Assessing the economic and health impact of soft mobility. The Lombardy region case study

Despite the political and scientific concern arisen in recent years, Particulate Matter (PM), is still a major problem especially in urban areas. Here, end-of-pipe measures are usually not enough to reduce atmospheric pollutant concentrations to acceptable levels, so, behavioral measures are a viable option to further abate PM precursor emissions. Soft mobility (SM), i.e. cycling or walking, is one of the most studied behavioral policies, due to its ability to generate multiple positive environmental and health impacts. This work presents the assessment of different soft mobility scenarios through the MAQ modelling system. The evaluation integrates fuel savings, greenhouse gases emission reduction, direct and indirect health impacts of SM measures and their implementation cost. The methodology is tested on a case-study for Lombardy Region in Northern Italy, a densely urbanized area with extremely high particulate matter concentrations.