MOVES3 Update Log

This page provides a chronological listing of updates to MOVES3.

See the MOVES4 Update Log for the latest versions of MOVES.

On this page:

In general, states should use EPA’s latest model, MOVES4, to take advantage of its improved capabilities and updated default values.

Users should consult the Federal Register Notice of Availability for MOVES4 and the Policy Guidance on the Use of MOVES4 (both available on the MOVES latest version page) before doing any additional work with any prior version of MOVES.

Modelers continuing to use MOVES3 may use any of the versions below; MOVES3.1 is the most recent and incorporates the changes made to the prior versions.

All versions of MOVES3 are available for download at the MOVES GitHub Releases page. Additional information on MOVES3 is available on MOVES Versions in Limited Current Use page.

November 2022
MOVES 3.1

MOVES3.1 is a minor revision to MOVES3. MOVES3.1 adds an I/M benefit for Class 2b and 3 gasoline trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating of between 8,500 and 14,000 pounds (Regulatory Class 41). In this minor revision, these trucks receive the same proportional I/M benefit for exhaust emissions as lower classification gasoline trucks.

This minor revision may decrease VOC, NOx, and CO emissions in some areas, but it will not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates in MOVES3 at the County Scale, and it is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity purposes.

The 20230712 installer for MOVES3.1 improves the ability to silently install and uninstall MOVES, which may be helpful for users who want to install MOVES through endpoint management systems.

August 2022
MOVES3.0.4

MOVES3.0.4 is a patch to MOVES3. It does not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates in MOVES3 at the County Scale, and it is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity purposes.

MOVES3.0.4 includes the following updates:

  • For air quality modeling purposes, shifts speciation of onroad organic gases from an internal MOVES function to a post-processing task, similar to the process for nonroad speciation, and allows a similar workflow to be used for particulate matter (PM) without changing existing PM output. Specifically:
  • Changes vehicle inspection and maintenance (I/M) program data in the MOVES national defaults. 
    • Due to the ending of I/M programs in Tennessee, beginning in the 2023 analysis year, there are no longer default I/M program data for any county in Tennessee. Additionally, default I/M program data for Cache County, Utah, has now been included in the MOVES default database to reflect this existing program, and default I/M program data has been removed for Montgomery County, Ohio. Additional information for some specific I/M programs has been changed based on data submitted for the 2020 National Emissions Inventory.
    • For more information on I/M in MOVES, see the MOVES technical report, Emission Adjustments for Temperature, Humidity, Air Conditioning and Inspection and Maintenance for Onroad Vehicles in MOVES3 (pdf) (1.5 MB, July 2022, EPA-420-R-22-016).
  • Adds an error check to prevent missing values in the County table of county databases (CDBs). In earlier versions, it was possible to bypass the County Database Manager and import a table with missing values for countyTypeID, which could lead to incorrect off-network idle emissions.
  • Old moveslog.txt files are archived into moveslog.zip instead of being deleted.
  • Contains updated versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Ant to avoid security concerns with earlier versions of these two programs.
  • Provides additional information for advanced users who want to compile the MOVES Nonroad code.

For additional technical details on these changes, see the MOVES3.0.4 milestone on the MOVES GitHub.

This update is considered a “patch” to MOVES3. It is not considered a new model for state implementation plan (SIP) and transportation conformity regulatory purposes. Compared to MOVES3, MOVES3.0.4 does not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates at the County or Project Scale. Users should continue to follow the MOVES Technical Guidance (pdf) (1.1 MB, November 2020, EPA-420-B-20-052) that requires modelers at County and Project Scale to review and update the relevant I/M coverage inputs to reflect the latest I/M assumptions in regulatory analyses.

January 2022
MOVES3.0.3

MOVES3.0.3 is a patch to MOVES3.  It does not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates in MOVES3 at the County Scale, and it is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity purposes. 

MOVES3.0.3 includes the following updates:

  • Fixes an error in the calculation of brake wear emissions at Project Scale.
  • Removes the unused file “log4j-1.2.13.jar” to avoid security concerns.
  • Fixes an error in methane and other hydrocarbon emission rates for diesel cars and light-duty trucks
  • Fixes an error when running with user-supplied hotelling data in counties with no restricted access roads
  • Fixes an error in calculating hotelling emissions when running MOVES in Default Scale with multiple years in the same RunSpec
  • Improves the scripts provided to help check MOVES3 submissions for the 2020 National Emission Inventory
  • Fixes an error that prevented the import of some .csv files
  • Adds support for Java 17

For additional technical details on these changes, see the MOVES3.0.3 milestone on the MOVES GitHub site.

This update is considered a “patch” to MOVES3. It is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity regulatory purposes.

Compared to MOVES3, MOVES3.0.3 does not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates at the County Scale but, in some cases, may substantially reduce estimates of future year brake wear particulate matter (PM) at the Project Scale.   As a result, MOVES3.0.3 is recommended when developing PM Project Scale analyses outside of California. 

In addition, MOVES3.0.3. estimates increased methane from model year 2010-and-later diesel cars and light-duty trucks, decreasing estimates of non-methane hydrocarbons such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).  However, these vehicles are a small fraction of the U.S. fleet and modern diesels emit low hydrocarbons so the fleetwide impact will be very small.

September 2021
MOVES3.0.2

MOVES3.0.2 is a patch to MOVES3.  It does not substantially change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates in MOVES3 at the county or project scale, and it is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity purposes.

MOVES3.0.2 includes the following updates:

  • Repaired an error in the sulfur correction for Tier 4 nonroad diesel engines that underestimated particulate (PM) emissions from these engines. Modelers of diesel nonroad engines should use MOVES3.0.2 and can expect to see higher PM emissions in future years.  While the impact on total emissions is small, the percentage change may be large.
  • Fully accounted for fuel economy improvements for all gasoline “other buses” and for lighter diesel transit buses due to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles—Phase 2 Rule.  This change leads to increased fuel efficiency and reductions in the emission of pollutants chained to fuel consumption. However, because the chained emissions are low and these buses are a small portion of most fleets, impacts are expected to be very small.
  • Repaired an error in Hotelling activity (and thus emissions) when MOVES is run for multiple counties at default scale. Modelers who used default scale to estimate emissions from long-haul heavy-duty trucks should revise their work with MOVES3.0.2 or confirm that they either (a) modeled a single county or (b) used geographic pre-aggregation.
  • Improved post-processing scripts for nonroad output.
  • Provided missing fuel parameters for hypothetical E0 and E15 gasolines for fuelRegionID 1570011000 (“California RFG”)
  • Fixed problems leading to errors for some users, including an UnsupportedClassVersionError, and a requirement for linkSourceTypeHour input when modeling only off-network links at project scale.
  • Removed irrelevant opModeIDs in the Project Data Manager opModeDistribution template.
  • Removed an inaccurate warning about road types and off-network idle at project scale.
  • Removed an irrelevant activityTypeID from the ActivityType table in output databases.
  • Replaced “National” with “Default” in MOVES RunSpecs and output databases.
  • Corrected the NEI pollutant code for Arsenic

March 2021
MOVES3.0.1

MOVES3.0.1 is a patch to MOVES3.  It does not change onroad criteria pollutant emission rates in MOVES3 at the county or project level, and it is not considered a new model for State Implementation Plan (SIP) and transportation conformity purposes.

MOVES3.0.1 or later versions of MOVES3 are recommended for modelers who:

  • intend to use the updated Default Scale or nonroad features (listed below),
  • are preparing an NEI submission, or
  • are modeling Essex County, NY.

MOVES3.0.1 includes the following updates:

  • Improved default vehicle miles travelled (VMT) for all U.S. counties, with small increases in most counties and large increases for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
  • Improved default gasoline characteristics for Essex County, New York
  • Improved installer to address issues when MOVES is installed with Windows 7
  • Improved error checking to allow source type vehicle population of zero
  • Added scripts to help check MOVES3 submissions for the 2020 National Emissions Inventory
  • Added Ant command to facilitate importing inputs from the command line
  • Added idle tab to the default scale data manager
  • Removed processing of irrelevant diesel fuel parameters
  • Removed incorrect check requiring RoadTypeDistribution inputs at default scale
  • Removed incorrect “core geography” database check at default scale
  • Removed petroleum and fossil fuel modeling options, as MOVES3 is not intended to be used for well-to-pump emissions modeling
  • Fixed problem with annual pre-aggregation that led to “data truncated” errors
  • Fixed problem with national pre-aggregation that incorrectly weighted meteorology inputs
  • Fixed problem with state pre-aggregation that incorrectly weighted E-85 fuel properties
  • Fixed problem that caused “divide by zero” errors in post-processing scripts
  • Fixed problem with tabbed output post-processing script that led to failures
  • Fixed problem with county scale XML importer for VMT
  • Fixed problem that led to “out of range RVP” errors in nonroad diesel-only runs
  • Fixed problem with nonroad runs for calendar years 2051-2061 that resulted in no output
  • Fixed problem in nonroad runs that could result in incorrect activity output of average horsepower and load factors for gasoline equipment when fuel subtype is checked

For additional technical details on these changes, see the MOVES3.0.1 milestone on the MOVES GitHub site.

Compared to the MOVES3 model that posted in November 2020, MOVES3.0.1 will increase activity (VMT) for runs at the default (national) scale that use the default VMT allocations to county, as well as for runs that use nation pre-aggregation. The VMT change will be less than 0.5 percent for counties outside Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but changes in other vehicle activity (starts, source hours parked, etc.) may be larger. More importantly, modelers using MOVES3 default VMT to model counties in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will see a very large increase in activity, and thus emissions. (Note that this change will not impact state and local regulatory use since default VMT cannot be used for SIP or conformity purposes.)

MOVES3.0.1 also updates the default gasoline for Essex County, New York, changing it from reformulated gasoline to conventional gasoline. While one portion of Essex County is an area that would use reformulated gasoline, that portion has no gas stations and thus conventional gasoline is the appropriate fuel in MOVES for this county. In runs where Essex County is modelled with default fuel inputs, MOVES3.0.1 will estimate higher emissions from gasoline vehicles for most pollutants as compared to MOVES3.0.0, but will estimate lower CO emissions. For more information about fuel inputs for state and local regulatory analyses, see EPA’s MOVES3 Technical Guidance (pdf) (1 MB, EPA-420-B-20-052, November 2020).

November 2020
MOVES3.0.0

MOVES3.0.0 is the initial release of MOVES3, a major update to the MOVES series of mobile source emission models. For more information, see MOVES Versions in Limited Current Use.

Prior versions of MOVES

For information on prior versions of MOVES, see Previous MOVES Models and Documentation page.

MOVES2014 Update Log.

MOVES and Related Models

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Last updated on January 18, 2024