Smart Energy for Smart Transport

Transportation is one of the most polluting activities, with urban mobility owning the higher percentage. Currently, 99.8% of the vehicles worldwide have internal combustion engines (ICE), and 95% of these use liquid fuels made from petroleum. The private car is the most common mode of urban mobility (UM) in Western countries, as it accounts for about two-thirds of daily commuting. Moreover, the car lies at the core of the socio-technical transportation system, characterised lock-ins. Policies are set to foster powertrains’ technological improvement for emissions reduction to reach emission targets, while there is also interest in shifting from ICE improvement to electric vehicles (EVs). But are the technological improvement and swift to different vehicle powertrains sufficient conditions to reach the emission targets? Are other policies, regulations, or actions necessary? Several researchers have analysed the transition of UM, focusing primarily on technological change and less on changes in mobility modes, with digitalisation and business model disruption. We investigate UM as a socio-technical system in transition consisting of four subsystems. We present a system dynamics (SD) model for the transition from the current state of the dominant regime based on ICE technology and private car to a new one. In the new system, new modes of mobility (ride-hailing, car-sharing) challenge incumbent ones (private car, taxi, public transport), and new technologies arise as niche innovations (EVs, ICTs). Finally, the developed SD model helps us explore different scenarios and policy mixes.

The 2019 Green Deal Communication aims to renew the growth strategy of the European Union (EU) and its commitment to tackle climate and environmental challenges. In 2020, the EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy Communication was published in response to the Green Deal’s priority for accelerating the shift towards sustainable and smart transport. The Strategy focuses, among others, on innovative mobility solutions, such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS), electromobility and hydrogen fuel cells. However, the promotion of smart mobility solutions has been at the core of EU transport policy for over a decade. The purpose of the current paper is to analyse the evolution of the relation between the climate change and energy transition priorities and the transport and mobility strategies in EU policy. The research is based on data mining from “Twitter”, a platform widely used by EU policy makers for the communication of policy initiatives and priorities. In this context, the research focuses on tracking and analyzing the evolution of user-generated content related to climate change, energy transition and (smart) mobility, published in the period 2011 (publication of the EU 2011 Transport White Paper) until today. The results derive from the application of text-mining techniques, and comprise of a series of metrics, analyses, and conclusions on the dynamics of relevant EU policies and their influence. Research outcomes could assist policy-makers and researchers to better understand the role of social media in the promotion of sustainable transport strategies and assess the acceptance of such policies.

Electric vehicle (EV) ownership is skyrocketing while authorities are scrambling to expand their charging infrastructure networks. In urban areas, they all face the ever-pertinent question of maximizing the marginal benefits of each new EV charger. This paper aims to make the case of coupling EV charging stations with micro mobility-hubs as a way of increasing each station’s area of influence, thus amplifying its potential service population. The case study of the Municipality of Kifissia is used to demonstrate the benefits of an EV charging station coupling with micro-mobility. The model will take into account the potential EV users of the selected area, available and planned EV charging stations and the local road network characteristics in order to formulate an alternative way of combined micro-mobility and EV infrastructure planning. The model is then tested in existing urban environments and with emerging results indicating that the theory can be a valuable tool in charging infrastructure planning. The developed methodology led to the delineation of the influence area of EV chargers with or without micro-mobility and the determination of the most suitable ones for coupling. Thus, it paves the way for a novel less-is-more approach to incentivizing EV usage and planning the necessary infrastructure – one of particular importance to national and local authorities that are just now embracing e-mobility.

The utilization of excess energy produced through vehicle movements stands in the center of efficiency measures in the transport sector. In case of electric trains, the excess energy of vehicle regenerative braking is mostly wasted as heat. Instead of an instantaneous waste, a later re-use of this energy requests the adoption of an electric storage system. The paper describes real data obtained through on-site and train on-board measurement schemes and a methodology to achieve metro system energy savings redirecting unused energy produced from braking metro trains to the metro station grid consumption. An emphasis is on cost/returns analysis and environmental benefits of the storage system. The Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) design developed for the Athens Metro combines efficiently the higher power density and (dis)charging cycles of supercapacitors (coping the high frequency of train stops producing energy) with the superior energy density of batteries (matching a slower release and a longer energy consumption time of stations’ current drain). A smart energy management and control strategy allows upon demand for an internal energy transfer between both storage technologies. So far, single-technology, onboard or wayside storage systems servicing mainly the traction of accelerating trains were available. The novelty here is the dual-technology HESS, located at stations servicing the energy demand of the latter. Preliminary results confirm the feasibility of the energy saving concept indicating a large potential for the MetroHESS reuse of 5000–6000 kWh/day per rectifier substation of otherwise unused braking energy of a metro line and a subsequent s sizing of the stationary HESS is performed. About 30% of the braking energy accrued can be reused through the MetroHESS to cover about 90% of the station energy demand while the residual braking energy will be dissipated in the train braking resistors. An implementation of the stationary storage system to Line 2&3 rectifier substations would cost 17 mi.€, saving on an annual base about 4 mi.€ electricity expenses for the operator as well as 8.600 tons CO2 for the sake of the community.

The role of transport for economic development has long been recognized, but so has its environmental impact. Transportation investments are able to generate or complement structural change and can significantly contribute to mitigating urban pollution. However, for developing countries, there is a long road ahead toward decoupling transportation investments and pollution. This paper aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by bringing new and updated evidence on the relationship between transport investments, economic growth, globalization, and pollution for a wide panel of 94 low- and middle-income countries over the 1990–2018 period. The main findings that emerge from robust System GMM estimations indicate that transport investments contribute to increased pollution in low and middle-income countries, and the effect is stronger for low-income countries. Moreover, globalization is found to negatively affect environmental quality in both low and middle-income economies, revealing the lack of adequate environmental regulations in these countries.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the land transport sector revolve around replacing the Internal Combustion Engine with alternative power units. Indeed, governments within the European Union and beyond move to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles in the near future. A number of technologies are proposed as alternatives, such as electric motors powered by batteries or hydrogen fuel cells, and hybrid power units. These new technologies rely on new infrastructure (charging stations, electrical grid upgrades, hydrogen production, storage and fueling facilities), which will need to be put in place to meet the needs of a transforming vehicle fleet. As such, forecasting the demand for the different technologies will be crucial in planning investments. We use machine learning techniques, specifically a Multilayer Perceptron and an Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference System, to forecast the demand split from public perceptions as captured through an online survey.

Traditional bus service in low-demand areas is usually designed with a low frequency planning strategy, where buses have to visit all fixed bus stops even though some do not have any passenger requests. To improve its efficiency and reduce the negative impacts on the environment, a user-centered service can be conceived by integrating the bus service as a feeder to transit. We study this problem considering also the use of electric vehicles, which are currently being widely introduced for such services. However, most studies neglect the synchronization issues of the feeder service and timetabled transit to minimize customers’ waiting time at transit stations. Moreover, existing studies on electric vehicle routing problems assume charging stations to be uncapacitated. To address these issues, this study proposes an on-demand first-mile feeder service to coordinate its service with timetabled transit using electric buses/shuttles. The problem is modeled on a departure-expanded (layered) graph and formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem. Several new contributions are proposed in this study: considering flexible bus stops based on meeting points (within a walking distance) of customers’ origins, coordinating bus arrival times at transit stations to minimize customers’ waiting time, and coordinating electric bus charging scheduling to ensure charging station capacity constraints. We conduct numerical studies on a set of instances to validate the proposed methodology.

The objective of this research is to investigate user's preferences on the selection and use of electric passenger vehicles. In order to achieve this scope a questionnaire has been developed, for a sample of 150 users, consisting of difference sections (mobility characteristics, demographic, knowledge on electric vehicles). Moreover, the key part of the questionnaire referred to a stated preferences survey through hypothetical scenarios with attributes including purchase cost, fuel cost per 400km and driving autonomy. Subsequently, multinomial logistic regression models were developed from which the selection coefficients were obtained that mathematically describe the selection parameters of electric and hybrid passenger vehicles. Results indicate that, although purchase cost is an important factor, as expected, both driving autonomy and fuel cost have a significant effect on the model with high elasticity rates indicating that the next step on energy transition relies on several key parameters, that should be equally improved in the following years.

Shared autonomous electric vehicles (SAEVs) are expected to soon revolutionize the transport system, with cheap and convenient taxi-like services. SAEVs can induce a significant modal shift from other modes of travel, with effects ranging from beneficial, like reducing private car use, to negative, like making public transport uneconomical and increasing congestion. This modal shift will also be influenced by electrification, as charging time and range limitations will influence availability of these vehicles. In this work, we expand a SAEV simulationIacobucci, R. Pruckner, M. Schmöecker, J.-D. model with mode choice to incorporate electric vehicles. In our model travelers choose between their current mode and SAEVs, which in addition to the fare, has a waiting time which depends on the real-time demand and fleet availability. We use a trip generation model based on a large person trip survey from Germany as our input data and scale-up the survey to obtain an OD matrix for the whole wider Munich area on a 1 km $$^2$$ 2 mesh area and representing instances of all trips in the city. As the basis for our extension, we build on a previously published efficient and scalable simulation model. Thanks to its scalability, we are able to perform our simulation with the resulting 4.6 million trips per day over a whole week. We study the effect of electrification on modal shift considering different battery capacities and charging station numbers. We will show at what level of these three decision variables the impact of electrification is negligible compared to our previous results with (non-electric) SAVs.

Supercapacitor powered electric vehicles have attracted worldwide interest in transportation sector owing to their promising characteristics such as rapid charging cycle (2 min), long durability (up to 1 million cycles), delivering high power during cranking and acceleration of electric vehicles using burst mode power delivery and free maintenance. Currently, the focusing on design, development, and demonstration of E-bicycle by using commercial Maxwell Supercapacitor as an indigenous module for the prototype demonstration. Further, self-discharge of supercapacitor module and data generation of supercapacitor E-bicycle parameters such as motor current, driving range and energy consumption during various load and speed have been collected. The charge and discharge cycles with voltage booster have been monitored on a regular basis.

The paper presents the hardware and software components of a driving simulator for electric vehicles. The simulator is providing the user with realistic feedback regarding the required visual and kinesthetic information. The motion of the driving simulator is imposed by a 6 degrees of freedom Stewart hexapod platform. The command signal of the platform is obtained through the motion cueing algorithms in which the reference accelerations of the vehicle are transformed into displacement commands of the platform. The driver is interacting with the pedals and steering wheel with the simulator and the dynamic model of the electric vehicle is obtained with state-of-the-art simulation software (Simcenter Amesim). The simulator can be used to evaluate driving scenarios and electric vehicles’ performance, to analyze the driver’s action, and to identify the driver’s decision in safety-critical scenarios in precisely controlled driving conditions.

Sustainable mobility requires a clean and decarbonised road transport sector. Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) stand as an appealing transitional solution for mitigating transport emissions due to their reduced lifetime Fuel Consumption (FC). However, their contribution to air quality and fuel savings depends on actual Real-World (RW) usage and the share of electric driving. This study analyses the use of PHEVs in RW conditions and the influence of vehicle technology thereon. An ad-hoc experimental driving campaign has been designed and is being conducted, with several volunteers driving a PHEV and a conventional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle used as reference. Comparing the RW collected data from drivers, and the two cars, provides insights into understanding the actual use of PHEV vehicles and how the vehicle technology influences the users’ driving behaviour. The preliminary results of this novel campaign indicate that the drivers adopted similar habits when moved to the PHEV model. Additionally, an analysis showed clear correlations between the battery state of charge (SOC) at the beginning of the trip and the corresponding trip FC. It is concluded that the increase in PHEVs sales can contribute to transport decarbonisation, provided that the vehicles are driven as expected by the regulations. In this sense, policy objectives could also address usage patterns such as the battery charging frequency.

This scientific work is meant to reveal the current research context and the future opportunities in the case of charging and/or supply systems for vehicles with electric or hybrid propulsion, which are analyzed in the light of their actual evolving dynamics and on the basis of which there are highlighted expectations regarding the main problems that the electric mobility is currently facing in the research and development environment, as well as its focus direction on eventual solutions that are considered in present and on their shortcomings in a future with evolved necessities.

With the climate change challenges, transport network companies started to electrify their fleet to reduce CO2 emissions. However, such ecological transition brings new research challenges for dynamic electric fleet charging management under uncertainty. In this study, we address the dynamic charging scheduling management of shared ride-hailing services with public charging stations. A two-stage charging scheduling optimization approach under a rolling horizon framework is proposed to minimize the overall charging operational costs of the fleet, including vehicles’ access times, charging times, and waiting times, by anticipating future public charging station availability. The charging station occupancy prediction is based on a hybrid LSTM (Long short-term memory) network approach and integrated into the proposed online vehicle-charger assignment. The proposed methodology is applied to a realistic simulation study in the city of Dundee, UK. The numerical studies show that the proposed approach can reduce the total charging waiting times of the fleet by 48.3% and the total charged amount of energy of the fleet by 35.3% compared to a need-based charging reference policy.

The purpose of this study is to design and implement a scientific tool which will be used to investigate the application of smart grids in the aviation industry and to evaluate the proof of concept. A case study for a regional Greek airport is proceeded with the development of a co-simulation agent-based model which includes building and electrical system simulation, climate data, flights, and passengers’ flow. In terms of methodology, the load types and schedule will be studied, like HVAC, building and runway lighting. It is presented how passengers fluctuation affects each type of load and, as a result, energy consumption throughout different hours of the day, depending on weather conditions. After the collection and validation of the above data, a model of each type of load at a typical regional civilian airport will be created. Finally, the models will be used with software packages and the co-simulation framework. The produced results are evaluated and are presented.

The massive, uncontrolled charging of numerous electric vehicles from the grid will create problems in the proper and reliable operation of the electricity networks. A very promising solution is the application of controlled and coordinated charging of electric vehicles, also known as smart charging. During smart charging, the charging time and rate of an electric vehicle are controlled. The development of an integrated smart charging solution meets significant technical challenges and requires the cooperation of numerous stakeholders. The electric vehicle aggregator is a new entity that can take over the central management of the smart charging of numerous electric vehicles and interact with the various stakeholders in an optimal way. This paper presents a prototype integrated tool for the management of smart charging by an electric vehicle aggregator in order to provide cost-effective charging to electric vehicle users while providing ancillary services to the system and network operators.

The impending adoption of electric vehicles is rapidly increasing the complexity of the charging process management for the various stakeholders of the EV charging ecosystem. These stakeholders need to cooperate in exchanging metering, billing, and other sensitive and private data required for the provision of EV charging services. Thus, secure, transparent, and reliable data communication networks must be established to enable efficient interaction among the different stakeholders regarding identity and charging management, along with the session settlement and billing processes.Blockchain is a distributed, digital transaction technology that allows securely exchanging and storing data, as well as executing smart contracts in peer-to-peer networks amongst different entities without established trusted relationships. These smart contracts may holistically describe the relationships between the different entities, as well as the rules of their interaction. Additionally, blockchain technology has the potential to ensure the integrity, reliability, and efficiency of the established ecosystem, strengthen cybersecurity, protect privacy, and minimize transaction costs by applying sophisticated cryptographic techniques.This paper provides an overview of how blockchain technology could transform and improve an operational EV charging management network and proposes a blockchain-based framework that is suitable for the electric vehicle charging ecosystem.

In recent years, road transportation of goods and people have been constantly increasing. As a result of population growth and economic development, the transportation industry has a need for larger amounts of energy. Many countries, including Greece, are emphasizing the promotion of electric mobility to reduce emissions. Also, a goal to achieve in the future is to produce the electricity needed through renewable sources. In addition, the Sustainable Urban/Island Mobility Plans, Electric Vehicle Charging Systems and other programs such as Daphne and Green Deal are applied to ensure the smooth integration of electric mobility in Greece.The present paper investigates through a questionnaire survey the development of sustainable network for people and goods transportation in Skiathos Island. Based on the sample responses, data analysis was performed with descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. It is concluded that there is a will to purchase an electrical vehicle, taking into consideration the existence of the appropriate infrastructure. Also, respondents were keen on autonomous vehicles regarding public transportation. The sustainable proposals for the transportation of goods seem to be of high interest to the businessmen of the island.

Pollution is a change in the physical, chemical and biological components of the environment that is harmful to humans, natural ecosystems and man-made ones; therefore pollution can be understood as an action by which man degrades his own environment of existence. The issue of urban pollution due to car traffic and especially the pollution of the intersections of main routes, especially in big cities, is an important source of nowadays pollution. The objective of this paper is to present a system for monitoring and improving air quality at road intersections. By giving priority to traffic to polluting vehicles, road intersections will be less polluted. Constructive details and operation mode of the proposed system, as well as suggestions for further development of it are discussed in this paper.

This paper introduces a new version of the systems already on the market for streamlining traffic at intersections in order to give priority to intervention vehicles. The system consists of two modules, one located on board the vehicle that emits the spatial coordinates converted to binary code and the other is located in the intersection traffic light box and receives the data, interprets them and decides the traffic lights change colors in the direction of travel of the intervention vehicle in green and all other directions will be red, thus giving priority and maximum safety to the intervention vehicles.

Recent advances in communications and mobile computing boosted the green mobility. Mobile Computing is the ability to provide computing technology in mobile environments while Green mobility aims to reduce vehicle emissions. The paper introduces a tool consisting of a mobile application and an information system that aims to collect and analyse the user’s driving style, with a specific focus on emission reduction. To achieve that, relevant user information such as accelerometer, gyroscope, location and on-board diagnostics data are being collected transparently and continuously for the sake of developing the driving assistance tool for low-emission driving. Based on the collected information and a scoring algorithm, the user’s driving style is analysed in real time and transcribed in a score. The proposed tool provides recommendations to the drivers when the score is bad and aggregated data to the authorities. The tool offers straightforward recommendations, while the driver is on the way, that can lead to prevention of high-emission driving styles by providing immediate corrective actions. As opposed to that, the information system stores and analyses the driving data that have been gathered to generate a post-driving dashboard for the authorities to monitor overall the driving behaviour and vehicle emissions. The tool has been tested thoroughly and the results indicate a robust performance.

Understanding passengers’ route choices plays an important role in public transport planning. As an alternative to traditional web-based surveys, smart cards, an emerging technology for fare collection, can be useful to obtain massive amounts of information over a long period of time. This paper determines how smart-card data can help us understand passengers’ travel strategies, by identifying factors influencing route choice behaviour within the bus system of Shizuoka, Japan. We also examine the discrepancy between hyperpath and actual route choices based on smart-card data together with the choice principles proposed by Luo et al. [17] and arrival time-based route assignment. Origin–destination (OD) pairs are analysed with the goal to determine the most appropriate model for the transit assignment problem.We found a discrepancy between hyperpath and actual route choices, which was attributed to the erroneous assumption of random arrivals of bus services; in fact, bus operation in the Shizuoka area is timetable-based. Consequently, passengers are likely to follow the bus schedule. Route choice flexibility was displayed by regular commuters, who did not strictly adhere to a single bus route even though they usually travelled according to the same origin–destination pair. This supports the concept of “hyperpath travellers”. A variety of factors, such as perceived crowding and uncertainty of services (delays), might also affect choices when bus routes are overcrowded and another bus is due shortly. Our findings aim to assist transport planners towards predicting traffic demand more accurately, and therefore enhancing the provided public transport services and determining influential factors for commuters’ travel strategies.

Since travelers seek efficient transnational door-to-door journey planners, seamless mobility solutions and multimodal transport networks connecting distinct systems should be in transport planners and researchers’ focus. Thus, in current research, a method is elaborated to implement a seamless multimodal route planning solution by identifying potential exchange points between various networks, filtering the relevant exchange points, running a routing algorithm, and presenting a utility function for the ranking of the alternatives. Exchange points are discovered by an algorithm using the GPS coordinates of stops. If the coordinates are close, a connection is indicated. To identify the potential exchange points, solely the stops of different local journey planners are considered by the algorithm. Some specific exchange points are chosen for route calculation. The selection is necessary as the number of exchange points is high due to the involvement of international and multimodal networks. By using a heuristic optimization algorithm, a rough estimation of the routes is conducted. The proposed method is flexible; the parameters can be easily updated and enhanced. Therefore, the framework provides an up-to-date and pragmatic implementation in case of changes, too. Furthermore, the developed method is applicable to wide geographical areas and by any traveler information service provider.

Research on novel concepts in the field of smart mobility and ITS requires employing traffic simulations in combination with communication and application simulations. With Eclipse MOSAIC we developed a co-simulation simulation framework to setup holistic system simulations in that very field, by coupling best-in-class simulators from various research domains. One important task here is modeling road traffic, which is non-trivial on a large scale. Traffic for a city-wide area can be modeled on a macroscopic or microscopic level, however, only the later provides realistic vehicle movements which is a requirement for communication and application simulation. Currently, there are only a handful of scenarios that model enough traffic to reliably test smart mobility applications. In this paper, we describe how we created a large-scale simulation scenario depicting a full day of motorized private traffic for the City of Berlin. To achieve this, we created a scenario for the microscopic traffic simulator SUMO, with the traffic demand extracted from an existing MATSim scenario and transferred to SUMO using iterative traffic assignment. Comparing the simulated counts with real data emphasizes that this scenario can model traffic in Berlin close to reality. With more than 2.2 million trips within an area of 800 km2 this is the largest traffic scenario we are currently aware of, and we will provide it for other researchers under an open-source license.

The proliferation in the number of vehicles on the road are causing traffic problems. Existing transportation infrastructure and car park facilities are unable to cope with this influx. Drivers struggling to park their vehicles is a usual scenario witnessed at peak parking times causing waste of precious time and energy. Intelligent parking systems for meeting near-term parking demand are a must-have for developing smart cities. Goals of intelligent parking systems include counting the number of parked cars, and identifying the available locations. In this paper, we propose an intelligent parking system using real-time image processing techniques. Features of the proposed system include vacant parking space detection, detection of improper parking, display of available parking spaces, and directional indicators toward different types of parking spaces (vacant, occupied, reserved and handicapped). The system leverages the existing video surveillance infrastructure to capture, process image sequences and provide guidance and information to the drivers.

Despite the interest in the MaaS system is growing fast within the scientific community, it remains uncertain if MaaS could be a potential tool able to reduce car ownership. This study aims to capture the impact of the total cost of ownership (TCO) on MaaS demand by endogenizing the MaaS choice and the TCO within the users’ travel choice in an agent-based model. We simulate different TCO price range starting from a benchmark cost in the literature and embed a specific type of MaaS plan which gives unlimited access to the services. Results show a significant growth of MaaS demand when TCO rises, in particular MaaS members are car users who shift their mode choice to public transport by travelling within more trips but in a shorter time slot. In contrast, MaaS users employ public transport for short trips while they still employ cars reducing their travel time but employing the same number of trips when TCO decreases. Results suggest that MaaS might become a more sustainable service by developing specific subsidies to discourage car ownership and by increasing mobility accessibility.

Due to waste of time and unnecessary pollution when seeking for a parking space in urban areas, the lack of parking spaces has a serious social and environmental impact. To address this problem, we developed the SocialPARK ecosystem which engages a community of interacting citizens, parking vendors and municipalities. SocialPARK revolves around a crowdsourcing scheme that aggregates parking information, for free public spaces reported by commuters, and for commercial parking spaces offered by parking vendors, in a single integrated platform. SocialPARK offers a variety of services, including “Park-and-Ride” options, making the city centers more accessible with less pollution. Apart from commuters’ participation, a central challenge is the involvement of as many parking vendors as possible, to offer a multitude of parking alternatives to the commuters. We present a business-oriented recommendation engine, developed as part of SocialPARK, to motivate parking vendors to participate in the envisioned open market of parking-related services. The engine is composed of two modules: the first module gathers usage information about the utilization of parking houses within a certain area; (ii) the second module exploits this information to exhibit statistical data and create targeted recommendations for parking houses, rendering their businesses more competitive and improving the services they offer.

Given the concentration of the majority of population in urban areas and the lack of available public space, car parking has evolved as a major problem for big cities in recent years. To address the issue, several approaches have been proposed including incentivisation mechanisms for increasing the use of public transport, carpooling for reducing the number of vehicles in the urban traffic network and crowdsourcing for reporting in real-time available free parking spots in the network. Towards the last direction, in this paper we introduce a novel crowdsourcing framework for reporting and allocating available free parking spots in an urban traffic network. The framework provides the necessary services for a user to report an available free parking spot discovered in the network, it distributes in real-time to all registered users the information about all available free parking spots in the whole network, as well as it evaluates the credibility of the received crowdsourcing information using an advanced probabilistic algorithm. Moreover, the proposed framework places special emphasis on the visualization of the parking availability (i.e., reported from and to the users) using appropriate coloring schemes with varied opacity levels. The proposed crowdsourcing framework is part of the platform developed in the context of the national research project Social Park.

Nowadays, Mobility, in all its dimensions (transport mobility, sustainable mobility, active mobility, and Mobility as a Service (MaaS)), is an essential dimension in sustainable development goals, allowing to increase in the quality of life, the health, the social inclusion and to reduce climate action in any society. To increase the citizens’ awareness and promote a true behavioral change, the citizens need to feel part of the process. Gamification has proved to be effective in raising citizens’ awareness, encouraging their participation, and promoting a gradual but profound behavior change in various areas such as participatory governance, tourism, culture, education, etc. Gamification can also propel a Smart Living Society 5.0 among the younger groups of the society, especially in the context of academic communities that are more knowledgeable and eager to foster a healthier, more sustainable, and more inclusive society. Smart Living Society 5.0 is an activity in the scope of the TECH - Tecnologia, Ambiente, Criatividade e Saúde - a project of NORTE 2020, focusing on creating an Academic MaaS (AMaaS). At this stage, it is essential to know about gamification use cases related to new mobility solutions and practices. The paper presents successful cases of mobility systems and services that consider gamification to promote and incentivize their use concerning active mobility and sustainable mobility; it discusses the potential of gamified systems to achieve a gamification proposal approach to implement in the AMaaS under development.

Given the concentration of the majority of population in urban areas and the lack of available public space, car parking has evolved as a major problem for big cities in recent years. To address the issue, several approaches have been proposed including incentivization mechanisms for increasing the use of public transport, carpooling for reducing the number of vehicles in the urban traffic network and crowdsourcing for reporting in real-time available free parking spots in the network. Towards the last direction, in this paper we introduce a novel crowdsourcing mobile application for reporting and allocating available free parking spots in an urban traffic network. The mobile application is based on a framework providing the necessary services for a user to report an available free parking spot discovered in the network, it distributes in real-time to all registered users the information about all available free parking spots in the whole network, as well as it evaluates the credibility of the received crowdsourcing information using an advanced probabilistic algorithm. Moreover, the proposed framework places special emphasis on the visualization of the parking availability using appropriate coloring schemes with varied opacity levels. The mobile application encapsulates diverging services to provide a complete solution to the end user of the city.

Artificial intelligence algorithms can be used to automate and improve various processes in public transportation. Using a combination of data sources like positioning devices, ticketing and sales notifications and video surveillance we can obtain details on the load and utilization of transportation network segments. These results can be used not only to improve marketing campaigns and increase quality of transportation services, but also to provide better on-demand transportation options with flexible schedules. In this paper we discuss one such automation system that benefits from delay analysis and real-time processing of video streams.

Decision intelligence is a wide-range term covering a broad latitude of decision-making techniques, uniting traditional and modern disciplines for the development and process of decision models. It transforms the uncertainty of multiple travel choices into the opportunity to provide safe and optimal travel options. Developing a user-oriented trip planner (TP) should complement decision intelligence. This possibility enables travellers to make more informed decisions since they will have greater visibility of what is happening at their chosen travel destinations. On the other side, it will be based on using a wide range of big data and analytics, improving user experience. Authors analyse the challenging aspect of Big Data (BD) fusion being used by a person, where extraction of information across multiple data sources for travel planning is required.The research aims to develop a personalised trip planner concept for Riga city, which considers all aspects of public transport service quality. The offered concept of the user-oriented TP allows the creation of customer-oriented, safe and sustainable recommendations based on personal preferences and presented in a ranking of possible travel routes.

The use of the C-ITS Day1-service GLOSA - green light optimized speed advisory - in urban networks depends on various environmental and temporal constraints. While GLOSA generally is said to improve traffic flow and decrease emissions and delay, the availability may be actually very low in real world scenarios due to the aforementioned constraints.In this paper, a framework to evaluate the effectivity of GLOSA (measured as percent of the cycle time where it is available with high confidence) is proposed, considering the 1. current signal program parameters like cycle time or proportion of green per cycle, 2. traffic flow parameters like traffic load or queue length and 3. limitations on the lowest and highest possible speed advised by GLOSA as well as the range of communication depending on the communication technology. The paper presents the framework and shows its application to evaluate typical urban intersections equipped with V2X communication. For this network, the effectivity of GLOSA will be evaluated based on the access lanes of signalized intersections, and it will be shown, at which intersection and under which circumstances GLOSA makes sense. Furthermore, it will be estimated what level of service is achieved for GLOSA.The proposed framework to assess the C-ITS service GLOSA serves as a basis for evaluating the possibilities for connected and automated driving in other cities and urban corridors.

Seeking for a positive insight in the Covid-19 emergency situation, it can be well said that from the beginning of the pandemic spread, impacts on transport and tourism sector and adopted policy measures were investigated, as cities noticed a behavioral change towards alternative transport modes. In most cases, governments recognized that the promotion of walking and cycling could reduce the risks of contagion, protect public health and achieve an effective modal split in favor of active modes, hoping to remain after the pandemic. In the need for a fast reaction, the transport and tourism sectors displayed great tolerance for experimentation and a willingness to support innovative technological solutions for promoting safer green trips and visits in the post-COVID era which appears to be coming soon enough. Such solutions limited or even banned the development of expensive and costly infrastructural interventions and encouraged suitable behavioral change of people habits. In this line, the development of smart mobile applications is undoubtedly one of the most vital aspects for both the transport and the tourism industry. Considering the fact that the pandemic effects demand a re-evaluation of travel solutions, the current paper presents the SUSTOURISMO mobile application, developed to meet the tourists’ needs and boost sustainable mobility in touristic regions. So far, the results arise from the testing phase of the app, confirm that such useful technology driven tools can be used as urban policy interventions in an effort to obtain a more sustainable mobility in urban environments.

Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) have been among the most emerging topics in automobility during the past decade. Technologically, the advances show its feasibility and numerous pilot applications worldwide imply its operability in urban and highway contexts. However, what is of utmost importance is to achieve a smooth and effective deployment, in order to ensure that the transportation system - and society in broader terms - shall benefit from their positive implications (among which fostering road safety) and avoid shortcomings and side-effects. In Greece, road safety has been a traditionally critical issue, in which significant progress has been achieved in the latest years. However, apart from small-scale piloting, limited CAV deployment activities have been undertaken so far. In order to identify how CAV could optimally be introduced in the Greek transportation reality, a survey has been designed, addressing stakeholders from different fields (academics, researchers, local authorities, transport operators, etc.). The aim of the survey is primarily to investigate the stakeholders’ opinion on the processes, actions and frameworks towards the deployment of CAV in Greece while, at a later stage, these results will facilitate the definition of deployment scenarios. The survey has been undertaken online, with the use of a specifically designed structured questionnaire, including questions varying from general opinion and acceptance of CAVs, to specific issues regarding, technological, legislative and regulatory issues. In total 47 questions were addressed to the participants and 21 answers received so far. This paper is presenting the survey, along with preliminary results and insights.

The city of Trikala, Greece was one of the first cities in Europe that deployed Autonomous Vehicle (AV) trials in public streets, along dedicated (not separated) path. The implementation of the project faced numerous technical, legislative, administrative and practical challenges. However, it has achieved a significant added value for the city. First, it supported the engagement of local community with smart city projects. Second, it provided the city authorities with valuable knowledge on the development and operation of AV and smart mobility systems. Third, it contributed to the enhancement of the city’s profile as innovator in digital transition. Moreover, after the completion of the project, the AV corridor was converted to a bicycle lane, serving many highly attractive destinations in the city. This paper addresses the challenges in the implementation of the project, the effect of the project in the attitudes of local community towards smart city applications, the knowledge gained and the impact regarding innovation diffusion in the city in two periods. The first evaluation takes place one year after the completion of the project (02/2016) and focuses on its immediate impact and perceptions of the public towards it. Five years later, taking also into account the corona crisis, the second evaluation takes place in 2021 mostly focusing on the knowledge gained and on the innovation diffusion effects. The evaluation is based on literature review, with focus on the examined AV project, as well as on thorough structured interviews with the project implementation authority e-Trikala in a 5-year period.

Autonomous vehicles are being introduced into citizens’ daily life. Their introduction will have a positive impact for the city, the citizens and the Economy. But further to the advantages/pros of their introduction are there any disadvantages/cons? What is the expected impact of their presence on people’s quality of life and on the free exercise of the fundamental human rights of individuals? Which aspects of their existence may be affected? A research using the Delphi method approach was carried out, using questionnaires addressed to experts across various scientific fields. The areas of interest covered in the relevant questionnaires include traffic, transportation, road safety, environment, cybersecurity, employment, ethical and social issues, privacy, human rights and the rule of Law. The results of this research, as came out from the last Delphi method’ round, were elaborated for the purposes of this paper and displayed as a statistic and descriptive overview of the experts’ views. Based on the, largely common, views of the participants of this research, a strong focus on ethical issues needs to be considered prior to the circulation of autonomous vehicles and their imminent impact on humans.

In this paper we develop a model to estimate and analyze consumer preferences and satisfaction from public transportation services. Unlike many other studies in this area, our approach is based on use of big data from multiple sources and allows to achieve continuous and precise estimation of consumer behavior. These results can be used then to adjust parameters of the transportation plans, schedules and asset allocation. We build the model with available data from INNOAIR project in Sofia.

The H2020-funded SHOW project (SHared automation Operating models for Worldwide adoption) supports the deployment of connected, cooperative and automated mobility (CCAM) through real-life pilot demonstrations taking place in 20 cities across Europe. While CCAM has the potential to bring great benefits to citizens and society, user acceptance is a crucial challenge to address. In this paper, we explore the importance of citizen and stakeholder engagement in the development of new mobility services, and how such aspects have been integrated and applied in SHOW. User acceptance surveys are being conducted at different stages in the project. In addition, dedicated citizen and stakeholder engagement activities are organized, including Ideathons and Hackathons. By engaging both citizens as potential end-users and stakeholders in the development process, we aim to ensure that SHOW services meet their needs and requirements and to increase the positive impacts on society.

Our modern era is characterized by swift and continuous technological development in a pressing and competitive environment, where time, timely decisions, and the risk of the adoption of new technologies and innovations are of crucial and decisive importance. In such an environment, we pursue to adopt pioneering innovations that will be able to exceed all previous efforts and will prevail both at a technological and an economic level. This paper focuses on the technology transfer process of transportation innovation from a financially advanced part of the world, that of Southeastern Asia, to Greece. By using the Maximum Difference Scaling (MaxDiff) method, a questionnaire survey was conducted in which 195 people who live in Greece participated. Through this questionnaire, the preferences among several alternative transportation innovations of the transportation system of Southeastern Asia were estimated. Smart parking, high-speed trains, and autonomous vehicles were selected as the top choices. The least preferred innovations were the parking spaces only for women, the flying cars, and the flying taxis. By analyzing the results, we concluded how positive the residents of Greece are toward new transportation technologies in combination with demographic criteria. Through the MaxDiff method, we recorded these preferences analytically for any future applications of these innovations at a national level.

Emerging ITS service applications such as parking (including AVPS: Automated valet parking systems), CAV (connected and automated vehicle) (including LSAD: Low speed automated driving), Kerb operations needs digital infrastructure supports for secured and safety operations. And there are several independent related ongoing standardization work items within ISO/TC204, such as HD (high definition) maps, METR (Management for Electronic Traffic Regulations), GDD (Graphic Data Dictionary). Therefore, there is a need of a guidebook style technical report. Creation of such technical report to have a definite need for how those independent standardization works fit in a prospected digital infrastructure service role and functional model for smart city ITS service applications. This role model concept must be extended by authorities/communities to be applied to other smart city services such as energy and telecommunication network.

The city of Padua in Italy aims to strategically redesign the urban mobility and logistics network as part of the new sustainable urban mobility plan (SUMP). Several strategies and business models – running on IT platforms and apps – will be assessed and deployed in this framework. This paper focuses on the current development and deployment of NEXT - a mixed freight/passenger transport system (so-called cargo hitching) of autonomous electric pods - in the urban area of Padua. Cargo hitching allows the integration of freight and passenger transport systems, thus, improving the operational, socio-economic and environmental performance of the urban mobility systems. The pods are capable to join and detaching while running. Its modularity and flexibility are relevant features leading to resources optimization. This paper presents the SPROUT Project (H2020- GA 814910) approach to define a city-led (co-created) policy response to harness the impacts of this new urban mobility solution in Padua. It includes the methodological approach adopted for the ongoing implementation in Padua and discusses the main cutting-edge features of the NEXT systems and related technologies.

Shockwaves are traffic pulses that mainly propagate upstream of traffic flow; commonly found on highways. The phenomenon is created due to the fact that vehicles move at different speeds and many drivers tend to change their speed abruptly; resulting to a temporary limited length tail. This can be damped or prevented using Connected Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS). It is possible to damp or avoid shockwave formations by transmitting relevant on time messages to drivers, which will suggest optimal driving behaviours. In this direction, a method for damping/avoiding traffic pulses (shockwaves) is developed and presented in detail in this paper. After analyzing traffic data from the Attikes Diadromes S.A. highway, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) were developed and trained to detect incidents when there is a high probability of shockwave formation. The ANNs were evaluated with real-world data from video analysis. In view of the evaluation, an optimal ANN for detecting shockwaves and an optimal ANN for detecting shockwave forerunners are proposed. The messages to be sent to drivers when detecting such incidents were analyzed. Final messages are proposed based on the available technology and equipment. Next, the C-ITS architecture is developed to support the above services. It was ascertained that the developed ANNs detect shockwaves and shockwave forerunners very efficiently based on specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). When the detection is made, the relevant messages are transmitted to drivers in real time. The impact of shockwave preventing and damping messages can be tested through pilot activities.

The increasing interest and the amount of capital invested in the technology of autonomous vehicles in urban and suburban environments resulted in a surge of research activities sustained around urban mobility in the competitive as well as the academic sector. The CrowdMapping project at the Department of Control Engineering and Information Technology at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics is one of such endeavors aiming at developing the necessary technology backbones for crowdsourced map data acquisition for autonomous traffic and transportation. In this article, we are introducing the differences we came to understand between the mindset and the aims of an entrepreneur versus a researcher and show how we attempted to manage these distinctions during the 2021 EIT Jumpstarter competition.

Traffic monitoring and advanced urban analytics play an important role in city planning and in attaining sustainable mobility through data-driven decision-making. With the advent of open-sourced data initiatives, new data-sharing technologies and software, also analytical methods, and data integration techniques are forced to subsequent levels. In this paper, we present two pilot studies of a recently conducted national project, joining vehicle counts and the travel times to present roadway traffic flows. We introduce a targeted selection of indicators and demonstrate the applicability of travel time metrics and the vehicle count measures, by combining different open datasets and transferable analyses to advance the interpretation strength of the data. Concretely, we apply regression methods based on the cosinor model, which allows us to analyze the rhythmic behavior of travel time and congestion trends. Furthermore, following the principles of data integration and data reusability we examine, using regression modeling and cross-validation, the possibilities to interchangeably use the governmental roadway counting database, vehicle counting by WeCount Ljubljana Telraam database, and the travel times records sourced by Google Direction API. The data analyzed indicate the possible interchangeability in selected scenarios and confirm the prospective to be used as complementary systems in the city monitoring and for urban sustainability assessment.

One of the critical differences that distinguish the traditional from the sustainable transport planning approach in urban areas is how roads and public spaces are considered and managed. Traditional planning treats roads as linear elements (links) that exclusively serve motor vehicles’ movement and thus are cut off from the rest of the public space. In contrast, the sustainable approach recognises the integration of mobility in the urban environment and therefore prioritises the existence of quality urban infrastructure and attractive public spaces, promoting thus sustainable urban mobility. In this framework, the current paper introduces a reliable, simple to implement, and low-cost methodological approach for assessing the perceived quality of public spaces such as parks, squares, and pedestrian areas, using crowdsourcing data. More specifically, the presented approach utilises data from Google Places API and employs Geographic Information Systems and spreadsheets to calculate an overall score for public spaces within a given spatial unit, such as a municipality. Given that the transition from theory to practice underlines issues of scalability, usability, and credibility, the developed methodological approach was applied in the seven municipalities that constitute the Metropolitan Area of Thessaloniki, namely the Municipalities of Ampelokipi-Menemeni, Kalamaria, Kordelio-Evosmos, Neapoli-Sykies, Pavlos Melas, Pylaia-Chortiatis, and Thessaloniki. The pilot implementation highlighted interesting findings for the above-mentioned areas and in addition, it validated the applicability and value of the developed methodological approach which thus can be used as a reliable tool for assessing the quality of public spaces.

In this work the application of radiant curtains in a train composition, for improving thermal comfort conditions, in winter season, is made. In this study the train compositions consider one occupied space with 32 passengers. The evaluation of thermal comfort conditions, using the Predicted Mean Vote index, is made by the Human Thermal Modelling numerical model. This model, that works in transient conditions and simulates simultaneously a group of persons, considers the body divided in 24 cylindrical and 1 spherical element, each element is divided in 4 parts and each part sub-divided in several layers. The body is protected by several clothing layers. This numerical model considers the human body and clothing thermal system, based on mass and energy integral equations system, the human body thermo-regulatory system, the heat exchange between the body and the environment and thermal comfort. The numerical test, when the train is subjected to solar radiation in the right side, is made with internal curtains. In these simulations tests are considered a uniform convective environment without significant air velocity, the internal air temperature, the air relative humidity and the Mean Radiant Temperature that each body element are subjected calculated numerically. In accordance with the obtained results, the internal warm curtains guarantee, in general, internal acceptable thermal comfort conditions.

This paper presents a numerical study on the airflow and indoor air quality influencing the occupants of an urban transport vehicle equipped with a HVAC (Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning) system based on ceiling-mounted air distribution systems. This study is carried out in a virtual chamber, which simulates the one that exists in the laboratory, occupied by twenty-four seated occupants. Above each occupant there is located an air inlet directed towards the occupants’ breathing zone. The exhaust is also located close to the ceiling between every two occupants seated side by side. Numerical simulation is performed using research software founded on a set of numerical models, one that simulates the vehicle's thermal response, Vehicle Thermal Modelling, and a coupling between one that simulates the airflow around the occupants, Computational Fluid Dynamics, and another that simulates the temperature distribution in occupants, Human Thermal Modelling. The performance of the HVAC system is evaluated for an inlet air velocity of 3 m/s. In this study the air velocity and the carbon dioxide concentration field are presented. The results show that the airflow presents a downward path in the inlet towards the breathing zone. In the area located between the occupants, the airflow presents an upward path towards the exhaust area. In accordance with the air velocity field, the CO2 concentration is removed from the breathing zone and is transferred to the exhaust area.

Transport models able to take into account both Automated Vehicles (AVs) and Conventional Vehicles (CVs) are increasingly required to support decision-makers in the transition to the future mobility. Studies on AVs mainly investigate motorways and extra-urban networks by using a traffic microsimulator approach, but very few studies investigate the more complex case of urban areas in which this approach is a very challenging problem for real (large) networks. In this last case, this study aims to analyze mixed traffic flows in presence of different AVs shares by using a microsimulation approach to estimate traffic flow parameters for a better definition of link flows and performances in presence of mixed traffic flows made of AVs and CVs. They can be used for a better implementation of more reliable meso-simulation assignment models taking into account the presence of mixed AVs and CVs traffic flows for strategic planning of large and complex networks The application to the road network of Rome (Italy) allowed to demonstrate the goodness of the proposed approach.

By 2050, and in the context of decarbonization and carbon neutrality, many companies worldwide are looking for low-carbon alternatives. Transport companies are probably the most challenging due to the continuing growth in global demand and the high dependency on fossil fuels. Some alternatives are emerging to replace conventional diesel vehicles and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants. One of these alternatives is the adoption of compressed natural gas (CNG). In this paper, we provide a detailed study of the current emissions from the largest bus fleet company in the metropolitan area of Oporto. For this analysis, we used a top-down and a bottom-up methodology based on EMEP/EEA guidebook to compute the CO2 and air pollution (CO, NMVOC, PM2.5, and NOx) emissions from the fleet. Fuel consumption, energy consumption, vehicle slaughter, electric bus incorporation, and the investments made were taken into consideration in the analyses. From the case study, the overall reduction in CO2 emission was just 6.3%, and the emission factors (air pollutants) from CNG-powered buses and diesel-powered buses are closer and closer. For confirming these results and question the effectiveness of the fleet transitions from diesel to CNG vehicles, we analysed two scenarios. The obtained results reveal the potential and effectiveness of electric buses and other fuel alternatives to reduce CO2 and air pollution.

In recent years the design of a multimodal transport system has been promoted and expanded to minimize the environmental impacts that are flourishing under the effect of rapid urbanization. Multimodal transport is expected to compete with the comfort and instant accessibility that the private car offers. In this paper, the proper design of such a network is studied, which implies seamless services, in the framework of which the itineraries and schedules of the various means are coordinated with each other. A structured literature review was conducted, addressing applications of smart payment methods, as well as services related to intelligent transport systems provided in Greece and abroad, while the need to address the challenges arising from the implementation of such a system is emphasized. The city of Volos, Greece was chosen to be tested as a case study, since it is a tourist attraction throughout the year, emphasizing the need of interconnectivity. In particular, the operation of each terminal in the city is analyzed, while at the same time the interconnection between them is evaluated, with the Urban Public Transport Operator acting as a connecting link. Data were collected through an online questionnaire survey capturing the habits and willingness of 248 travelers to participate in an integrated transport system, along with interviews with stakeholders from selected sectors, i.e. public authorities, operators, businesses, academia, etc. Results showed that users are quite positive to the idea of introducing automation in public transport and consider that there will be an improvement in the situation of the road network and in their daily movements. In addition, they showed enthusiasm for the concept of multimodality, and they assessed it as a system to be quite resilient even in times of pandemic like COVID-19. Lastly, measures are proposed that will upgrade the interconnection of the terminals and consequently facilitate mobility of all passengers.

Autonomous driving is an innovative solution for future transport but, which are the suitable scenarios to start its implementation? The INTEGRA project analyses the different scenarios where autonomous vehicles can be applied taking into consideration the accessibility and integration of all the population. This analysis is focused on the different situation in which this technology can be implemented in an urban environment for transporting both freight and passengers. Firstly, the city movements are analysed in deep from the automation point of view. In order to study freight transport is considered both business to business and business to consumer delivery. For both deliveries the parameters analysed are type of product, type of vehicle needed, infrastructure required, which user will pick up the goods and how. In turn, the passenger transport is considered as an integrated one that would benefit all the citizens, especially those who are not able to drive.After this analysis, the study recommends the suitable scenarios to start implementing autonomous driving considering the view of stakeholders involved in each scenario. In any case, and in conclusion, it must be realised that initially not all the scenarios and situations will be able to change to autonomous vehicle due to the users’ expectations and the need of interactions, i.e., probably the autonomous vehicle will be a standard operation but in specific situations a person will be needed in this transport, and both systems will need to collaborate.

Shared micromobility systems are rapidly pervading urban environments. Usually, they are either dockless, in line with free-floating paradigms whereby vehicles can be left and picked up anywhere within the region of operation, or have docking stations with predefined parking slots. In this paper, we present an optimization-based framework to analyze and compare the advantages and disadvantages of these two different types of micromobility systems. We also include the possibility of rebalancing the system by the operator. First, we leverage graph theory to build a linear time-invariant network flow model of the two systems and use it to frame the time-optimal routing problem. Specifically, we formulate a linear program (LP) for the dockless system and a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) for the docked one whereby we jointly optimize the siting of the docking stations. Given their structure, both problems can be solved with off-the-shelf algorithms and global optimality guarantees. Second, we showcase our framework with a case study of Manhattan, NYC, whereby we quantitatively compare the performance achievable by the two micromobility paradigms. Our simulations suggest that increasing the number of stations of docked micromobility systems may decrease the average travel time up to a minimum aligned with the travel time achievable by dockless systems. Thereby, adding more stations does not significantly improve the system’s performance. Moreover, due to the slightly asymmetric travel demands, a mild rebalance of the system is enough to boost its performance.

Existing modelling research that attempts to quantify how flexible charging sessions of electric vehicles are, have been constrained by either charging data or inadequate mobility data. This resulted in significant underestimations of the charging flexibility. In this article an agent-based model is developed that is able to quantify the charging flexibility more realistically. A new charging flexibility metric is defined that takes future trips and the state-of-charge of the vehicles into account. The developed approach leverages detailed activity patterns from the ALBATROSS-model by simulating vehicle utilization from a household perspective in different neighborhood types. The results show that the over 80% of the evening peak charging demand from electric vehicles can be mitigated when utilizing the charging flexibility. It also shows that about half of the charging demand can be extended by more than 40 h. These results demonstrate the great potential of electric vehicle to balance the grid and enable high degrees of renewable energy production.

Electric cars can slash greenhouse gas emissions, but they still have the other drawbacks cars have. We show that shared autonomous electric vehicles (SAEVs) can provide personal transportation with the comfort and speed of cars while radically reducing the number and size of vehicles. This leads to vehicle fleets that require over fifteen times less resources and make the city much healthier (in terms of particulate matter, noise pollution and traffic accidents). SAEVs also require over a hundred times less parking space and make streets more pedestrian friendly so they become spaces to meet others.

This paper presents a stated adaptation approach to assess car drivers modal shift in presence of Park and Ride facilities and certain connecting transport modes. The experiment is designed as part of a web-based survey conducted in 2021 in two European cities: Munich and Lublin. To increase choice task realism, some of the experimental attributes used to design the hypothetical scenarios are customized around respondents’ current car travel patterns gathered within the same survey. The effects of service attributes, contextual variables and individual characteristics are investigated through discrete choice modelling. Based on the results, potential policies are simulated.

Electric bikes are considered an important sustainable alternative to private cars. This transportation mode competes with other new mobility modes, such as Shared Mobility and Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Because these services may not always be available, people may face a variety of choice options in different cities/regions. Despite their relevance, most studies of e-bike mode choice do not consider these availability effects, which may bias estimated acceptance rates and market shares of e-bikes. This paper reports the formulation and estimation results of a discrete portfolio choice model incorporating the availability effects of other sustainable mobility services to explore individuals’ willingness to buy pedelecs and speed pedelecs. We designed a stated portfolio choice experiment considering varying choice set composition, where Shared Mobility or/and MaaS may not be available. An error component logit model was formulated to analyze the availability effects. The knowledge we gained regarding the willingness to buy e-bikes in the presence or absence of motorized shared mobility options has major practical implications as some pilot studies have evidenced decreasing use of active modes once motorized shared mobility becomes conveniently available.

Demand responsive transport (DRT) although existed for decades, has recently become more attractive due to availability of real time (demand and supply) data and advanced matching algorithms. DRT is advantageous in reducing traffic and space occupancy if each service is simultaneously used by multiple travelers. Despite its benefits, travelers’ willingness to adopt this transport service is essential for such a service to have a meaningful impact on the living environment. Apart from service characteristics such as travel cost, travel time, waiting time and convenience, the uncertainty involved in the service delivery can be an additional factor for travelers no to be eager in using such a service. In this study, a web-based stated adaptation experiment is designed to understand the travelers’ choice of DRT in different contexts. Stated adaptation choice experiment first collect travel history and then expose respondents to two DRT options designed on the basis on the reported trip characteristics. A regret- rejoice based model is estimated to identify the relationship between the features of DRT service (including uncertain characteristics) and people’s adaptation behavior.

For developing healthy and environmentally friendly cities an innovative redesign of urban infrastructure is necessary. However, changes to the current infrastructure are not always adopted and accepted immediately. Therefore, it is crucial to understand why people accept or refuse the transformation of public space towards active mobility. Taking the example of Berlin, a four-week real-world experiment (RWE) was conducted in summer 2021 when a street was transformed to a car-free square. Parklets, which are wooden platforms on parking spaces, made this alternative use of space visible for residents and enabled them to experience the infrastructural change in their daily lives. However, these temporary experiments and infrastructural changes in general are controversial among residents. After the intervention, we measured residents’ acceptability as attitude and intention to react (protest etc.) within a household survey (N = 155). Using regression analyses, we examined the influence of socio-demographics and psychological variables (perceived fairness, affect and place attachment) on acceptability. The survey shows that almost as many participants favor the redesign as oppose it. Moreover, we found that on the attitudinal level, acceptability is influenced by perceived fairness, affect, place attachment, gender, and age. Whereas for behavioral acceptability, only perceived fairness plays a significant role. This demonstrates that the transport transition is strongly influenced by the idea of fairness. If the benefits are clearly recognizable for different population groups and the distribution of space feels fair, changes to the built environment are more easily accepted.

Lockdown measures aimed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic brought about an unexpected surge in bicycle ridership in many cities around the world. In Greece, a Ministry of Environment and Energy decision, issued in June 2020, prescribed the technical specifications for local authorities regarding the provision of temporary cycle lanes. In this paper, we examine how this opportunity for increasing bicycle ridership played out in the Municipality of Thessaloniki. We focus on the case of a pop-up cycle lane placed along a major arterial road, Karamanli Avenue, in an attempt to shed light to the reasons for the ‘failure’ of the cycle lane that finally led to its cancellation, eighteen months after construction, in February 2022. In the first part, we evaluate the design of the cycle lane both at the macro- and meso-scale (connectivity, accessibility, placement) and the micro-scale (design choices regarding geometry, materials, signage). In the second part, we present users’ opinions about the intervention collected through a questionnaire survey as well as bicycle traffic volumes during the pandemic. Combining these sources, we attempt to identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the process of the creation of the Karamanli cycle lane and to propose design recommendations.

Over the years, the urban planning literature has focused substantial attention on walkability research, aiming to enhance physical activity and healthy communities in the city through urban planning and design. However, while motorized traffic research seems to gain momentum in combining innovative technologies for traffic monitoring in recent years, pedestrian research seems to be left behind; the common tools used to collect pedestrian data are limited in time and scale. The increasing availability of quantitative data on the built environment holds great potential for a new generation of walkability studies, based on direct evidence of pedestrians’ flow around the city. This study aims at scrutinizing the added value of big data and crowdsourced big data to pedestrian and walkability research while experimenting with a new emerging technology of Bluetooth sensors. We used a dataset of over 53 million pedestrian records, monitored in 83 street-segments in Tel-Aviv, Israel, to analyze tempo-spatial dynamics of pedestrian movement at the street-level. The data was collected 24/7 for five months, including the time of COVID-19’s first lockdown. The results provide new insights on the relationship between attributes of the built environment and pedestrian movement, while identifying and evaluating attractive street segments across temporal changes. We discuss the role of street characteristics as determinants of walking, the impact of policy decisions on walking behavior and the possible implications of crowdsourced big data as tools for supporting planning decisions.

The subject of this paper is to evaluate the quality of walking, or else walkability, in two provincial cities of Greece, namely the cities of Veroia and Igoumenitsa. This paper aims to investigate and evaluate the characteristics of the pedestrian environment in the two cities and to draw conclusions regarding the elements that encourage walking in the two cities in order to propose necessary measures and future research. The methodology which was followed for the elaboration of this work consists of two parts. The first part concerns a literature review, and the second part consists of two questionnaire surveys conducted in each one of the two cities. The participants were 166 for the case of Veroia and 138 for the case of Igoumenitsa. Some of the proposals that were derived from the results of the questionnaire surveys are the following: i) the sidewalks’ infrastructure, e.g., width, ramps, etc., is not considered satisfactory in both cities; therefore, it should be improved, ii) illegal parking is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed by better signage as well as a more regular policing, iii) the sense of security and safety should be increased, and for this reason, the appropriate measures should be taken by the respective municipalities, e.g., increasing lighting levels, taking special care of stray animals, and reducing vehicles’ speed with suitable measures, iv) emphasis should also be given to the aesthetics of the pedestrian environment in ways such as caring for their cleanliness and increasing the planting of trees and flowers.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mobility behavior of citizens and to assess temporary measures to change mobility in the city of Thessaloniki through a questionnaire survey. The research focuses on recording and analyzing the habits, attitudes, and intentions of the active population towards temporary measures to change mobility at two (2) time intervals: before the pandemic and during the imposed pandemic restrictions. Specifically, we study the new measures against the pandemic implemented in the city of Thessaloniki and the creation of temporary mobility projects that favored active mobility, such as the construction of bicycle paths and sidewalks. We compare citizens’ mobility habits such as the frequency of their movements and the choice of mode of transportation before and after the pandemic and through the results, we find out how much their daily life has been affected. Next, we examine their reactions to the new measures taken with regard to their mobility with questions concerning temporary changes to public transportation and traffic bans. According to the results, it is essential to mention the support of the citizens regarding the creation of bicycle paths and sidewalks, as well as new parks in the city. Finally, with the help of the questionnaire, the above data were collected, and conclusions were drawn that helped in the formulation of proposals for the creation of new measures for a better, more citizen-friendly urban environment.

Sidewalks are an integral part of everyday human mobility habits. Although more interest is growing in the design of more eco-friendly and human-friendly sidewalks, the infrastructure in Greece is still problematic as far as environmental and accessibility factors are concerned. This paper attempts to determine the most important factors for the inhabitants regarding the sidewalks’ characteristics. This is achieved through Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) analysis, a commonly used preferential analytics marketing research technique. Five (5) attributes were included in the analysis. The most important attribute was found to be accessibility (38.79%), followed by shading (20.31%), width (20.19%), air temperature reduction (11.36%), and aesthetics (9.35%). The results emphasized the accessibility issue along with the width problem in Greece that affects both People with Disability (PwD) and all the pedestrians. Additionally, the importance of factors such as shading and air temperature reduction that affect the experience of pedestrians in a country with high temperatures, like Greece, are examined. Finally, aesthetics was chosen less; thus, it’s the least influencing factor for pedestrians’ experience. Apparently, further research regarding the accessibility, width, and shading of sidewalks in Greece is required, together with respective action to optimize them toward an anthropocentric design of sidewalks, especially today, after the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of active mobility became clear.

Cycling represents a fundamental link in the sustainable urban mobility chain. Besides time and distance, cyclists consider a multitude of criteria when planning their route towards a destination, such as safety, road inclination, road surface, etc. Finding routes that properly take such criteria into account is particularly challenging. Therefore, intelligent route planning services are important to assist cyclists in scheduling routes that address their preferences. Our key research objective has been to develop a wayfinding service tailored to the specific requirements of cyclists (including delivering services) using analytical models which capture various practical aspects that affect the cycling experience. We investigate the use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) to obtain geospatial data relevant to bike routing. Those map data are combined with contextual data (such as wind speed/direction) to derive optimal multicriteria, context-aware bike routes. A preliminary qualitative evaluation has demonstrated the effectiveness and utility of our approach in realistic bike route planning scenarios in urban environments.

Supporting that public and active transport based solutions are the backbone of passengers’ transport systems in order to achieve ‘accessibility for all’ and ‘sustainability for the planet’ goals, the current paper presents key takeaways of an extended literature review of relevant mobility policy papers and documents while further incorporating the ‘voice’ of involved actors and stakeholders in the case study area of Adriatic – Ionian Region (ADRION). Policy documents and good practices review along with the insights from eight nodes pilot cases (Igoumenitsa GR, Trieste and Bologna IT, Zagreb HR, Ljubljana SL, Bar ME, Durres AL and Belgrade RS), enhanced by the feedback from stakeholders resulted in the formulation of a roadmap for ADRION’s intermodal passengers transport promotion. The roadmap, a prioritization of interventions based on ADRION nodes real needs and capacities, aims to provide input for structuring evidence-based action plans towards strengthening sustainable connectivity. Among the proposed interventions of the roadmap, integrated solutions (e.g. harmonized information provision), new cooperation schemes, services’ optimization, harmonized procedure/management structures and funding enablers’ mobilization are identified.

The emergence of social media resulted in a high number of people using them. Their flexibility makes them more popular compared to conventional methods of information sharing. Transport-related information can be shared cost-efficiently and timely on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The shared content’s form can be a text, a photo, or a video enabling more accurate transport-related information. The main objective of this study is to investigate to what extent social media have an impact on the mobility choices of people, filling the gap of previous studies that paid little attention to the influence of social media on transport-related purposes. A systematic literature review was performed in SCOPUS database to identify any record that is related to social media and urban mobility. Only records with an important and relevant contribution to the topic were kept. In addition, a thorough review of transport-related social media accounts and content was performed to investigate their influence. Social media metrics such as reactions, comments and shares of posts are measured to determine the real influence of the accounts and their content. The analysis ends up with an appropriate scheme and form of a transport-related account and content that would be more influential in today’s social media landscape.

Modern cities, as complex systems, are often vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic hazards. In this paper we attempt to examine how cities can show resilience to emergencies, such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, through intelligent transport systems (ITS). Trikala, Greece constitutes a model smart city that has been recognized internationally for its efforts to promote technological and social innovation and sustainability focused on urban mobility by implementing a wealth of advanced and integrated intelligent urban transport systems. The aim of this paper is to explore the urban mobility behavior, as well as the attitudes and perceptions of the Trikala’s citizens towards intelligent transport systems in the light of the pandemic Covid-19. The study is based on an on-line questionnaire survey and the data analysis was carried using descriptive and inferential statistics. The main findings showed that the coronavirus outbreak had a significant impact on the individual mobility patterns and on public space use. The non-mandatory trips were decreased, and the frequency use of active transport modes (walking, cycling) was increased. Most citizens have positively evaluated ITS and consider that they can make a substantial contribution to the safety of urban travel during the pandemic. Intelligent and soft mobility measures constitute crucial elements of an integrated spatial and transport planning, which should be the fundamental strategy for building urban resilience in times of crisis.

The purpose of this study is to explore the active travel behaviour of kids, especially in terms of cycling. Literature suggests that safety is an important factor for both kids and parents that prevents them from the use of bicycle as an alternative mobility mode. The aim of this research is to explore the magnitude of the impact of improving the kids safe cycling skills on their independent mobility. One hundred students of age twelve to fifteen participated in the survey, inhabitants of the region of central Macedonia, Greece. The students took part on a safe cycling training that equipped them with both practical and theoretical skills on safety aspects. Their cycling behaviour was measured before and after the training provision with a questionnaire. Along with their opinion in terms of implementation of cycling promotional schemes and actions. The results revealed that a great majority of kids who undertook safe cycling training, started using their bike more often for commuting. Almost 70% started that they gained more confidence, enriched their knowledge and increased the bicycle usage. Finally, a significant percentage of participants stated that while they desire to use bicycle as their main means of transport, they are prevented from some inhibiting factors such as lack of infrastructure (cycling lanes), pack of secure parking spaces and lack of incentives.

The Urban Transports Community (UTC) is an Interreg MED initiative co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, which brings together seven territorial cooperation projects and almost 120 organisations (including public authorities, private companies, universities, non-governmental and international organisations) active in twelve European-Mediterranean coastal areas. In the framework of its activities, the UTC has launched several soft mobility-related projects in the field of soft mobility. These projects include: 1) the bike lane network BICIVIA in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, which extends the bike network, while connecting the newly built with the existing one; 2) the extension of cycle paths, and their integration in the already existing bike lanes in Durres, Albania; 3) the bike lanes upgrade in Misano, Italy, which includes offering guidance for the users and ensuring proper monitoring of their use; 4) the promotion of cycling in Zadar, Croatia with the collection of mobility and air quality data, cycle road mapping and upgrading the existing smartphone App (Zadar Bike Magic). Building upon the lessons learned we put forward policy recommendations for public authorities and stakeholders at local, regional, national and EU level.

The most common forms of active transportation are walking and cycling. Many cities of the world have given substantial emphasis to the promotion of active travel with a series of reports from government and other bodies making walking or cycling for short journeys more popular among people. The purpose of the study was to investigate the perceptions of students attending secondary education schools in Orestiada regarding the use of bicycles and motorcycles as a means of transportation. The research involved 454 students who attended four high schools in Orestiada municipality. A self-managed questionnaire was used to collect the data, while the Loglinear Analysis was used to examine the relationships between preferences and perceived benefits of transportation modes. The results showed that most students prefer to travel on foot or by bicycle, while the majority of the participants own a bicycle. They consider it an easy and ecological way of traveling, which in addition improves their physical health. The negative elements identified in the study are the lack of respect of drivers for bicyclists and the lack of knowledge about the traffic code. The results of this study raise awareness among authorities about local projects that can promote sustainable urban mobility and encourage behavioral change in favor of active mobility. In order to develop the full potential of the active modes of transport, cycling and walking infrastructure must be designed appropriately.

The alignment of Greek cities with EU goals considering urban mobility and respective quality of life necessitates the effective integration of active transport modes in the design of the transportation system, an integration which, to this date, has not been successful in Greece. During the Covid-19 pandemic a substantial increase in active transport was observed internationally, but also in Greek cities. The present study explores the shift towards active transport both as a utilitarian and a recreational activity in Greece during the pandemic, while it elaborates on the potential of maintaining this trend. A revealed preference questionnaire survey was designed and distributed on-line, to identify citizens’ trip characteristics, prior and during the lockdown periods, while other relevant data, including traveller perceptions, sociodemographic characteristics and Covid-19 related data, was also collected. The shift towards active transport was captured through targeted indicators, while discrete choice models were designed to reveal the factors affecting this shift. Results combined with the knowledge of the shortcomings and opportunities relevant to the transportation system, as shaped by user, trip and infrastructure characteristics, can form the basis for the design of effective approaches towards promoting active transport in Greece.

The objective of the present research is to investigate the preferences towards e-scooters and to identify the most important factors that affect route choice of e-scooter users, mainly in terms of infrastructure. To collect the required data, a questionnaire-based stated preference survey was carried out, including attributes of journey time, road surface and type of road (based on the speed limit) answered 205 participants in Athens. Afterwards, a discrete choice analysis was carried out from which the utility function, that mathematically describes the route choice preferences of e-scooters users, was extracted. Results showed that the probability of choosing an e-scooter is not affected from the duration of the trip but mainly by the type of road and the road surface. A cycling street with asphalt is found to be the best combination for e-scooter users for a trip in an urban area.

Substantial changes are needed to combat traffic jams and improve air quality. Active and non-motorized travel choices allow more sustainable urban mobility and bring intrinsic benefits to the quality of life of each individual and public health. This study aims to understand better the characteristics that influence individuals’ preference for certain types of transport modes in their daily routines in the Porto Metropolitan Area. A mobility survey was carried out by Statistic Portugal in which about 80,000 residents in the Porto Metropolitan Area were interviewed, considering 41 relevant characteristics that can influence the type of transport chosen for a trip. In this research, it was found that about 80% of the respondents preferred to travel using motorized transport, and only 20% used soft modes for their daily trips. The method proposed in this paper considers a multinomial discrete choice model that allows the analysis of different combinations of characteristics (independent variable), having the dependent variable as the transport mode chosen by the respondents in their trips. Through subjective questions about the available data, it is intended to analyze which characteristic exerts the most significant influence on citizen decision-making.

Earlier studies have extensively examined school mobility in regards to socio-economic and demographic dimensions. However, school travel patterns adopted by parents’ personal perceptions and attitudes have so far received scant attention, especially in the Greek com-munity. Utilizing data collected from Public Schools of Thessaloniki, Greece, through a questionnaire survey, the study presents a methodological approach followed, for interpreting the interrelations between the school mode choice and specific travel behavior characteristics. The study combines a number of statistical methods and techniques. Starting from the deployment of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, observed variables found to affect the school mode choice are clustered to factors that affect parents’ choices. Following, a Structural Equation Model (SEM) is shaped in order direct and indirect dependencies between the factors and the dependent variable (mode choice) to be identified. As a last step of this joint methodological approach, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are trained for defining behavioral patterns leading to specific decisions in terms of school mode choice.

This paper explores mobility patterns of students, academics and staff travelling from/to the campus of the University of Patras, as well as their mobility behavior in the campus, based on a survey launched in November 2021 (N = 1095). The questionnaire covered the following issues: choice of transport modes; factors influencing the transport mode choices; barriers to using public transport and active modes. Results indicate that 40% of the community drive to university, while for respondents of more than 26 years old, this percentage raises to more than 60%. Public transport is mainly used by students, and the use of active modes appears to be limited. Almost 30% of public transport users are not satisfied with the mode they use. Access to public transport and waiting time at the station are associated with the use of public transport. With 26% of car users reporting a total commuting time of less than 10 min, results indicate that a significant number of trips could be alternatively made with soft modes, provided the necessary infrastructure. Travel time, reliability, and ease of access are considered to be the most important mode choice criteria, while comfort, and safety are the main barriers preventing the use of active modes. Moreover, more than 70% of the community moves within the campus, 79% of them on foot. The findings of this study may prove useful for the design of sustainable mobility policies for travelers to/from and inside the campus.

The increase in the level of motorization, in addition to the undesirable impact on the environment, has also produced a negative influence on physical activity and general population health. The needs of modern human have conditioned the return to basic forms of travel and the promotion of new concept - active mobility. Current active mobility strategies are aimed at encouraging people physical activity through the realization of daily trips, primarily by walking or cycling. This concept underwent certain changes during the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected the general reduction of the population mobility, but at the same time increased the share of alternative modes. The mentioned outcome was used as an incentive to further promote active travel in order to preserve the general health and increase the resilience of cities. This paper presents some of the most significant results according to the survey of the Covid-19 impact on active mobility. The research was conducted for the city of Belgrade (Republic of Serbia), on a sample of 1143 respondents. The obtained outcomes indicate an increase in the degree of active mobility (walking and cycling) during the pandemic, compared to the period before the Covid-19. Similar results were observed in other cities, which led to the fact that during isolation, people transferred to sustainable modes of transport in order to realize everyday activities. Moreover, the changes that occurred in the pandemic provided the necessary incentive to maintain the existing modal split and to further increase the number of active trips in the future.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in understanding the impact of social ties on travel. Some of the questions raised are: What are the frequencies and scale of these rides? What are the means of transport taken? Furthermore, what social network parameters impact travel behaviour? While all recent studies are based on Wellman’s “Network Individualism” theory, this study aims to extend the theoretical framework by focusing on groups and their travel behaviour.The study introduced Scott Feld’s Foci theory and Hägerstrand’s time-space prism. According to Feld, group activities are based in relation to a physical or temporal focus; hence individuals are connected via events, locations, or activities. On the other hand, the time-space prism indicates the constraints under which activities are performed. Based on the two theories, the study focused on the fragment of group meetings: how they are formed and how their formation relates to socio-demographic parameters and the city’s structure. Data was gathered via online questionnaires, which traced the travel behaviour patterns of groups within the city of Tel Aviv. Meeting locations were mapped, and a measurement of the social tie strength amongst the meeting members was constructed. The study uses multivariate regression analysis to reveal the hidden variables affecting travel choices for a group meeting.

The electric scooter (e-scooter) is an increasingly popular transport mode in urban areas at global level. As an alternative form of shared micromobility in cities, e-scooter sharing systems were first introduced in the United States in 2017. Since then, they have spread in Europe, Asia, and Australia. In order to evaluate their sustainability performance, shared e-scooters should be simulated or/and measure their real-life impacts; however, a universal evaluation process for selecting a simulation platform does not exist. This study seeks to better understand the impacts of micromobility and simulation platforms for urban areas. To achieve this a two-stage evaluation process is performed. At first, the study reviews and analyzes the most common simulation models (i.e., traffic simulation and Agent-based Model (ABM) platforms). Seven ABM platforms are identified as suitable for simulating transportation modes. The seven identified ABM platforms are explored and evaluated based on a set of indicators representing four dimensions: 1) Functionality, 2) Capabilities, 3) Data, and 4) Operational Capacity. In the second-stage evaluation the seven ABM platforms are further evaluated for simulating micromobility against ten proposed criteria. The ABM platform Multi-Agent Transport Simulation Toolkit (MATSim) emerges as the most prevalent for simulating e-scooters in urban areas as it meets nine of the ten introduced criteria and it has the potential to be adapted effectively in the simulation of new innovative transport services.

Small and medium sized enterprises are key for ensuring economic growth, innovation, job creation, and social integration in the EU. The European Commission provides support for the SMEs in different fields. Access to finance is the most pressing issue for many small enterprises: there have been projects and schemes to improve the financing environment for SMEs both at European but also national and regional level. However, especially in the transport sector, Tier 2 suppliers find it difficult to enter the innovation chain as they generally have only short-term supply contracts with the Tier 1 companies. This paper aimed at researching into the factors that will support a stronger transport SME sector using as methodology, five international workshops and nine focus group sessions with regional stakeholders over a period of three years. This paper ultimately describes the key policy directions for reinforcing the competitiveness of the transport SMEs in the region of West Midlands, UK. A good practice exercise was conducted on four different European regions which enabled the experts involved in the policy design process to get inspiration from and further tailor the schemes to meet with the regional and local needs. The findings suggest that there is a need of a more sectorial policy approach at regional and local level to enable transport innovation flourish, strengthen cluster activities, intellectual property support, better links between tier1 and tier 2/supply chain, Financial Engineering Instruments to support SMEs, international focus, plug the skills gap.

In recent years, light electric standing scooters have become a popular mode of transport in urban areas all around the world. Even though this type of vehicle has been first introduced only a few years ago, e-scooters are of major interest in transport research and there is a rapidly growing body of research on various aspects of e-scooters. In this contribution, we focus on the voice of a marginal group in transportation. We investigate the experiences and opinions blind and visually impaired people have towards e-scooters. For doing so, we conducted a survey on experiences and opinions on e-scooters consisting of closed and open questions. The survey was disseminated via associations and key partners. A total of 276 blind or visually impaired persons participated in spring 2021 in Germany. The results show that blind and visually impaired probands feel highly disturbed by e-scooters in their everyday mobility. Almost all participants have already experienced conflicting situations with e-scooters as pedestrians. Thereby, unproperly parked e-scooters cause by far more problems than those driving. Half of the respondents have already tripped or fallen because of a parked e-scooter. Therefore, the greatest potential for improving the situation for this group and pedestrians in general, lies in fixed parking areas. The results enable us to understand the perspective of a group often less considered in transport research. We draw recommendations based on the assessment of this specific group in order to develop the transport system towards an integrative design.

The impact of digital mobility services on the mobility landscape is growing and users are increasingly faced with more mobility options to choose from in their everyday lives. This evolution, however, is not happening in a homogeneous manner and pace among all citizens. Especially the vulnerable-to-exclusion groups are at risk of missing the opportunity to benefit from these services. In this regard, the Inclusive Digital Mobility Solutions (INDIMO) project, a Horizon2020 project launched in 2020, established a multi-perspective view of digital mobility and logistics services, considering the needs, requirements and concerns of service operators, system developers, policy makers, as well as users, with a particular focus on vulnerable-to-exclusion persons such as elderly people, ethnic minorities, rural residents, or persons with lower income, reduced mobility or lacking digital skills. Using case studies from five pilot locations, stakeholder interviews and surveys, the project is finalising an important tool that will ensure the accessibility of new digital mobility solutions: a Universal Design Manual for digital mobility services. In this paper we will look into the crucial step of involving end users in creating equitable, just and inclusive transportation. We will address the current barriers and drivers to developing and deploying accessible and inclusive digital mobility services identified by the project and look into one of the developed tools, the Universal Design Manual- UDM, and how it can support policy makers, NGOs and operators/developers to create inclusive services.

Wayfinding and navigation services represent important components in the ecosystem of smart and sustainable mobility e-services. However, existing wayfinding services fall short in addressing the needs of Blind and Visually Impaired People (BVIP), particularly for multimodal urban transfers, i.e. those that involve both walking and public transportation services. The main challenge tackled by BVIP is to derive BVIP-friendly route plans (e.g., giving preference to road segments with tactile paving, crossings with acoustic traffic signals and public transit services adhering to high accessibility standards), thus strengthening their sense of safety and independence. The main contribution of this paper is an integrated solution for calculating multimodal routes and supporting real-time navigation, optimized for BVIP. Our solution makes use of BVIP-related annotation data available on OpenStreetMaps and integrates open multimodal route planning services (OpenTripPlanner) which consume multimodal transportation data compatible with the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). Our proposed system derives end-to-end multimodal routes considering a multitude of criteria which are of importance for BVIP. Real-time navigation is provided via a mobile application. Our system has been evaluated in several usage scenarios to validate its functionality and effectiveness.

This article investigates three critical parameters that influence the sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development of the island areas in Greece: insularity, accessibility, and affordability. First, the index of insularity is calculated as the ratio between the generalised transport cost (from/to the mainland country) and the estimated population. The accessibility index is calculated as the sum of all freight transport flows within each island regional unit and between them and each other regional unit of the country, weighted by the generalised transport costs. The unaffordability index is expressed as the ratio of the average monthly household expenditure on private transport to the average total monthly household expenditure in island regions. The geographical mapping and the numerical results of the analysis demonstrate the strong spatial heterogeneity of the calculated indices, and the necessity of reducing interregional and intraregional transport costs, in order to mitigate the impact of insularity and to increase the accessibility of the small- and medium-size islands. Appropriate policies include the expansion of the measure of transport equivalent for fuels, the restructuring of the overall transport network among and to/from islands, and the strengthening of the local public transport systems, the management of transport demand and the promotion of energy transition in the transport sector in the island areas. These policies, combined with high productivity investments in physical and human capital, are expected to improve the conditions of market competition, the standards of living, and the equitable growth of businesses in the island regions.

Shared mobility services have emerged with the promise to be an alternative to private vehicles within urban transportation networks. However, the study of the typical patterns of use and adoption of these services has followed a slower pace than their deployment, making it difficult to assess beforehand whether their deployment and the characteristics of this deployment will actually contribute to a sustainable and equitable transport system. In this paper, we present a detailed comparative analysis of user’s income characteristics over the data of two different shared mobility services, a public bike-sharing and a moto-sharing system, in the city of Madrid (Spain). An income figure is assigned to each user of the service according to their home location. Results show that the public bike-sharing service appears to be more accessible to users within each studied zone whereas the moto-sharing service attracts users with higher incomes within the population.

Social equity concerns have been emerging in public transit planning. Most of the social equity research in transportation focuses on understanding different groups of users’ accessibility to various destinations. In contrast, as cities try to provide different payment options for transit users, which come with different costs per trip, limited research has been developed to under-stand the type of transit fares used by different groups of riders. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide an empirical investigation of the factors affecting the use of different types of fares by different segments of users, while assessing if there is an association between the use of different fares and socioeconomic issues to understand the equity of fare usage. Using data extracted from Saskatoon Transit’s farebox system, several segments of users are defined based on their travel patterns (i.e., frequent, infrequent, and casual users). Fare options analyzed include using exact cash payments, disposable cards, smart cards loaded with multiply options (monthly, yearly, economic) and multi-ride packages (10-ride packages). The results of the models suggest that using different fare media types is more sensitive to socioeconomic factors, rather than built environment and transit service internal factors for different type of users. Key socioeconomic factors such as educational level, percentage of visible minorities, average household size, and in-come are associated with some fare types for some users more than others.

Disabled people are undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable groups at risk of social exclusion and among the many obstacles they face there is the difficult use of public transport. The TRIPS (TRansport Innovation for disabled People needs Satisfaction) project, funded by the HORIZON2020 Research and Innovation Program, starts from field research activities and the evaluation of existing mobility and accessibility services to develop and propose co-designed solutions that allow users with disabilities to take on a leading role in the design of transport services. The project consortium is made up of users, organizations from the transport sector, specialists in the field of assistive technologies and public authorities. This paper presents original research, introducing the TRIPS theoretical framework—on which co-design is based and developed—and illustrating how it has been grounded in one of the seven project pilot contexts, the city of Bologna in Italy, with the aim of improving the inclusiveness of urban transport for persons with disabilities by empowering them in the design of transport solutions. Over the past 18 months, SRM Reti e Mobilità—local Authority for Public Transport in the Bologna area—has coordinated the pilot activities, carrying them out in collaboration with the Local User Lead (LUL), who in turn coordinates the Core User Team (CUT), a working group composed of people with disabilities who play an active role in the design of new mobility solutions and in their validation. In order to stimulate synergies towards the co-planning of inclusive mobility, SRM has also established a local Enlarged Working Group, in which local authorities, transport operators, users and associations linked to world of disability interact with the CUT in order to provide feedback on the proposed solutions and their potential implementation. The presented research is of an interventionist type: its results can be capitalized for future applications of the TRIPS theoretical framework and beyond and contribute to the research in the participatory research field.

Inclusive mobility represents an essential component of the smart and sustainable mobility ecosystem. Moreover, smart parking has gained greater importance given the vital contribution to reducing the carbon footprint. However, currently, existing solutions are not yet inclusive as they do not include the required information for the comfort and safety of people with reduced mobility, for whom the time it takes to park the vehicle is sometimes not the most important factor when compared to the suitability of the parking space considering the displacement objectives. The main contribution of this paper is a conceptual and technological architecture for an inclusive and real-time solution for parking assistance in a small urban environment. The architecture uses a crowd-sourcing approach, a Geographic Information System, a set of external APIs, the GPS, and a mobile solution for interaction with the citizen. The solution will be built from a previous work developed in the city of Viana do Castelo in Portugal and intends to be evaluated by the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMI) proposed by the European Commission.

Future mobility is described as efficient, environmentally friendly, automated, connected, shared and safe. Automated shuttle buses that are electrically operated combine the flexibility of individual transport with the cost efficiency of public transport. This technology leads to the reduction of congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, automated shuttle buses are part of the future and sustainable mobility concepts in urban and rural areas. Besides technological development, user acceptance is the most important factor for automated shuttle buses to become established in the future. A number of acceptance studies of automated vehicles and in particular of automated shuttle buses have already been carried out. These mainly examine usability, effort, acceptance, safety as well as speed, space or braking. This paper makes a further contribution to the acceptance, control and performance of automated shuttle buses. In contrast to previous publications, these results are based on a pilot operation that takes place entirely in public space. Furthermore, the acceptance analysis focuses on the future permanent use of automated shuttle busses, which closes another research gap. For this purpose, a questionnaire based on the “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” model was created and passengers were interviewed after a ride with the automated shuttle bus in Stolberg. The results show that more than 80% of the respondents are satisfied with the whole ride and especially with the accessibility. In addition, over 90% of passengers felt safe, but over 70% were also happy to have an operator on board. In conclusion, almost 70% are in favor of the shuttle bus continuing to run in the future and would even pay money for it.

As of March 2020, with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Italians are moving less to get to work, but the car remains the preferred means of transport. In general, there has been a sharp drop in demand for public transport. In order to overcome this critical situation, it is necessary not only to ensure constant sanitation and control on board to mitigate contagion, but also to guarantee a certain flexibility in transport services. In fact, greater flexibility in the service makes it easier to reach people and places that are not part of the daily routes or timetables of travelers. Demand responsive transport (DRT) is the flexible solution that fits into the space between buses and taxis. Through the use of minibuses, DRT services provide a “social” aspect to offer niche services to users with limited mobility (disabled or elderly). They also connect areas defined as weak demand areas, which are not only peripheral areas but also those areas that have been characterized by reduced connections due to the recent pandemic. This paper focuses on a city in the Sicilian hinterland and presents a comparison of the current public transport service connecting the train station with the area of the historic centre and the expansion areas with a hypothetical DRT service. The analysis was conducted by applying an analytical model characterized by a cost function of the transport operator and a cost function of the PT user for each of the services. Assessing the transport cost as the sum of the costs received by the service provider and the user makes it possible to analyze the social and the results provide a basis for better planning of public mobility services and thus an increase in sustainable mobility.

The ongoing shift from auto-oriented urban planning policies has led to a growing interest in the creation and management of public spaces in cities. Public spaces can act as an attraction for a city and have been proven useful for urban revitalization. However, it is not uncommon for many of those spaces to stay underutilized. The aim of this paper is to create a walkability utility index for every road segment that, when correlated with the population density of each area, is used to define the overall accessibility of public space on foot. This culminates into a set of novel equipotential mapping samples applied to a set of urban segments of Greek cities. The results of this paper lead to a different way of evaluating existing city plans, offer a useful tool to authorities in implementing urban regeneration works aimed at improving citizen well-being and, a keyway of evaluating new public space development projects.

Driver distraction is a growing problem, as it seems to be an important cause for several road accidents. This study was conducted with the aim to look into the contributory factors that may cause a driver’s distraction, some of which are the use of mobile devices, fatigue of the driver, consumption of food and beverages and smoking while driving. In this paper, we report on the findings of an online questionnaire survey in which 1214 Greek drivers willingly participated in a study that aspired to unveil drivers’ perspective on their own driving habits. The data collection tool was a questionnaire consisted of 27 questions and divided into seven parts. The first questions referred to participants’ profile such as gender, age, educational level and years of holding a driving license. The next questions focused on participants’ mobile phone use in their everyday activities and mobile phones use while driving, and on participants’ consumption of food, beverages and smoking during driving. Further questions examined driver’s fatigue and its frequency, the impact of driving with passengers in the vehicle and the extent to which the interaction with them affects a driver’s attention. Finally, participants were asked to grade their personal and other drivers driving skills and behavior. This survey can contribute to the improvement of road safety, as the findings help us quantify the negative effects of drivers’ habits that contribute to distracted driving and supports that the drivers should be better trained and authorities should pay more attention in this situation.

In the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, severe traffic problems are observed during peak hours and especially in its urban center. It is also observed that the occupancy of the cars that serve the demand is rather low, i.e., 1.44 travelers per vehicle. This phenomenon, combined with the unattractiveness of public transport, exacerbates the Unit’s traffic problem. One way to alleviate the problem is to create carpooling schemes, a practice in which the driver of a vehicle accepts other passengers. In this paper, a Conjoint Analysis questionnaire survey is presented, which was conducted in order to determine whether Greek travelers are receptive to carpooling, as well as what factors influence their choices, such as cost, waiting time, and driving behavior of the car driver, etc. In the survey, 84 people participated. The sample seems to be low, but in the case of Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) analysis, it is sufficient to derive statistically significant results. The main objective is to optimize such a prospective carpooling service to make it more attractive to the users. The attribute with the highest importance was found to be “Reliability of driver / Safety” with 54.3%, followed by “Route cost sharing” with 20.0%, “Number of passengers in vehicle” with 16.6%, and “Time of the route” with 9.1%. The “Reliability of driver/Safety” attribute was found to be of paramount importance, a fact that was verified with three (3) scenarios of market simulation.

Micro-mobility is a major component of urban mobility, especially after the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The potential of micro-mobility holds, in-respect to the creation of a more sustainable transport system is high and crucial, since it can lead to the reduction of car ownership and CO2 emissions, and the increase of citizens’ accessibility. In addition, micro-mobility usage has been increasing rapidly, and is noted as a very important factor especially for the first and last mile of a trip, leading to increased intramodality. Nowadays, considering the necessity for social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, micro-mobility has gained a lot of attraction in a bigger spectrum of users. This paper attempts to understand, analyze and present the micro-mobility scheme through a systematic literature review, and to present the levels of micro-mobility usage in Greece. This research aims at evaluating the opportunities, the advantages, and the disadvantages of micro-mobility, as well as the major factors promoting the use of micro-mobility modes. Further, micro-mobility stakeholders are interviewed to highlight the most important aspects of micro-mobility schemes in Greece, and showcase the most crucial problems and risks revolve around micro-mobility and to provide insight of the users’ attitudes and characteristics. The paper concludes that micro-mobility’s most important advantages for Greek stakeholders are flexibility and congestion reduction, while as the most important barriers they characterize the inefficient infrastructure and the weather barriers.

The need for emerging and innovative transport solutions has increased during the last decade due to the cities’ population growth and consumers’ trends towards eCommerce, a situation exacerbated by COVID-19. One of the most promising solutions to deal with last-mile logistics challenges is the installation of facilities strategically located within the city boundaries as Urban Consolidation Centres to move the goods from a conventional vehicles supplying the facility into smaller electric vehicles. In parallel, cities aim to become “smart cities” with the digital twin as an ultimate goal to merge physical and virtual environments. This paper explores the concept of digital twin and Urban Consolidation Centres. It presents different open data models, software tools and the integration to calculate city sustainability and operators’ performance indicators to leverage the results to improve policy-making and business decisions. It compares the Madrid business as usual scenario with the benefits of introducing Urban Consolidation Centres in a public parking lot in the centre of Madrid within the Low Emissions Zone and using electric vans to supply the Urban Consolidation Centres with electric tricycles to deliver to the end consumers. After validating the results between the real and virtual life experiments, Madrid will explore this simulation environment to understand the impacts of modifying the underlying business schemes. Policymakers and operators can respond to emerging research questions such as “what are the effects of defining new low emission zones?”; “what if we shift the location for the UCC or use other types of vehicles?

Transport and logistics stakeholders capitalize on technological developments to improve the efficacy of their operations along freight transport corridors and cope with the increasing demands of international supply chains. Recent research and practice highlight that the integration of new digital technologies positively influences the sustainability of supply chains. The way digital transformation impacts the performance of logistics operations has been given little attention yet. Intelligent collaborative logistics entails composite operations that require multi-stakeholder collaboration, inter-organization process coordination, and a holistic view of the carried-out operations. Measuring the operational performance of such complex processes poses great challenges due to a lack of balanced nomenclature between impacts at operational level and clarity across stakeholders. Performance measurement is not approached uniformly by everyone involved thus causing difficulties in assessing the impact of different services along the corridors. Based on a bottom-up validation of the performance measurements proposed by the extant literature, this paper analyzes the operations of 68 logistics-related, quadruple-helix organizations that are active in 11 European countries. The analysis proposes a sustainability impact categorization to serve as a common glossary for the measurement of the impact of digital services implementation on logistics operations along international supply chains. The proposed categorization has significant theoretical and practical implications as it allows uniformly quantifying the effectiveness, efficiency, and competency of digital services applied in operational settings, and identifying the viability of different digitalization strategies for multi-stakeholder logistics operations to achieve fully integrated, visible supply chain outcomes.

Recent developments on ICT applications for efficient and sustainable management of ports’ operations have mainly focused on container handling within sea ports and terminals, while little effort has been given to respective Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax operations even though these are significantly represented in the Greek port system. The work addresses the development of a cloud-based Yard Management ICT platform (CloudYMS) for covering respective operations in Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax ports which are effectively combining passenger traffic with cargo handling (e.g., unaccompanied trailers management and cargo trucks’ parking while waiting to be loaded on the vessel). The functionality of the CloudYMS platform supports a configurable parking assignment process within the ISPS area of the port based on port operational rules, real time and historical data as well as sensor data. Yard operations are covered through dynamic allocation of respective resources within the yard (e.g., handling equipment, cranes etc.) while Gate operations are handled in a semi-automated manner with the establishment of a set of well-defined interfaces to shipping lines’ ICT infrastructure and monitoring of all gate in/out movements for both cargo and passengers. Finally a dashboard functionality provides data insights allowing the identification of bottlenecks in port operations which may lead to informed decisions on a second step. Focusing on efficiency in freight transportation and sustainability of the port-city interface, the cloud-based platform will offer easily accessible digital solutions to small and medium-sized ports and terminals for efficient yard and vessel management and reduced waiting times at the port gates.

The city logistics take a considerable part of the urban transportation. Inevitably, the last mile deliveries are partly responsible for degrading the environment. Towards more environmentally friendly city logistics the use of different means of transport has been tested; one among them is the drones. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the use of drones for the last mile deliveries. More specifically, to give insights into how the parcel distribution could be deployed within an urban environment with the use of drones. Data were collected from a transport operator and two scenarios were synthesized reflecting the current situation and the future one. An analysis of the stakeholders involved was performed and for the analysis of the scenarios, two integer mathematical programming models were formulated and implemented with the case study. Thereafter, the results of the two scenarios were assessed with relevant indicators that were extracted from the literature. The results showed that the use of drones for urban distribution reduced the carbon dioxide emissions, the average delivery time per package and the distribution costs. The results of the literature review and the stakeholder analysis indicate that the lack of a legal framework is the most important obstacle towards the use of drones for parcels’ distribution in urban environments.

In Europe, the majority of the population lives in cities. The industrialization of production, combined with the trend of over-consumption and the spread of e-commerce, has increased the freight transport activities within the urban environment. The pandemic has stressed the urban freight transport systems even more, since consumers feel more secure shopping online, thus increasing the amount of goods distributed into the cities. It is clear that due to the complexity of the urban environment, City Logistics is a part of the supply chain that needs special treatment. In this paper, an organized approach to the issues related to City Logistics is conducted, developing an integrated framework of smart goods distribution measures in urban centers. Furthermore, the pilot implementation of the framework in the city of Volos, Greece is tested and evaluated. This framework can be used as a tool when upgrading and modernizing freight distribution systems, in any medium and large European urban center.

There are unique challenges in the last-mile delivery in Vietnam relating to infrastructure, urban structure and land-use, technologies, and cash-on-delivery purchasing habit. They resulted in the pressures on order fulfillment and operating efficiency of the urban logistics services. In order to improve Vietnam's last-mile delivery, crowd-sourced distribution was explored as a viable option. The objectives of the study were to investigate the influence of six attributes in customer intention towards the adoption of crowd shipping in Vietnam. The structured questionnaire was implemented to collect 488 responses in the anonymous form. The outcomes of the study suggested a high likelihood of customer intention towards the shipping innovation diffusion. Relative advantages and observability had positive significant relationships with customers’ intention. The study found no relationship between complexity and trialability on the willingness to use of shoppers. The study supported the understanding of the acceptance of the intelligent alternative from behavioral perspectives.

In general, the concept of last mile delivery in logistics and transport refers to the actual goods’ delivery to the receiver, which can take place at a pre defined place (home, work, etc.) or by click & collect. Last mile logistics’ management has gained great importance due to the increasing complexity of supply chains and the highly dynamic nature of today's logistics ecosystem. The rise of e-commerce has exposed the intertemporal weaknesses of last mail delivery and highlighted new ones. Ignoring or underestimating these aspects can compromise a company's competitiveness and survival. The combination of last mile delivery’s true needs with the necessity for less polluted and congested urban areas, leads to the consideration that radical and innovative changes are required. Electric transport vehicles (bicycles, scooters, vans, light and soon enough medium and heavy commercial vehicles) represent an aspect of the natural evolution for logistic systems. An increasingly attentive to environmental impacts, capable of responding to the challenges of increasingly smart, liveable and sustainable cities logistic system, leads to the spread of the logistics concept’s cycle and therefore the usage of environmental friendly vehicles such as bicycles, cargo bikes and scooters to deliver goods, especially in urban centres. This work aims at defining an exemplified methodology for the selection and proper planning by service op erators and local authorities of last-mile logistics modal forms in different urban contexts, promoting the concept of decarbonisation in accordance with the Paris Agreement and the dissemination and drafting of increasingly “performing” sus tainable mobility urban plans.

Covid-19 pandemic has set and unfortunately continues to set a new reality for human societies. Inevitably, city logistics and urban road freight transport in general were affected change as well as the decision of many national governments to promote electricity over the old-fashioned internal combustion engines by setting a milestone for this objective by 2030, intensify the necessity of radical and innovative solutions through which urban road freight transport will become sustainable. Although that for many years, many policies, strategies, and measures are implemented world widely, urban road freight transport remains as one of the significant reasons for congestion phenomena and air pollution. It is without question that the local urban road freight transport systems will be examined as part of transportation surveys firstly to identify the current situation and secondly to test possible solutions. In this aspect, the present paper presents the calculation of the passenger equivalent value for commercial vehicles in the city of Thessaloniki based on the Highway Capacity Manual 2010 equations applied on data collected with a recently developed methodology, simpler and without requiring heavy equipment in situ.

The integration of passenger and freight transport into a unique scheme is a concept developed to increase the effectiveness of mobility and to reduce its environmental and social externalities. This solution involves infrastructural, vehicular, and nodal aspects. Each of them requires ad-hoc evaluations to verify its suitability to the proposed territorial context. Literature suggests the adoption of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to verify the technical and economic validity of a transport solution, but to the best of our knowledge contributions dealing with KPIs and integrated passenger-freight transport are still missing. To cover this gap, the paper first analyses relevant KPIs for freight-only and passenger-only transport. Then, it identifies a set of relevant KPIs that are suitable for evaluating the performances granted by an integrated vehicular system. Far from being the mere sum of the two types of transport, the set of 11 indicators includes the perspective of different involved actors (PT and goods carriers, PT users, clients, residents, and retailers). They cover financial, operational, environmental, and social aspects and allow a proper evaluation that includes the “3E” of transport planning (i.e., efficiency, effectiveness, and equity). In this way, a contribution to the correct appraisal of this innovative transport solution is available for policymakers and practitioners.

The road freight transport sector in Greece, a once-thriving industry of the Greek economy, currently faces many threatening challenges. In this paper, we conducted a literature review and a series of four in-depth interviews with stakeholders of the sector in order to identify the main problems that the industry currently faces and to find and propose possible solutions. Many problems were found, such as poor quality of the national network, problematic elements of labor legislation, bureaucracy, lack of professional truck drivers, unfair competition from foreign road freight transportation companies (e.g., different taxation and insurance contributions, absence of controls for foreign road freight transportation companies, different labor legislations, non-observance of bilateral reciprocity between Greece and Turkey), unfair competition from domestic road freight transportation companies (e.g., maintenance of specific legal status for some of them), lack of subsidies (e.g., for fuel costs, to replace old trucks with new anti-pollution technology), problems after the COVID-19 pandemic, and many more. Regarding all these problems solutions are proposed, such as improvement of the road network, elimination of violations, revision of the legislative framework, ways to attract professional drivers, state funding, and subsidies (e.g., fuel cost subsidy, subsidy for replacement of old trucks with new of anti-pollution technology), adherence to the principle of reciprocity in bilateral negotiations, and many more. The road freight transport sector in Greece faces an existential threat; more in-depth research is required, and the Greek state should take emergency measures.

Road freight is the most dominant means for transporting goods in Greece. According to ELSTAT (2021) the total weight of goods carried by road freight vehicles covers 81.0% of the total market share, leaving shipping in the second position with 18.5%, and rail and air freight transport with 0.5%. This stems primarily from trucks’ ability to cover short distances between major cities, and other characteristics such as flexibility and the Greek geomorphology. In this direction, the aim of this study is to demonstrate the service of Road Freight Transport (RFT), as part of the EN.I.R.I.S.S.T (Intelligent Research Infrastructure for Shipping, Supply Chain, Transport and Logistics) Inland and Intermodal Freight Platform. The demonstration of the RFT service includes the (i) organization and processing of the database, (ii) descriptive data analysis per commodity type, NUTS 3 area, etc., (iii) development of a demand forecasting model based on time series and causal forecasting, (iv) indices’ generation and visualization of the results through interactive maps. The available dataset regards data from the period 2011–2019, however, a direct connection with ELSTAT database through an API is expected for integrating every year’s new data. Data analysis produced interesting results, which can be exploited by various stakeholders, i.e. Researchers, Start-ups, SMEs, Large companies and Public Authorities, facilitating innovation and knowledge sharing, while contributing in the creation of sustainable green supply chains.

Globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased number of consumers using e-commerce services. This trend has been raising the demand for logistic activities, especially on the last-mile. This part of the supply chain is expensive and ineffective, and a source of negative externalities such as air and noise pollution, traffic congestion and accidents. The anticipation of innovative solutions can help to mitigate these costs. In this context, this paper provides a systematic literature review of the existing literature regarding emerging solutions for last-mile parcel delivery. For guiding the development of more sustainable last-mile parcel distribution, and to provide some insights for future research, we identified and summarized the emerging concepts within this field domain. The results show that innovative solutions have been emerging at different levels: (i) definition of new crowdsourcing-based models, (ii) use of new types of vehicles, and (iii) development of optimization systems based on data collection and the combination of different technologies. Moreover, recent studies show that new strategies are being developed focusing on using consumers as active actors of delivery; non-road and autonomous vehicles are promising concepts in last-mile operations; and different logistic operations, such as vehicle routing, are being optimized with data analytics, cloud technology and mobile apps.

The relationship between transportation and the environment is complex, with transportation bringing important socioeconomic benefits while also harming the environment. This study investigates empirically how the logistics performance index (LPI) measuring the quality of trade and transport-related infrastructure (QTTI) affects air pollution as measured by total CO2 emissions in 15 top polluting countries over the 2007–2018 period. Using panel data with fixed effects to examine the relationship between the logistics performance and CO2 emissions while controlling for economic development (GDP per capita), we find that LPI-QTTI is an important mitigating factor for pollution. We assure the results’ robustness by producing heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation (HAC) consistent standard errors. The findings, confidently indicating that higher logistics performance decreases CO2 emissions in the sample of top emitters, have important policy implications and bring relevant new evidence to assist countries in reaching the SDGs f the UN 2030 Agenda.

Last-mile delivery is a significant topic of interest for parcel service providers because it is the most expensive and time-consuming part of the shipping process. Parcel lockers turned out to be a successful way to consolidate deliveries and reduce transport costs. However, stationary parcel lockers are expensive, and therefore they are economical only in urban areas with many customers. Mobile parcel lockers with changing locations depending on the regional parcel volume in the districts have the potential to overcome this challenge. A pilot project in the German city of Magdeburg currently implements mobile parcel lockers that are transported by cargo bikes. Based on actual customer data from the pilot project, we evaluate the utility of mobile parcel lockers and cargo bikes in terms of delivery time, driven distance and emissions. Afterwards, we compare the concept with cargo bikes and mobile parcel lockers to the direct delivery with internal combustion engine vans. The investigated case study considers the route and location planning in one urban district with several feasible locations for mobile parcel lockers. A new algorithm solves the resulting maximal covering location and capacitated vehicle routing problems in an integrated manner. Our research provides an initial quantitative assessment of mobile parcel lockers and evaluates their use in a practical case study.

Bike-sharing systems have been widely used as an eco-friendly mode of urban micro-mobility in metropolitan areas. The next generation of bike-sharing may use autonomous bikes to solve the problem of station imbalance. Such an on-demand shared-use self-driving bikes service (OSABS) utilizes electricity-driven self-driving cargo bikes to offer the service at user demand locations. One can book the bike using the mobile app, and then the bike drives autonomously to the user. Unlike conventional bike-sharing systems, OSABS bikes can wait at the street or a station for the next user request after the former ended the trip. Autonomous cargo bikes require a charging station to refill the electric energy and waiting stations on the street level to avoid public disturbance while awaiting the next user. The scope of our paper is firstly to investigate suitable station distribution strategies taking both stations types into account, and secondly, to test them in a simulation model. Initially, this paper investigates various station distribution strategies for the conventional bike-sharing system and shared autonomous vehicles (SAV) based on a literature study. We derive station distribution strategies for the OSABS system. Consecutively, we present a detailed simulation model of the system. The station distribution strategies will be evaluated for charging and waiting stations based on key performance indicators (KPI) such as overall station cost, bike cost, service level, and demand distribution. Finally, we provide the first simulation-based evaluation of station distribution strategies of next-generation bike-sharing schemes.

Bike-sharing systems have become a sustainable alternative to motorized private transport in urban areas. However, users often face high costs and availability issues due to the operational effort required to redistribute bicycles between stations. For addressing those issues, the AuRa project introduces a new mobility offer in terms of an on-demand, shared-use, self-driving cargo-bikes service (OSABS) that enables automated redistribution. Within the project, we develop different order management and rebalancing strategies and validate them using simulation models. One prerequisite for this is sound demand scenarios. However, due to the novelty of OSABS, there is currently no information about its utilization. Consequently, the objective of this study was to develop an approach for defining OSABS demand scenarios in a temporally and spatially disaggregated manner as an input for simulation models. Therefore, we first derived city-wide usage potentials of OSABS from a survey on mobility needs. We then spatially and temporally disaggregated the determined usage likelihood using travel demand matrices and usage patterns from a conventional bike-sharing system, respectively. Finally, we performed cluster analyses on the resulting annual demand to summarize sections of the yearly profile into representative units and thus reduce the simulation effort. As we applied this approach as a case study to the city of Magdeburg, Germany, we could show that our methodology enables the determination of reasonable OSABS demand scenarios from scratch. Furthermore, we were able to show that annual usage patterns of (conventional) bike-sharing systems can be modeled by using demand data for only eight representative weeks.

Loading and unloading zones (L/U zones) are necessary to ensure a low-conflict delivery and pick up of goods in streets with high density of commercial and other uses next to it. Their implementation is often seen as a supporting measure accompanying city logistics schemes. Nonetheless, the allocation of L/U zones is usually supply-oriented; a determination of the L/U zone demand is often omitted. It is important to provide a number of L/U zones in line with demand, both to minimise second-line stopping (possible result of under-supply) and to ensure acceptance of the reserved zones by unauthorised road users (possible result of over-supply).Leerkamp (1996) developed a model for determining the demand of L/U zones on main roads. Building on this, this paper provides an adjusted model for the determination L/U zone demand by means of a simulation. The simulation considers the different distributions of the stop duration of different trip purposes (as the affiliation of vehicles to market segments). The calculation is based on the number of stops in the design hour as well as the aspiration level to be defined in planning as the permissible share of the design hour with excess demand.The study is based in counting data from Duesseldorf, Wuppertal, Cologne and Solingen. The analysis of L/U zone demand is based on the application of the model in 118 road segments in these four German cities.The resulting model can be used by urban planners to determine the demand of L/U zones in newly developed as well as existing neighbourhoods.

Cycling and micro-mobility are booming all around the world. Covid-19 and other trends have led to a growing demand. The market is reacting by producing a wide range of different vehicle types, suitable for different usage requirements. Besides a huge variety of conventional bicycles, this includes different forms of electric bicycles, cargo bikes and electric kick scooters. Most of the vehicle types are legitimized to use the cycling infrastructure, although the specifications and riding characteristics differ significantly – from vehicle dimensions to speed levels and electric ranges. The market in the future will become more and more diverse and the current regulations and planning standards are, however, no longer up to date to cover the different demands and requirements. For this reason, the paper discusses how to deal with this heterogeneity of vehicle types and user groups in terms of infrastructure and legal aspects.

A steadily growing e-commerce generates an increasing number of parcels to be delivered in cities. Hence, collaborative last mile solutions applicable for parcel delivery providers, such as the collaborative use of parcel lockers, the collaborative use of space, which is specifically dedicated for freight purposes in inner city areas and white label delivery play an increasing role to alleviate inefficiencies and externalities associated with last mile deliveries. Especially, the integration of micro depots to the urban freight delivery process provides a collaborative environment that supports cities and delivery companies in taking together a step forward toward environmentally friendlier urban logistics, since this enables the use of electrically assisted delivery vehicles (e-vehicles), such as e-cargo bikes and delivery vans on the very last mile. However, there is still limited research on collaborative distribution strategies in last mile logistics. Thus, the paper aims to investigate the extent to which parcel delivery providers generate collaborative approaches and to what extent such approaches should be promoted by the local authorities. Therefore, this paper comprises a comprehensive literature review about the latest research on collaborative approaches in last mile logistics. The findings from the reviewed research contributions indicate that there is a lack of qualitative research approaches that put the individual experiences, opinions and perceptions of relevant actors in focus of investigation. The findings from expert interviews enrich the findings from the literature review and depict new insights on the willingness for collaborative arrangements among delivery companies and local authorities.

Taxis are popular and convenient transport options in urban areas, yet they are often a target for complaints with respect to service quality and driver behavior. Understanding taxi driver behavior is important, since they are responsible for travelers’ safe, efficient, and convenient commuting. This paper investigates taxi drivers’ behavioral aspects, using data from a questionnaire survey undertaken in Athens, Greece. These aspects include driving conduct, illegal driving practices and environmental awareness, which are analyzed using econometric models. Results show that specific work attributes, driving style and the way of doing business are factors affecting those drivers’ behavioral aspects. These findings can be exploited by decision makers for modifying taxi operations and mitigating the impacts of traffic code violation practices. Also, in an era of sustainable mobility, these can be used for suggesting targeted policies focusing on improving environmental awareness of taxi drivers.

Predictive Maintenance Systems (PdM) for bus fleets are becoming more and more necessary to speed up operations and maximize resources at garages, especially when it comes to plan spare parts substitutions, repair operations, prevent breakdowns and manage the generated waste. However, some regular maintenance operations are yet to be integrated within PdM either because still carried out according to the maintenance staff experience or simply because neglected or underestimated. Among these, two are more urgent to address due to their potential in mitigating negative impacts on the environment: emissions control and water management. Coherently with such need, the paper introduces some innovative Dashboard Functions (DF) to integrate a software-based PdM. The first DF is aimed at assessing the emissions generated by buses, especially when fleets are composed by pre-EURO VI vehicles. The second DF is focused on the water management and control for washing buses: an underestimated issue. The outcomes of integrating the assessment of emissions and water in the soft-ware are described, with a special focus for the former on the problem associated with older vehicles and some special parts of them specifically contributing to the emissions phenomenon; the latter, in turn, is centered on the application of different washing technology. All of the above with the research goal to ad-vance scientific knowledge in this field and provide a truly remarkable example of environmental sustainability best practice in the PdM applications.

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the current state of public transport and approaches for sustainable urban mobility in the Petroşani Basin. The main elements that support sustainable development are society, the environment and the economy, and the diagnosis of the current situation, the identification of solutions, the development plans and their implementation lead to sustainable development in terms of transport activity. Taking into account national and Community climate change mitigation targets, reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions becomes a priority objective. In this regard, the main sources of pollution are transports, thermoelectric power plants and tailings dumps and tailings dams, as a feature of the Petroşani Basin. The high degree of urbanization leads to heavy road traffic, with negative effects on environmental and health factors. The research methodology used involved: analysis of the research literature; analysis of EU documents and national policies on the financing and development of sustainable urban transport; analysis of the factors influencing urban mobility; analysis of road infrastructure; analysis of public transport demand. The study of population mobility fluctuations by hours, days and season allows the design of a sustainable public transport, which ensures a movement as fast and safe as possible and with beneficial effects on the health of the inhabitants. Research shows that sustainable urban mobility can be achieved through the cooperation of all stakeholders (national government, municipalities, public transport providers, residents).

Understanding the impact of the severe weather condition on travel behavior is crucial to the better design of rail transportation systems. This paper aims to evaluate the travel behavior and the demand characteristics of the rail transportation system under different weather conditions. For this purpose, two different data sources were used: i.) a one-year smart card data of the metro system (20 km in length with 17 stations) located in Izmir, Turkey providing the daily ridership data of the different user groups such as students, teachers, adults, and the elderly, ii.) the meteorological parameters (including temperature (°C), precipitation (mm), wind (m/s)) taken from the General Directorate of Meteorology in Turkey. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was conducted to statistically investigate the effect of meteorological parameters on different user groups. The results indicated that the elderly groups are more sensitive to severe weather conditions, for whom significant variations in ridership level were observed and it was found to be significantly different from the other users. However, fewer fluctuations in student ridership level were observed. This study proved the significant effect of meteorological parameters on the ridership level of different user groups.

Transportation accounts for 24% of global CO2 emissions; according to the current trends, energy use and CO2 emissions associated with this sector are projected to increase by more than 80% by 2050. Following UN Recommendations, EU Directives and Policies prioritising the transition to more clean modes of transport, the O.A.S.A Group (Group) estimated its annual environmental footprint. Specifically, the Group quantified the impact of its activities (transport-related and others) on the environment aiming at the integration of the environmental parameter into the decision-making process. 2019 was the baseline year for all estimations performed; the study estimated the carbon (and other) emissions from the transport fleet (direct emissions), as well as carbon emissions and carbon removals from the Group’s other supporting activities (indirect emissions). A mix of internationally recognised methodologies (i.e., EMEP/EEA 2020, 2006 IPCC Guidelines), activity data and emission factors were used and applied in the study. The study highlights the positive impact of the Group to the environment, justifying that – without its existence - approximately 200,000 tn of CO2 would be emitted annually in the metropolitan area of Athens. Electricity consumption of the electrified transport means is the Group’s most critical CO2 emission source overall (approx. 40%). Diesel-buses come first amongst all transport means, accounting for approximately 35% of direct emissions. The rising share of renewable energy sources in the electricity generation mix, the fleet renewal initiatives and the deployment of electric buses are expected to further improve the Group’s environmental footprint in the future.

It is acknowledged by numerous researchers that island residents experience inequality with respect to their accessibility in comparison to the rest of Greek residents, as they are dependent on the frequency, quality of service, and capacity that ferry operators provide. Consequently, to the fact that the ferry business is a free market (due to: (i) no barriers to entry; and (ii) minimum state interventionism in routings), current ferry services operate as “selfish routings” and do not consider the transport system as a whole. This may lead to social welfare loss. This work proposes a hybrid methodology using two MCDA methods (AHP and PROMETHEE) to evaluate whether total ferry fleet assignment to routes is optimal in a holistic manner, from a transport system perspective. Eight “key” routes are considered. For all routes, 6 criteria are introduced, on the basis of which different ferries are evaluated. These criteria are passenger capacity (number), lane meters (number), cabin berths (number), speed (knots), maneuvering ability of ship (index), and comfort (index). Weights of criteria for each route are calculated (8 times, one for each route) through AHP approach, by expert’s input from different categories of stakeholders. Results indicate that the current ferry system can become more efficient by permutation (i.e. exchanging) of currently operating ferries between different routes. The proposed fleet assignment: (i) increases the quality of service for several routes; (ii) increases the accessibility of islands (as it contributes towards better capacity management and leads to less skipped port calls due to bad weather); and (iii) increases efficiency due to greater load factors.

Transport and tourism are rising economic sectors based on their mutual growth on reliable technological tools, affordable energy sources in relatively peaceful decades. This growing trend, faced along years sudden slowdown caused mainly by the financial and health crisis; one of the most serious and recent episodes was the COVID-19 pandemic. In each past episodes the recovery of growing trends was well succeeded but the pandemic outbreak implied innovative approaches to retake the growing trends. In such a changing framework CIVITAS DESTINATIONS European project addressed the main challenges of tourism and resident mobility at local (rural, urban area, large city) and regional level, focusing on 6 European islands (Malta, Cyprus, Elba, Crete, Gran Canaria, Madeira) aiming to implement and evaluate 83 different sustainable mobility measures. After collecting and ex ante, process and ex post data, according the CIVITAS evaluation process methodology, the project proves to have a cumulative relevant impact at qualitative and quantitative level to grant long run environmental and financial sustainability of tourism and transport at the local and regional level. The main aspects observed were related to: public participation and governance models in touristic mobility integrated with the residents’ needs, sustainable mobility options are highly valued among tourists, role of technologies to focus on final user needs, the growing trends of elder and disabled people, new integrated and innovative business in tourism and mobility markets, health at the core of future trends.

An adequate road network hierarchy is an essential tool for increasing efficiency in the urban transport system in the era of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). In this context, this paper intends to evaluate how these certain planning schemes changed road network hierarchy conditions, using a multicriteria approach that adopts various parameters (readability, arteriality, existence of rings roads, multimodality, etc.). To this end, 7 cities that have implemented a SUMP, scattered in the Greek territory are examined both without and with the suggestions of the plan. The data used to fulfill this assessment, are secondary and derived from the consultants or planners that developed the corresponding plans. Briefly, the results show that the road network hierarchy planning schemes generally improved the current conditions considerably. Particularly, the SUMPs’ visions seem to have a common approach concerning the structure of the new road network hierarchy system in most of the studied cities. For instance, cities proved to be rather potent in the criteria of arteriality and sustainable modes promotion. Moreover, ring roads that may contribute to deterring through traffic are included in many of the developed plans. This research gives substantial insights on the road network hierarchy re-definition process that the SUMPs have incorporated. Consequently, it could play a pivotal role in the future, functioning as a preliminary evaluation “roadmap” for evaluating both existing and proposed road hierarchy in urban areas. Therefore, future SUMPs or relevant plans would be able to enhance their suggestions in the quest for sustainability.

As cities grow larger, they increasingly face problems caused by transport and traffic. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) offers a promising opportunity to mitigate road (surface) congestion by taking urban mobility to the third dimension – the airspace. However, making it safe, secure, green, quiet and accepted is still challenging. The EU-funded project AURORA (sAfe Urban aiR mObility for euRopeAn citizens) is developing safety-critical technologies to support autonomous flight UAM in urban environments, focusing its demonstrations primarily on emergency-related applications. Urban Air Mobility is a fairly new concept for European cities and regions. Integration of UAM services and operations into existing mobility plans, in particular SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans), is hindered by various technological, regulatory, economic, environmental, social and operational barriers. To address these challenges, AURORA brings together a multidisciplinary team with expertise in aeronautics, smart mobility, intelligent transport systems, urban planning and citizen engagement. To foster adoption of UAM, the project involved relevant stakeholders in its journey from the start. This paper will address the results of this stakeholder involvement, tackling the challenges and opportunities that citizens, policy-makers and mobility experts see in these new related to UAM. We will look into the integration needs, the environmental concerns, the aviation safety and security requirements and understand the societal challenges around this new level of mobility.

With the number of road traffic fatalities continuously increasing around the world and road crashes being the most common cause of death among young people, road safety constitutes an urgent, vast societal problem. In Europe, despite the significant improvements made on road safety levels, further steps must be taken to deliver safe and sustainable mobility. Given that “what gets measured gets also managed”, the systematic collection, processing and reporting of road accidents data is considered a valuable tool for interpreting casualty trends and improving road safety. In this context, this paper introduces a novel, comprehensive roaD accidEnts informAtion centeR (DEAR) for Greece. DEAR was developed in the framework of the “Intelligent Research Infrastructure for Shipping, Supply Chain, Transport, and Logistics” (ENIRISST) and aims to assist and provide valuable information to the Greek relevant stakeholders and the general public. DEAR provides information on the number and characteristics of road traffic accidents and associated casualties in four succeeding spatial levels (national, regional units, municipalities, and cities) through the measurement of multiple standardized indicators. DEAR uses as input a wide variety of officially available data as well as open-source data including road traffic accidents and socio-demographic data. DEAR utilizes SQL queries to deliver trends and comparative analyses, which are presented to the users via a combination of interactive tables, graphs, and maps. DEAR is expected to be an insightful tool for decision-making in policy decisions regarding road safety, as well as a useful information center for interested researchers.

Urban planning usually interconnects with the theme of mobility and the degree of accessibility of a city. This is especially true when referring to more vulnerable age groups, such as older adults. The domain of “urban ageing” deals with the implications of urban living for the ageing population and it spans across health, social and urban disciplines. The use of technology to support healthy urban ageing is of foremost importance with specific examples including health monitoring, wandering detection technology, and system for timely response in risky situations. PROLONG designs and manufactures a prototype of a device designed as a tiny wearable GNSS-IoT tracker to be strapped at the user’s shoulders, responding to the need of detecting abnormal or dangerous walking patterns of older adults. A first PROLONG prototype is already manufactured and is currently being tested. Thanks to proprietary algorithm capable to yield centimeter-grade accuracy from Galileo satellite positioning data, the device not only provides high-accuracy outdoor localization of older adults, but it also delivers fall detection and, most interestingly, assessment of gait abnormalities through real-time spatio-temporal gait analysis in outdoor scenarios. The PROLONG system requirements and user needs analysis have been performed through a design thinking inspired workshop that was organized in Thessaloniki, Greece. The workshop included 16 participants: 12 older adults, 2 informal caregivers and 2 healthcare professionals. Due to COVID pandemic, online or telephone interviews were performed following the design thinking structure. The raw data collected from each participant were analyzed in order to edit an review that includes the summary of all the discussions and the main points.

Higher efficiency and increased productivity of transportation infrastructure constitute major challenges that asset management (ΑM) has to deal with. This trend is also enhanced by the current economic recession and as a result innovative cost-effective and environment friendly solutions attract the attention of European ministries of transport and National Infrastructure Authorities (NIAs). Capitalizing upon communication capabilities, connectivity between hinterland and logistics facilities could be achieved in an efficient way gaining economic savings and benefits. Technological solutions allow participation and communication of both internal and external operations among terminals and logistics facilities. These solutions integrate data from different systems and applications, developing a multimodal environment. Moreover, modern technology supports information spread into different platforms almost dynamically. AM exploits this information and data provided by information management and utilize training and awareness activities to define proper corrective actions. These actions should be taken when monitoring indicates that there is a deviation from an established critical limit. This paper presents a comprehensive framework on AM of transportation networks that enhances resilience planning. The proposed framework aims to address the complexity of decision making that NIAs and ministries face at a strategic and policy level. It is based on an evolutionary scheme that favors the increased collaboration among stakeholders developing synergies even between competitors. It deals with the entire transportation system holistically and promotes a fully functional transportation network assigning processes at a cross-modal and cross-border level to achieve a high-level network optimization. Resilience planning is also enhanced to ensure that the network can operate with maximum efficiency at any stage and to identify alternate routes or modes of transport after breakdowns.

This work explores urban traffic patterns in the city of Athens during the first few waves of the Covid-19 pandemic and in particular between March and November 2020. Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by WHO on the 11th of March 2020, and several measures were implemented to mitigate its spread utilizing social distancing practices. As a result, our lives changed substantially, and so did our travel patterns. The aim of this paper is to identify how Covid-19 affected urban traffic patterns, and which were the contributory factors affecting this effect. Traffic data were collected from 73 road sites of the Athenian road network, for specific days in 2020 and their respective ones in 2019 (set as base conditions). The explored road sites, days and time periods were determined by the different trip purposes that were explored: work and leisure trips, taking into account the typical Athenian traveller habits. Covid-19 related data was also collected (e.g. Covid-19 reported cases), while the application dates of the different restrictions were noted. The impact of Covid-19 was explored with the design of multiple linear regression models, where the dependent variable was the change in traffic flow between the two periods. Results demonstrated a substantial reduction of traffic flow in 2020, which varied both spatially and temporally, while the most significant Covid-19 related factor was found to be the number of deaths.

Barcelona, surrounded by the sea and mountains, concentrates the access by vehicle in some specific points and, as in many modern cities nowadays, there are hot spots in certain time frames during working days. This is the case for the northern access, where three high density roads merge in a single point with up to twenty lanes in parallel, resulting on traffic jams besides both air and noise pollution. In the context of the local Transport Infrastructure Program, the Government of Catalonia urges to perform technical studies to solve the problem. In collaboration with authorities and as a first response, an algorithm based on the results of a traffic simulation was defined to set the maximum speed while reducing the environmental impact and easing traffic management. This paper describes the most relevant details of the tasks carried out, from the construction of the microscopic model using Aimsun.Next to the results, going through the calibration phase and the programming of the algorithm itself. The algorithm implements a reactive mechanism based on the fundamental diagrams on traffic flow that stablish relationships between traffic engineering variables such as speed, flow and density. Results reveal that a variable speed limit during peak hours drives to an overall performance by spreading the vehicles along the corridor, making a more fluid traffic and reducing emissions representing an economic impact about 3.2M€ per year as calculated using the Handbook on the external costs of transport from the European Union as the reference for unit costs.

Traffic congestion, abandonment and devastation of buildings and public spaces in Athens city center form a troubled urban landscape in the heart of the metropolitan capital. Daily users, residents, employees, visitors desire the quality upgrading of public space through environmental upgrading and sustainable mobility, and the promotion of the international metropolitan character of the city. A strategy for reshaping the character and function of the historic Athenian triangle is proposed, aiming at its environmental and sustainable development through feasible, meaningful and non-landscaping solutions of low cost and high positive impact. Sustainable mobility is the main principle of re-planning the study area, while the main strategy is to transform the historic triangle of Athens into a “Low Pollution and Limited Vehicle Traffic Zone”. The proposed measures include the development of pedestrian mobility networks by expanding the pedestrian paths and slow traffic routes, bicycle networks based on the approved Metropolitan Bicycle Route of Athens while a methodology for enhancing public transportation networks with new lines of electric mini-buses is developed in the study area. Complementary actions are proposed through the provision of Wi-Fi on public transports, development of applications that facilitate combined travel and provide real-time data, integration of personal mobility (roller skates, scooters, hoverboard) and enhancement of their use as flexible modes of personal mobility combined with the car-sharing, ride-sharing and dynamic carpooling initiatives.

The Canal Port of Rimini is a great historical and cultural relevance site representing an urban landmark for the city. Given its strategic position, important architectural monuments have been built around the canal over the past centuries. Together with the conformation of the canal itself, which crosses the city, these elements led to some criticalities in terms of accessibility and mobility efficiency in the area, that are often not adequate to the current needs. Transportation comfort is a fundamental prerogative to implement sustainable mobility solutions. As part of the European Interreg project “FRAMESPORT”, which aims at the global and sustainable growth of minor ports of the Adriatic Sea, this contribution presents a detailed analysis of the area to detect the criticalities that hinder the urban regeneration of the Canal Port of Rimini. The analysis method adopted is based on the data collection, carried out with the stakeholders' involvement, to elaborate a participatory project responding to users' needs. The survey provides a detailed overview of the urban and historical-cultural context and shows the relationship between the Canal Port, the environment, and its infrastructures. The research aims to demonstrate that re-shaping the existing transport network – which represents a key role in the interconnection and continuity of the urban landscape - permits the regeneration of an urban area without upsetting its historically consolidated asset. Moreover, it seeks to highlight that the improvements in micro-mobility, together with punctual regeneration interventions, also contribute to improving the life quality and comfort of the surrounding area.

Recently, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concept is presented as an alternative, time-saving and environmental friendly urban transport mode. UAM development involves the use of cities airspace, and air-vehicles have to use ground or buildings facilities for takeoff and landing. Currently, cities development and functions are defined by urban planning legislation and tools, and property laws. Air-traffic is regulated by international standards, of the International Civil Aviation Organization, national aviation authorities’ regulations, while airplanes use specific spatial locations for takeoff and landing that are also regulated by local aviation authorities, while specific rules and restrictions on constructions development and land uses are implemented in inhabited or industrial areas found in a close distance from the airports. As UAM involves simultaneously urban airspace use and ground/or non-ground level take off and landing infrastructures, its correlation to urban planning emerges. This article presents UAM integration on urban planning taking into consideration the correlations between urban planning principles, property legislation restrictions.

The importance of transport systems and their ability to contribute to the economic robustness of a geographic area and the well-being of its inhabitants is noticeable and well documented worldwide. Nevertheless, it is also broadly acknowledged that transportation projects, especially those oriented towards the extensive use of private auto-mobiles, have the capacity to affect sustainable development and, consequently, the quality of people’s life via the production of numerous negative externalities such as noise, greenhouse gases and air pollution, accidents, traffic congestions, etc. Hence, several European cities, in order to mitigate these negative effects and achieve European Union policy goals, have developed Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). However, there is still a gap on how this progress can be monitored and assessed in quantitative terms. In this paper, thirteen Sustainable Urban Mobility (core) Indicators, as they have been recently proposed by the European Commission, are implemented and estimated in four Greek municipalities with different characteristics, namely: Nea Smirni, Aigaleo, Nafplio and Xylokastro. This research aims to reinforce objectivity in the assessment of sustainable mobility by following a data-driven quantitative approach. In addition, it performs a comparative analysis so that to identify major mobility problems per municipality. At the end, this study presents some paradigms regarding how a standardized assessment of sustainable mobility using Sustainable Mobility Indicators can lead to highly effective mobility measures and sophisticated monitoring frameworks for the future.

In 2019 Budapest have introduced its first SUMP, the Budapest Mobility Plan (BMT). As part of the SUMP process, a revision process has started in 2021. The planning process will align the objectives of the BMT with the integrated regional development strategy and the urban development plan of Budapest. This will ensure the functional integration of urban design and transport infrastructure in the city. As a part of the planning, the monitoring and evaluation process will also be revised, including a set of indicators assigned to the SUMPs by the EU, called SUMIs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators). The monitoring system of mobility plan will also be aligned with indicators of the urban development strategy, ensuring a common monitoring system and evaluation procedure of urban and transport planning in Budapest. In this paper we will outline the methodology for choosing objectives and indicators following the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) principle, that assure the alignment of urban and transport planning goals. We will also detail the formation of the monitoring system, and policy evaluation methodologies. The monitoring system consist of multiple layers, evaluating strategic goals and objectives on the one hand, and operational goals and projects on the other hand. Indicators and calculations related to these different layers, need to follow different methodologies, while also providing a comprehensive evaluation of the whole plan. Moreover, when creating the monitoring system, both current data constraint and possible technological evolutions have to be factored into the work.

Numerous urban mobility projects attempt to utilize near zero-CO2 emission practices in order to reduce greenhouse effect. Most initiatives attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change through controlling the resources consumed by human activity. In this study, the assessment of the degree by which these initiatives affect urban mobility and resulting impacts utilizes a fuzzy semi-quantitative methodology with the inclusion of all stakeholders into an innovative Decision Support System (DSS). This holistic approach effectively assesses the interaction of linguistic evaluations and fuzzy set theory to produce a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) that overcomes the ambiguity caused by a lack of quantitative evidence. The study strands include scenarios that emphasize the impact to sustainable urban mobility due to urbanization and the rise of urban actors (social, technical, transport, and economic) in influencing environmentally friendly decision-making. We concentrate in the use case of Larissa, Greece (city of the CIVITAS initiative) that started implementing the sustainable urban development plan in 2015. The suggested decision-making tool employs analytics and optimization algorithms to direct responsible authorities and decision-makers towards sustainable urban mobility of Larissa and eventually decarbonization of the urban and suburban area.

The main aim of the paper is to analyze the temporal behavior of air pollutant concentrations in two different Greek urban areas, Piraeus and Volos. Results indicate that the daily mean concentrations of PM10 exceeded the EU standards in both cities on a significant number of days over the most recent calendar years. Further, the Theil-Sen estimations indicate that the overall trend for PM2.5 in Piraeus is negative and statistically significant over the analysis period, whereas the trend analysis for PM10 in Piraeus, as well as for both PM2.5 and PM10 in Volos reflects only modest decreases that lack statistical significance, suggesting that more effective control measures and policies are needed to tackle this global challenge. Other results show that in Piraeus, CO and NOx exhibit similar seasonal and daily variations, with the highest concentrations in winter and the lowest in summer, and also with the highest concentrations on Fridays and the lowest over weekend days. Particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) shows similar temporal behavior in both urban areas, also registering higher concentrations in winter months, suggesting that the main culprit might be the use of unsustainable energy sources for heating. On the other hand, the O3 concentration in Piraeus is highest in the summer months, reflecting strong solar radiation.

The growing societal demands for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) actions towards sustainable development triggers new forms of educational programs and research activities. In line with this direction, the Living Lab (LL) approach provides a means to engage various actors in the process of development of a solution fostering inclusive ‘quadruple helix’ participation and open end-user-oriented innovation. Nowadays, LLs have become a strategy in many universities for co-creating impact for more sustainable and healthier cities and regions. However, LLs can create shared value for society, only if their long-term viability is ensured. The challenge is making LLs effective and self-supportive, but existing models lack a holistic and multi-perspective umbrella view over all dimensions, functions and stakeholder interrelations of a LL. In this paper, we present the conceptualization of the domain of LLs in Higher Education. We present the INVEST LL ontology (INVESTL2) which models the needed domain knowledge streams for the LLs and consists of 3 main modules: (1) the Living Lab model, (2) the Business model and (3) the Quality Assurance model in education provision environments. Taking into account the multifaceted nature of this challenge, our proposal achieves a holistic conceptualization of the domain of LLs, in order to be further utilized for the implementation of a Semantic Web Rules Repository. This rule base is in control of the required streams of knowledge enclosed in the LL knowledge agendas for developing, recommending and executing tailored workplans to meet the LL goals. Finally, the INVESTL2 ontology is applied for the definition of a semantic infrastructure for the RES-Q LL case study on disaster risk management.

The South-Central region of Bulgaria, that comprises the districts Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Smolyan, Haskovo and Kardzhali, is characterized with favorable climatic, relief and landscape conditions that foster the cultivation of various agricultural crops as well as livestock breeding. Therefore, nowadays the region comes out as one of the most well-developed in terms of agri-food activities. The South-Central region of Bulgaria is one of the leading regions in the production of milk, vegetables, wine, etc. and has a great potential for developing environmentally friendly agricultural activities such as organic farming. Sustainable regional development might be achieved by elaborate evaluation of the specific characteristics of a region in terms of social, natural and economic development aspects. Special attention is given to the transportation of the agricultural production and how it impacts the sustainability in the region. Therefore, in the present study, the current state of the agri-food sector in terms of production rates as well as the measures for the sustainable development of the sector in the region is outlined.

Disasters are considered a major problem worldwide and a significant threat to sustainable development, causing, among others, the loss of lives, the destruction of infrastructure, economic disruption. The implementation of policies and strategies that will prevent future disaster risk, reduce existing disaster risk, and manage residual risk has become more vital than ever. It requires multi-sector collaboration to achieve enhanced resilience to the multiple hazards to prevent and/or reduce the potential losses, assure prompt assistance to victims of disasters, and achieve rapid and effective recovery. Such an approach demands collaboration between scientists and authorities and proper use of the available information so that the steps to be taken can be understood and processed by all the stakeholders involved. The utilization of disaster risk information, along with the use of more sophisticated ICTs, will provide policymakers with a holistic DRM, enabling decision support for a natural and/or man-made crisis. To that end, the key objective of this study was to conduct a Systematic Literature Review to highlight the existing research approaches in ICT for DRM. To analyze and evaluate the findings, the selected studies were classified according to four areas: (1) Stakeholders, (2) Disaster phase, (3) Disaster type, and (4) ICT. Additionally, a SWOT analysis was conducted to provide a holistic overview of ICTs and their applications in the DRM sector. Hence, our work attempts to present a comprehensive analysis of the research approaches and determines the arising opportunities and shortcomings that require the attention of the research community.

The world is faced with sustainability challenges and recurring crises in all aspects of social, economic, and ecological life. Cities and regions seem to be increasingly susceptible to environmental changes, while natural hazards and disasters continuously test their resilience. Along with the climate change, the global coronavirus outbreak has once more underlined the importance of resilience in facilitating sustainable development. To successfully tackle these challenges and rapidly adapt to future crises and shocks, societies should focus on building resilience and shift to Circular Economy approaches and close the loop achieving a more efficient use of resources. To achieve greater resilience at a minimum environmental cost, it is important to increase circularity and accelerate the transition towards a sustainable bio-based growth. On this basis, the valorization of waste and by-products, the integration of different processes within the biorefinery concept and the production of bio-based added-value products could address major regional challenges, thus, yielding significant environmental, economic, and social benefits. The basic aim of this paper is to summarize recent development on biomass and food waste utilization and possible engagement of bio-based processes as an enabler of regional resilience. More specifically, the main purpose of this work is to introduce two relevant case studies illustrating the enormous potential of bio-based circular economy for a more sustainable and resilient society. Within this context, the exploitation of available biomass and organic waste residues in the Region of Central Macedonia and their utilization in the biogas production, as well as the investigation for the provision of alternative diet to pigs from food waste that is considered unfit for human consumption are examined. Future possible sustainable approaches to support the reveal of green supply chain models will also be discussed. The core outcomes will shed light on the potential of circular bio-based solutions targeting the enhancement of regional sustainability and resilience from an economic, environmental, and social point of view.

In order to identify the relevant competences to mitigate climate change and promote sustainability, a rich variety of methods, tools and materials need to be reflected and used widely in higher education and in the field. Defining the relevant research, development and innovation competences within sustainable supply chains shaping sustainable and responsible mindset of the practitioners and educationalists, is one of the important aims of INVEST4EXCELLENCE Horizon2020 project. This study reports the research protocol and its results of the sustainable supply chain competence inventory conducted in Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Slovakia by the INVEST European University partners. Our paper discusses the process, tools and results from the partner regions and ends up reflecting the capacity building involving a broader European higher education and business community. The results may promote the systematic inclusion and integration of sustainability and responsibility in researching, developing and innovating sustainable supply chains in education and the field.

Improving community urban resilience necessitates a comprehensive awareness of all possible hazards and resilience choices, as well as the interests and objectives of many stakeholders, in order to create and implement inclusive and proactive interventions. For such complex urban ecosystems, we may utilize soft computing knowledge such as Fuzzy Theory and Decision Support Systems (DSS) to provide an innovative participatory model that identifies and quantifies urban resilience tradeoffs. We concentrate on the design of a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) that interlinks several participant perspectives in the form of semi-quantitative cause-and-effect linguistic responses from experts and stakeholders. More specifically, we analyze how this explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) cognitive model may assist decision-makers and competent authorities in developing urban resilience solutions. Based on stakeholders’ collective expertise the aggregated FCM determines the most advantageous initiatives in terms of their direct and indirect implications on urban resilience. We apply this model for the case of the city of Joensuu, Finland. For the use case, steady state analysis as well as best and worst-case scenarios are produced which are based on environmental, economic, social, and technological criteria. The prototype DSS is evaluated with both sigmoidal and hyperbolic tangent activations producing comparative results.