FACTSHEET 9
Transport Activity Measurement Toolkit (TAMT)
Developer
World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Region Sustainable Development Department
Transport Cluster, World Bank Environment-Climate Change Department
TAMT Beta 1.0 was released in 2011; the most recent version is Beta 1.1
Location
http://code.google.com/p/tamt/wiki/DesignDocIntroduction
Websites of interest
http://www.virtualbox.org/
TAMT is a Transport Activity Measurement Toolkit designed to facilitate vehicle activity
data gathering and management. The TAMT framework for the assessment of transport
emissions is designed to:
 Provide a simplified standardized approach to data collection and processing that
can be performed by a diverse group of people and institutions in many countries.
 Allow distinct output datasets to be generated as required to run different transport
planning and emissions models.
TAMT does not calculate emissions factors; it is a toolkit that is designed to facilitate
vehicle activity data gathering and management. It is composed of both a practitioners’
guide that outlines a methodology for assembling local data on vehicle activity and a
software program (TAMT Appliance) that “allows users to collect, manipulate, and output
GPS data on [vehicle travel in] road networks.” 1 TAMT has an open-source software
program that can be freely downloaded from the code.google.com site, and can be run on
any desktop system that supports the Oracle VirtualBox client.
Methodology
TAMT provides a GIS (Google Maps) based tool for collating traffic data by way of GPSbased sampling of local traffic patterns, vehicle use and occupancy, and fleet composition.2
The steps required to develop an activity-based GHG and local pollutant emissions
inventory are as follows:
1) Divide routes into sections with consistent traffic patterns.
2) Measure traffic flow on each section by day, hour, and vehicle class. Traffic counts
may be made using video-based sampling or manual traffic counts.
1
Information available at: http://code.google.com/p/tamt/wiki/DesignDocIntroduction
Information available on line at:
http://www.esmap.org/esmap/sites/esmap.org/files/Modeling%20Tool_TAMT.pdf
2
3) Measure traffic speed and drive cycles on each section during congested and
uncongested flow, via a “moving observer technique (in which a seed-vehicle with
or without GPS drives at the average traffic speed)” and/or using GPS loggers to
record actual trips by local people.
4) Measure vehicle occupancy
5) Use fleet composition data based on vehicle sales and registration data, emissions
test data, and survey work
Source: (Rogers, 2001)
TAMT measures VKT (vehicle kilometers travelled) via ‘link-based emissions
measurements’, in which data on vehicle flow on a given roadway and the length of that
roadway provides the hourly VKT on that roadway.
“By calculating the length of each road link, the TAMT Appliance processes the vehicle flow
and speed data using SQL regressive weighted averaging to obtain simple output tables
giving the VKT fraction for each vehicle type, technology, and fuel in 5 kph speed bins. It
also generates other trip length and soak time information tables.” (Rogers, 2011)
The TAMT Appliance software generates two types of reports, the data of which can be fed
into an emission factor model to enable the user to obtain the total emissions.
Inputs
 Define study zone
 Divide road into sections (tag important roads)
 Measure the traffic flow on tagged sections (traffic counts)
 Measure traffic speed and drive cycles (recorded by the device) – Import to the
program from the GPS log files
Outputs
 Annual vehicle - kilometers travelled within each speed bin for each vehicle types
 Trip statistics (drive cycles) – see Table 9.1.

Table 9.1 TAMT Inputs – Drive Cycle
Speed bin (speed distribution)
Trip statistics reports
 Speed distribution
 Trip bin
 Speed distribution by traffic flow
 Engine soak times
 the travel distribution on each Tag
for each day type (aggregated by
Day-type)
 The travel distribution on each Tag
for each day type (aggregated by tag)
Source: (Rogers, J. 2011)
Vehicle Categories
There are 250 types, technologies and fuel combinations. Vehicle Characteristics
incorporate “vehicle type, subtype, technology, Gross vehicle weight (GVW),
accumulated mileage, engine displacement, and fuel used.”
 Motorcycles- W2 (Gasoline, 2T or 4T),








three-wheelers - W3 (gasoline or LPG/CNG, 2T or 4T),
Passenger cars – PC (gasoline, diesel, or LPG/CNG),
Taxi (TX), (it is included in PC)
Light-duty passenger vehicles – LDV, Pickups, Vans, SUVs,
Light-duty commercial vehicles – LDC (gasoline and Diesel up 3.5 tons GVW,
LPG/CNG up 2.5 tons GVW,
Heavy-duty commercial (trucks) - HDC (long-distance coach [diesel], over 3.5
tons GVW [Gasoline], urban bus [diesel or LPG/CNG], rigid truck [diesel], tractortrailer/articulated truck [diesel])
Medium duty minibuses – MDB
Heavy duty buses HDB
Pollutants/Gases Analyzed
N/A
Evaluation
Table 9.2 TAMT Evaluation (strengths and weaknesses)
Strengths
Weaknesses
TAMT can be used as part of an Not publicly available
integrated suite (including EFFECT,
MACtool, LULUCF) to perform lowcarbon growth assessments
TAMT
hardware
requirements
(video cameras, GPS devices) are
low-cost
and
accessible
in
developing nations, relative to such
other methods for collecting local
VKT as Origin-Destination surveys
Precedents
N/A
Reference
Rogers, J., 2011. A. TAMT Practitioners’ Guide. The World Bank. Pages 152 (129139). Accessed on July 20, 2011 at: http://www.cleanairinstitute.org/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2011/07/TAMT_Guide_Final.pdf
Rogers, J., The World Bank & ESMAP. Measuring and forecasting global and local
emissions from on-road transport presentation. (May 21, 2011) Accessed on July
21,
2011
at:
http://www.cleanairinstitute.org/download/rosario/sp12_05_john_rogers.pdf
Rogers, J., The World Bank & ESMAP. Measuring Transport Activity. A Toolkit for
Evaluating Fuel Consumption and Emissions from On Road Vehicles and
forecasting global and local emissions from on-road transport presentation. (July
11,
2011).
Accessed
on
July
20,
2011
http://www.cleanairinstitute.org/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2011/07/TAMTEFFECT_20110711-presentation.pdf
at: