Assessing the Impact of Calendar Events upon Urban Vehicle Behaviour and Emissions Using Telematics Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsOn initial reading, the work appears well-written, easily comprehensible, relevant, and current. However, upon careful analysis, it becomes evident that the article is a simplified examination of the paper "Ghaffarpasand, O. and F.D. Pope, Telematics data for geospatial and temporal mapping of urban mobility: New insights into travel characteristics and vehicle specific power. Journal of Transport Geography, 2024. 115: p. 103815," referenced as [24] in the bibliography.
To be considered for publication, in my opinion, the article should incorporate more extensive statistical analysis:
· 1. Analyze additional vacation periods, such as Christmas, New Year, and all school holidays.
2. Determine if there are statistically significant differences between various vacation periods, and then compare these differences to the entire period as in [24].
· 3. Expand the range of references, ensuring that self-citations do not exceed 30% of the total.
· 4. Given the focus on road traffic emissions, include references from European and global agency reports, as well as scientific journals specializing in road traffic analysis.
Furthermore, I have noted several points throughout the text that could enhance the quality of the final work:
11. In the abstract and introduction, clarify that the Easter period comprises two weeks of Easter holidays.
22. Define CO2 and NO2 in the abstract or main text.
33. Provide full names for UK and US in parentheses upon first mention.
44. Replace reference [3] with more recent data, as it currently presents values from 1999 to 2016, whereas the manuscript discusses the situation up to 2020.
55. Remove or replace reference [4], as it is outside the scope of the paper. It explores global energy use under a household-consumption-based multi-region input-output accounting scheme and does not support the stated percentage of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs).
66. Update references [5-7] to focus specifically on road traffic. Note that [7] does not mention ICEs. Consider incorporating more recent references, such as European Environment Agency reports.
77. Replace reference [11] with more appropriate sources, such as reports from The International Council on Clean Transportation.
88. In Section 2.1, elaborate on the dataset size and provide a more detailed description.
99. Explain the methodology for characterizing travel characteristics by estimating the SAFD matrix within each GeoST-segment, rather than merely referencing the authors' previous paper. Define GeoST-segments and consider including a map to illustrate them, even for a small area of the city.
110. Provide details on the dataset size and significance when discussing the shift in petrol to diesel car distribution in Birmingham from 2016 to 2022. Include the percentage breakdown of each engine type analyzed, as emission factor calculations differ for each type.
111. In Section 2.5, specify the exact percentage of hybrid vehicles and consider including their emissions, as hybrid cars may operate in non-electric mode.
112. Conduct and present a statistical test to support the decision to exclude Wednesday and Thursday from the analysis.
113. Clarify the meaning of "more urban conditions" in line 362.
By addressing these points, the article's overall quality and scientific rigor will be significantly improved.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe review and analysis of the manuscript is made difficult by placing some of the data and graphs in the supplement. Additionally, the Authors made a mistake in the references to the figures in the supplement. As a result, they point to other graphs and discuss data from others. In my opinion, it is more beneficial to place all the graphs with the results in the article and organize it.
There are comments on page 21. I don't know whether these are the authors' comments or whether the article was previously reviewed and these are the reviewers' comments. Such comments should not be included in the version intended for review.
The topic of the article and the concept of the research are interesting, but in relation to the above comments, I propose that it be rebuilt first. In the next step, it will be possible to conduct a substantive analysis of the presented research results.
I have no critical comments regarding the introduction to the subject of the article. Regarding the literature review, I recommend expanding the list of publications to which the Authors refer.
Author Response
please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your efforts to address most of the points raised in the review. However, I would like to point out that in some instances, CO2 is not written with the '2' in subscript (CO2).
I also recommend adding a sentence or paragraph to explain why you chose to focus specifically on the Easter period, as the title refers to events and holidays in general.
With these minor corrections, the manuscript could be accepted.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for their help in improving the paper.
We have now subscripted all the 2’s in CO2.
Before ordering and paying for the telematics dataset, we considered investigating three distinct holiday periods before settling on the Easter period. We considered the Easter holiday, Christmas holiday and the long summer school holidays. We concluded that the Easter holiday was the best test case since it is least likely to be affected by extreme weather events. The Christmas period can be affected by cold wave events and the long summer school holiday by heatwave events. These meteorological events would likely interact with the holiday effect, and it would be more difficult to get a clear holiday period signal, we now include the following line in the paper to highlight this point on L345-347.:
“The Easter holiday period was chosen, rather than other holiday periods such as Christmas or the long summer break, because it is less likely to be affected by extreme meteorological events such as heatwaves or cold waves, which could cause confounding factors.”
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors took the suggestions into account and partially revised their manuscript and provided responses to my comments. I support the publication of this manuscript.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for their help in improving the paper.
