How do I use MOVES at Project Scale?

See More Frequent Questions about MOVES and Related Models.

The MOVES model can estimate emissions at national, county or project scale. Project scale is useful for estimating an individual transportation project like an intersection or transit project, but it requires detailed inputs that describing the vehicle population and activity at the site being modelled.

EPA has several resources that explain how to use MOVES at the project scale. While some of these resources were developed with earlier versions of MOVES, the information still generally applies to the latest MOVES version.

The first two are guidance documents:

The latest version of EPA’s guidance, Using MOVES3 in Project-Level Carbon Monoxide Analyses, is found on EPA’s "Project-Level Conformity and Hot-Spot Analyses” website under Resources for CO Hot-Spot Analyses.
This guidance describes how to define links in a project, set up a MOVES run, and create an input database for a project scale MOVES run.
The latest version of the PM Hot-Spot Guidance: Transportation Conformity Guidance for Quantitative Hot-Spot Analyses in PM2.5 and PM10 Nonattainment and Maintenance Areas, is found on EPA’s "Project-Level Conformity and Hot-Spot Analyses” website under Resources for PM Hot-Spot Analyses. Section 4 of this guidance describes how to use MOVES to model a transportation project. Like the first document, it covers how to define links, set up a MOVES run, and create an input database, but there is more detail here about defining different types of links. This guidance applies to refined PM hot-spot analyses.

The next two resources are EPA training resources on the web:

The latest version of the MOVES “Hands-On Training Course,” available on the MOVES Training website, two-day training course includes a module about using MOVES at the project scale.
For even more detail, see EPA’s PM hot-spot training, available on EPA’s Project Level Training for PM Hot-Spot Analyses website, which is based on the PM hot-spot guidance above. The training materials include presentation slides as well as files to use for the examples covered in the class. Module 2 of this training covers using MOVES at the project scale.