Abstract: It is of great importance for environmental governance to explore the influence of the emission of motor vehicle pollutants on the surrounding environment in urban roads. Scholars have established various emission models by analyzing the influencing factors of pollutants. According to their different research scales, the widely used models were divided, and the principles, applications and shortcomings of the models were summarized. At last, the COPERT model was selected to calculate the main air pollutant emissions in Xuefu Road, Lanzhou City, and the ANSYS software was used to simulate the impact of road traffic emissions on the surrounding environment. The results showed that the four main air pollutants NO₂, CO, PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ emitted on Xuefu Road during the working days were 67.7, 269.1, 15.1 and 22.8 t, respectively, and the light trunks, which accounted for 10.0% of the total number of motor vehicles, contributed a large amount, accounting for 50.5% and 69.1% of the total amount of motor vehicle NO₂ and PM emissions, respectively. By comparing the simulated values with the measured ones, it is found that the COPERT model has a good support for mesoscale research.