Real world driving cycle for motorcycles in Edinburgh

Knowledge of the driving cycle is an important requirement in the evaluation of exhaust emissions. Data were collected from trips performed on five routes between the home addresses in the surrounding areas and place of work at Napier University in Edinburgh. A real world Edinburgh motorcycle driving cycle (EMDC) is developed for each of the urban and rural roads, using this data. Forty-four trips were made on the routes in both urban and rural areas. We assess motorcycle speed, percentage time spent in cruise, accelerations, decelerations and idling and their statistical validity over trip lengths. The results show that EMDC has a cycle length of 770 and 656 s for urban and rural trips, which are higher than those of the European Commission’s driving cycle for cars used for emission estimations of motorcycles. Time spent in acceleration and deceleration modes of EMDC are found to be significantly higher than in other driving cycle studies, reflecting diverse driving conditions in Edinburgh.