Assessing Road-Segment-Level Operational Environmental Burdens of Electric Vehicles: A Composite Index for Urban Transportation Planning

The rapid transition toward electric mobility is widely recognized as a key strategy for improving urban environmental quality. However, while electric vehicles eliminate tailpipe emissions, they continue to contribute to environmental pressures through non-exhaust sources such as tire wear, road surface abrasion, and particle resuspension. This study develops a composite index framework for assessing road-segment-level operational environmental burdens associated with electric traffic, focusing on traffic operations, electric vehicle load characteristics, non-exhaust emission potential, and meteorological dispersion conditions. The framework does not constitute a life-cycle assessment and does not include battery production, electricity-generation mix, or other upstream environmental impacts. The framework combines four dimensions of influence: traffic operations, electric vehicle characteristics, non-exhaust emission processes, and meteorological dispersion conditions. Indicator selection was performed using the Delphi method, while indicator weights were determined through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The methodological contribution lies not in the individual methods applied, but in their integration into a road-segment-level assessment framework specifically designed to identify and prioritize environmentally sensitive locations under traffic electrification scenarios. The resulting model incorporates sixteen indicators aggregated into a single environmental impact index that enables the ranking, classification, and prioritization of urban road segments according to their environmental burden. A case study conducted on selected urban streets demonstrates that non-exhaust emission indicators, particularly tire wear and particle resuspension, represent the most influential factors in the assessment process. Within the illustrative five-segment case study, the relative road-segment ranking remained unchanged under the electrified-traffic scenario, while the structure of the assessed burden shifted toward non-exhaust processes. The proposed framework provides a practical decision-support tool for urban planners and transport authorities by enabling the identification of environmentally sensitive locations, prioritization of infrastructure interventions, and support for sustainable mobility strategies in increasingly electrified urban transport systems.