2018 to reduce Cincinnati's carbon emissions in line with the Paris Climate Accord. Our goal of this project is to not only provide people with methods they can use to reduce their personal fuel consumption, but also to analyze how readily these methods are adopted and how successful they may be. We expect the methods which appear to require the least amount of lifestyle change will be the most adopted, and we will analyze the chosen methods to see which are most fuel efficient. To test this, participants were given cards with a list of fuel-efficient practices, choices, and vehicle modifications, as well as a space to log gas station visit information. The participants were instructed to drive without modifying behaviors to generate baselines. Participants are then instructed to adopt whichever practices they want to, marking them on the card and monitoring gas consumption for the rest of the trial. Upon completion, we will analyze the average fuel consumption change to see which methods were most successful, as well as generate a list of the most readily adopted choices. These two lists should hopefully allow the City of Cincinnati to focus on which practices they should focus on to promote green personal fuel consumption practices.