New mobility concepts such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) are emerging as potential solutions to move people more sustainably in an increasingly urbanized world. Planning for this multi-modal mobility requires a whole system approach (STEEP - social, technical, economic, environmental, and political) to evaluate alternative future scenarios and address varied stakeholder concerns. A strategic planning tool was selected that can model alternative scenarios for how urban mobility systems may evolve over time. A sustainable mobility scorecard was defined, comprised of individual metrics generated from the tool's output. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was selected and applied to generate stakeholder weightings from an online survey of U.S. transportation planning professionals. Those weightings were applied to the scorecard to demonstrate their influence on alternative planning outcomes. Results include the scorecard metrics assessed with the greatest relative importance to sustainability; increases in no car ownership, increases in the transit/walk/bike mode share especially in lower income populations, maintaining the average peak traffic speed (actual/posted), and reducing cars per capita. The resulting weighted scorecard, part of a strategic assessment methodology for mobility sustainability (SAMMS), is then used to evaluate four future planning scenarios with contrasting trends (socio-demographics, travel behavior, employment, land use, transport supply) for the greatest overall sustainable mobility outcome.

Integrating renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, challenges grid stability due to their intermittent nature. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology provides a promising solution by utilizing electric vehicles (EVs) as decentralized energy storage systems, enabling the storage of surplus energy during low demand and its release during peak demand. The effectiveness of V2G depends critically on car usage patterns. Data from the Netherlands Mobility Panel (MPN) of 2022, comprising travel diaries from 2,505 households, was analyzed to explore this. A methodology was developed to create car usage profiles based on parking durations and locations, distinguishing weekday and weekend patterns. The analysis shows that vehicles are predominantly parked at home, with weekday profiles reflecting work-related parking and weekend profiles highlighting increased leisure activity. Households with shared cars showed higher driving activity and shorter parking durations than households with a 1:1 car-to-license ratio or surplus vehicles. Six distinct car usage clusters were identified for weekdays and four for weekends.

The Internet of Things (IoT) can bring radical advancements in the domain of waste collection, as it enables the organization of demand-responsive schedules which leads to higher efficiency operations. One major challenge in the deployment of demand-responsive schedules, nevertheless, is the uncertainty they bring in the planning of resources as they follow the daily waste demand. This is undesirable in real-life operations as it makes it difficult to reserve resources and ensure the stability of operational processes. Therefore, waste collection scheduling approaches need to be devised that are not only demand-responsive but also supply-friendly. In this paper, we present a solution approach for the waste collection vehicle routing problem in an IoT context (IoT-WCVRP) that focuses on these requirements. We demonstrate its applicability through a case study of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, where real-life household waste data are used and the observed waste collection operations in the city are compared against the optimized outcomes of the model. The application results show that our IoTWCVRP approach achieves the stated demand and supply trade-off, increases the vehicle utilization rates by 5%, and reduces emissions and travelled kilometres by 6% and 8% respectively.

Automated driving developments should be considered when making decisions about investments in physical and digital infrastructure. This paper proposes four scenarios for automated driving developments in the Netherlands in 2040 and 2060 taking into account uncertainties regarding future penetration rates, the level of connectivity, the operational design domain, and the expected impacts of automated driving: 1) Late transition, 2) Automated vehicles on main roads, 3) Car-topia, and 4) Share-topia. To derive these scenarios, an extended switchboard method is introduced in which multiple driving forces for automated driving can be varied. The main driving forces were identified based on expert surveys. For each scenario, a modelling approach is used to compute the impact of automated driving on vehicle kilometres driven and congestion. The extended switchboard method offered more flexibility than existing scenario methods. The model-based impact assessment provided more conservative and probably more accurate insights into the expected impacts of automated driving on vehicle kilometres driven and congestion than expert estimates from the literature. The results show that in all scenarios automation leads to an increase in the number of trips, vehicle kilometres driven and congestion. In the scenarios with autonomous vehicles, congestion is expected to increase up to 17%. The higher the penetration rates of connected automated vehicles, the smaller the increase in congestion (1.5%-11%). The results indicate that investments in digital infrastructure are needed to prevent capacity reduction due to autonomous driving. The scenarios “car-topia” and “share-topia” may require additional physical infrastructure on motorways and regional roads, and/or the implementation of demand management strategies.

Shared automated electric vehicles (SAEVs) have the potential to transform regional transportation, particularly in low-density areas where accessibility and resource optimization are challenging. However, their integrated economic impact on operators, users, environment, and society have been little explored. This paper presents a cost-benefit analysis methodology, incorporating a flow-based integer programming model, to assess the viability of SAEV services in a regional interurban context. The case study is based on mobility data from the Aveiro and Coimbra regions (Portugal). We evaluate the replacement of all motorized intermunicipal trips with various SAEV configurations, including automated cars (with and without pooling), automated minibuses, and a mixed fleet (cars and minibuses). Results indicate that SAEV providers can achieve profitability with fares ranging from €0.08 to €0.36 per kilometer. Even at these rates, SAEV services generate economic benefits for users, particularly pooled car-based services, as private car expenses dominate current mobility costs. Additionally, all SAEV configurations contribute to cost reductions related to air pollution, noise, global warming potential, and road accidents, with pooled services offering the greatest savings. A series of SAEV transition scenarios using a fleet of pooled cars also demonstrated benefits for all stakeholders, albeit lower than those from fully replacing motorized trips. A second sensitivity analysis confirms that reducing vehicle acquisition costs is key to lowering fares and increasing user savings. This paper represents one of the first evaluations of large-scale SAEV services for intermunicipal trips with significant distances between urban centers, contributing insights into smart and sustainable transportation solutions for such contexts.

The adherence to a timetable with precise departure and arrival times becomes increasingly challenging in real-world scenarios due to the daily fluctuations in rail traffic, leading to uncertainties that complicate effective real-time traffic management. In this paper, we introduce and optimise timetable flexibility to enhance operational robustness and reduce conflicts resulting from minor train path deviations. We propose a Train Rescheduling with Flexibility (TRF) model, relying on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation. The primary objective is to minimise timetable deviation, while maximising timetable flexibility. The punctuality threshold is utilised to optimise time allowances within the real-time traffic plan, considering passenger connections and preventing early departures. A real-life case study that focuses on part of the Dutch railway characterised by complex track layouts and heterogeneous rail traffic is used to validate our model. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of predictive delays on flexibility, along with conducting sensitivity analyses on key parameters such as flexibility weight and punctuality threshold. The results of our optimisation model demonstrate its effectiveness in exploiting timetable flexibility to deal with disturbances.

This paper proposes a decision-making framework for a multiple-period planning of electric vehicle (EV) charging station development. In this proposed framework, transportation planners seek to implement a phased provision of electric charging stations as well as repurposing gas stations at selected locations. The developed framework is presented as a bi-level optimization problem that determines the optimal electric charging network design while capturing the practical constraints and travelers’ decisions. The upper level minimizes overall vehicle CO emissions by selecting optimal charging stations and their capacities, while the lower-level models travelers’ choices of vehicle class (EV or conventional) and travel routes. A genetic algorithm is developed to solve this problem. The results of the numerical experiments describe the sensitive nature of EV market penetration rates in the urban traffic stream and overall vehicle CO emissions to EV charging station availability and capacity. The findings can assist transportation agencies in designing effective EV charging infrastructure by identifying optimal locations and capacities, as well as in creating policies to encourage EV use over time. This study supports broader efforts to reduce air pollution and promote sustainable transportation by promoting EV adoption in the long term.

As a two-sided digital platform, ride-sourcing has disruptively penetrated the mobility market. Ride-sourcing companies provide door-to-door transport services by connecting passengers with independent service suppliers labelled as “driver-partners”. Once a passenger submits a ride request, the platform attempts to match the request with a nearby available driver. Drivers have the freedom to accept or decline ride requests. The consequences of this decision, which is made at the operation level, have remained largely unknown in the literature. Using agent-based simulation modelling on the realistic case study of the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, we study the impacts of drivers’ ride acceptance behaviour, estimated from unique empirical data, on the ride-sourcing system where the platform applies regular and surge pricing strategies, and riders may revoke their requests and reject the received offers. Furthermore, we delve into the implications of various supply–demand intensities, a centralised fleet (i.e., mandatory acceptance on each ride request) versus a decentralised fleet (i.e., ride acceptance decision by each driver), ride acceptance rates, and surge pricing settings. We find that the ride acceptance decision of ride-sourcing drivers has far-reaching consequences for system performance in terms of passengers’ waiting time, driver's revenue, operating costs, and profit, all of which are highly dependent on the ratio between demand and supply. As the system undergoes a transition from undersupplied (i.e., real-time demand locally exceeds available drivers) to balanced and then oversupplied state (i.e., more available drivers than real-time demand), ride acceptance decisions result in higher income inequality. A high acceptance rate among drivers may lead to more rides, but it does not necessarily increase their profit. Surge pricing is found to be asymmetrically in favour of all the parties despite adverse effects on the demand side due to higher trip fare. This study offers insights into both the aggregated and disaggregated levels of ride-sourcing system operations and outlines a series of transport policy and practice implications in cities that offer such ride-sourcing systems.

Modular autonomous vehicle (MAV), as a novel mode of public transportation, is anticipated to reshape the next generation of transportation systems, with the potential to adapt to diverse travel demand patterns in urban areas. In this study, we consider a MAV hub-and-spoke public transportation system (MAV-HSPTS). Each MAV can operate independently for first-mile/last-mile transport of passengers. Multiple MAVs can assemble into a modular bus, operating synchronously on mainline corridors with predetermined routes, stations, and timetables. We formulate a MAV routing, scheduling and repositioning model in a rolling horizon framework to capture the operation of the system. A heuristic algorithm that assigns passenger requests to MAVs is developed to reduce the computation time. The model and solution algorithm are evaluated on a bus transit corridor in Shanghai, China. Results demonstrate that the MAV service can reduce passenger travel time by over 20 % compared to conventional bus service, and over 90 % of the passengers could benefit from the convenience of in-bus transfers. MAV reposition proves to be an effective method to reduce the operational costs, especially in scenarios with imbalanced demand distribution.

People want to rely on optimization algorithms for complex decisions but verifying the optimality of the solutions can then become a valid concern, particularly for critical decisions taken by non-experts in optimization. One example is the shortest-path problem on a network, occurring in many contexts from transportation to logistics to telecommunications. While the standard shortest-path problem is both solvable in polynomial time and certifiable by duality, introducing side constraints makes solving and certifying the solutions much harder. We propose a proof system for constrained shortest-path problems, which gives a set of logical rules to derive new facts about feasible solutions. The key trait of the proposed proof system is that it specifically includes high-level graph concepts within its reasoning steps (such as connectivity or path structure), in contrast to using linear combinations of model constraints. Using our proof system, we can provide a step-by-step, human-auditable explanation showing that the path given by an external solver cannot be improved. Additionally, to maximize the advantages of this setup, we propose a proof search procedure that specifically aims to find small proofs of this form using a procedure similar to A* search. We evaluate our proof system on constrained shortest path instances generated from real-world road networks and experimentally show that we may indeed derive more interpretable proofs compared to an integer programming approach, in some cases leading to much smaller proofs.

Shared Automated Electric Vehicles (SAEVs) are poised to revolutionize future transportation. However, potential drawbacks, including increased vehicle usage and the projected shorter vehicle lifespan, introduce critical factors that may impact efficiency and environmental benefits. This research introduces a framework that integrates Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for a behaviour-driven SAEV assessment. The ABM simulates regional SAEV operations, informing the LCA of pre- and post-integration scenarios. Sensitivity analysis on fleet sizes, system performance metrics, and Global Warming Potential (GWP) reference values are performed. Findings demonstrate that SAEVs significantly decrease the fleet size and total travel distance by raising the average travel per vehicle. SAEVs integration yields a 75–86% daily GWP reduction without significantly compromising user experience. Over 30 years, fleet replacement needs due to inadequate fleet sizing raised GWP by 170%. Balancing short and long-term environmental impact requires optimizing fleet size to achieve sustainable and efficient service delivery.

In the present study, we explored the influence of ride experience in automated minibuses (AmBs) on transport mode choice that includes the automated shuttles as well as conventional transport options (car, bus and bicycle) on the first-/ last-mile stage of rail trips. We used the case study of the connection between Brandevoort train station and the newly developing working and living area in Helmond (the Netherlands) where an AmB was tested in the February-March period of 2021. We conducted a two-wave stated preference experiment wherein data was gathered both before and after the participants had a test ride in the AmB. The results of the joint hybrid mixed logit model indicate a clear preference towards flexible-service AmBs, particularly in relation to travel time and costs. While preferences for less favoured regular-service AmBs experienced a noteworthy shift in travel time and costs, waiting and walking time parameters influenced by participants' ride experience in this pilot and by prior ride experience from other pilots. This reinforces the idea that the ride experience in AmBs even in a short pilot trial like the one conducted in Helmond has a significant impact on preferences for AmBs in comparison with car, bus and bicycle alternatives. Hence, panel studies can provide a more comprehensive understanding of how attitudes and preferences of potential users evolve over time.

Once trusted, automated vehicles (AVs) will gradually appear in urban areas. Such a transition is an opportunity in transport planning to control undesired impacts and possibly mitigate congestion at a time when both conventional vehicles (CVs) and AVs coexist. This paper deals with the complex transport decision problem of designing part of the network that is exclusive for AVs through a nonlinear programming model. The objective function minimises the costs of travel times where vehicles circulate under user equilibrium. The model evaluates the benefits of having an AVs-dedicated infrastructure and the associated costs from the detouring of CVs. Three planning strategies are explored: incremental, long-term and hybrid planning. The first creates a subnetwork evolving incrementally over time. The second reversely designs a subnetwork from the optimal solution obtained at a ratio of 90% AVs. The third limits the incremental planning towards that optimal long-term solution. The model is applied to the city of Delft, in the Netherlands. Two scenarios are analysed, with and without AV-dedicated roads, at several AV penetration rates. We find that implementing dedicated roads for AVs reduces the overall costs and congestion up to 16%. However, CV detouring is inevitable at later network stages, increasing the total distance travelled (up to 8%) and congestion in the surroundings of AV subnetworks. Concerning the planning strategies, incremental planning is appropriate for starting in the initial stages and is the strategy that most tackles CV detouring. The hybrid or the long-term strategies are more suitable to be applied after a ratio of 50% AVs, and the hybrid planning is the strategy that most reduces delay.

Emerging concepts, such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS), could evolve to provide sustainable mobility, especially in densely populated urban areas. However, recent studies highlight the challenge of evaluating how the complex interactions of user demographics, mode choice, vehicle automation, governance, and efficiency will impact the sustainability of future mobility. Given this challenge, this research identifies a whole system (STEEP - social, technical, economic, environmental, and political) framework as essential to assess the overall sustainability of emergent urban mobility systems such as rideshare. The need is a single tool that can rapidly explore the long-range sustainability impact of such alternative future mobility scenarios for a given city region. This paper documents enhancements made to Impacts 2050, a strategic-level model of urban mobility, to address this need, including updates to the statistical travel behavior model and the addition of rideshare including trip occupancy. Results obtained with the enhanced Impacts 2050 showed that, while rideshare use increased significantly for some scenarios, its overall mode share remained limited. In addition, though rideshare enabled users to shed car ownership, the overall percentage increase of “no car ownership” was low. An urban mobility sustainability scorecard based on STEEP and generated by output from the enhanced Impacts 2050 is presented.

Anticipating the forthcoming integration of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) into urban networks, the imperative of devising an efficient real-time scheduling and routing strategy for these vehicles becomes evident if one is to maximize their potential in enhancing travel efficiency. In this study, we address the problem of jointly scheduling and routing SAVs across an urban network with the possibility of platooning the vehicles at intersections to reduce their travel time. We argue that this is especially useful in large urban areas. We introduce a novel vehicle scheduling and routing method that allows a specific number of SAVs to converge at the intersections of urban corridors within designated time intervals, facilitating the formation of SAV platoons. Dedicated lanes and signal priority control are activated to ensure that these platoons go through the corridors efficiently. Based on the above concept, we propose a linear integer programming model to minimize the total travel time of SAVs and the delays experienced by the conventional vehicles due to SAV priority, thereby optimizing the overall performance of the road network. For large instances, we develop a two-stage heuristic algorithm to solve it faster. In the first stage, leveraging an evaluation index that manifests the compatibility of each vehicle-to-request combination, we allocate passenger requests to a fleet of SAVs. In the second stage, a customized genetic algorithm is designed to coordinate the paths of various SAVs, thus achieving the desired vehicle platooning effect. The optimization method is tested on a real-world road network in Shanghai, China. The results display a remarkable reduction of 15.76 % in the total travel time of the SAVs that formed platoons. The overall performance of the road network could be improved with the total travel time increase of conventional vehicles significantly smaller than the reduction observed in SAVs’ total travel time.

In the move towards sustainable urban mobility through seamless intermodality, European cities are faced with the possibility of implementing shared mobility systems. They constitute an opportunity to create new urban hubs, considered as nodes of intermodality and places of urban intensity. In order to effectively plan the future locations of shared mobility hubs, this paper outlines the methodological framework that sustains the design of a new decision-support tool, the so-called Mcda2MobilityHub (M2MHub),¹ using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). For this purpose, the analysis of existing literature and interviews with local authorities and transport operators, led to the identification of six main location criteria (mobility, compactness, diversity of uses, profile of potential users, spatial configuration and environment). The criteria weights were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the framework was applied to the case study of the city of Barcelona. The results obtained are presented in the form of heat maps, highlighting the flexibility of the decision-support tool to transform open data into appropriate indicators and detailed maps. This output can be used to support future policies for planning shared mobility hubs as places for convenient multimodal transfers, which also enable social activities and improve the quality of life in European cities.

The introduction of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) provides a significant opportunity to address the persistently increasing problem of urban traffic congestion. By virtue of their connectivity and automation features, CAVs can reduce vehicle headways, thereby increasing road capacity and enhancing throughput. It has been hypothesized that CAV-infrastructure design policies can influence traveler behavior in ways that could reduce congestion. This research focuses on the potential of using CAV-dedicated lanes (CAVL) to alleviate traffic congestion in a bottleneck corridor that serves both human-driven vehicles (HDVs) and CAVs. We delve into investigating the impacts of CAVLs on the departure time and lane choices of morning commuters. The study first expresses traffic equilibrium conditions as a linear program with complementarity constraints. Then, a system-optimal commute congestion management design is formulated to minimize the overall system cost, which consists of queuing delays and early and late arrival costs. The results of the computational experiments suggest that: (i) the CAV technological advancements can significantly reduce traffic congestion under CAVL deployment with an almost similar effect as a tolling policy; and (ii) the lower value of time for CAV commuters leads them to depart closer to their desired arrival time without a tolling policy, which could significantly increase the bottleneck traffic congestion that commuters experience, particularly HDVs.

In light of growing environmental challenges, the need to reconsider how we approach personal transportation is becoming increasingly evident. A shift from a private car-focused mobility system towards a more sustainable and equitable transportation system is needed. Car sharing is considered a means to achieve this, however, its usage and its impact are not entirely understood, as many studies do not consider the motives of individuals to use this alternative, treating the population of users as a homogeneous group. This study aims to reveal distinct car sharing usage profiles to gain a thorough understanding of the various motivates behind car sharing and its relation with travel behaviour. Six user profiles are uncovered using a Latent Class Cluster Analysis (LCCA) based on station-based carsharing data of one company operating in the Netherlands gathered through an online survey (N = 1281). The results show significant diversity in car sharing motives. The identified user groups have different effects on travel behaviour. Environmentally motivated car sharers use the shared car as a complete replacement for their private car, causing a substantial decrease in car ownership and usage. For utilitarian car sharers, and especially formerly carless individuals, the decrease in car ownership is less substantial and even an increase in car use can be observed. Finally, it was found that car sharing is mostly complementary to public transport use. Ways to promote the use of both modes could be explored.

Difficulty in finding parking spaces and high parking fees discourage private car usage. Fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) capable of self-parking away from destinations will likely remove this barrier. Despite extensive survey-based research on AVs in recent years, existing literature has not sufficiently addressed the potential impact of new parking options on the demand for these vehicles. This study explores commuters’ joint choice of travel mode and parking for private autonomous vehicles (PAVs). To this end, a stated choice (SC) experiment was designed and deployed in the city of Beijing, China. Attitudinal statements were also designed to measure four latent variables: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived safety, and attitude toward waiting. Using a hybrid choice model framework, the estimation results reveal that the choice of letting the PAV self-park at a non-destination location is significantly influenced by the location of such parking, the potential delay in re-taking the vehicle, and the fuel/energy consumption to and from the non-destination parking place. Attitudes toward AVs also play a crucial role, with perceived safety and perceived usefulness having the greatest impact. Our results can help managers and planners understand how PAVs affect people's travel mode choices and the corresponding parking options and assist them in developing strategies in preparation for the widespread use of AVs.

Ride-hailing companies will face the emergence and gradual expansion of AVs-only zones in urban areas where only automated vehicles (AVs) are allowed to circulate. When owning a mixed fleet (automated and conventional taxis), a ride-hailing company has to determine the optimal fleet size as a function of the gradually expanding coverage of AVs-only zones while taking into account interactions with privately-owned human-driven vehicles. To model this problem, we propose a bi-level framework in which the lower level captures the mixed routing behaviour of the vehicles and the endogenous traffic congestion, and the upper level determines fleet sizes to maximise profit. A parallel genetic algorithm is introduced to solve this bi-level framework, which is embedded with a tailored algorithm for solving the lower-level model. Numerical experiments are conducted on instances based on a small network and the network of the city of Delft, The Netherlands, to demonstrate the performance of the proposed solution method and investigate the impacts of AVs-only zones on traffic and ride-hailing operations. Results indicate that the fleet size of automated taxis increases nonlinearly with the expansion of the AVs-only zone while that of conventional taxis decreases as demand shifts from human-driven vehicles to automated taxis. The fleet size decision depends heavily on the fleet's cost structure, the location and the distribution of parking depots. Furthermore, the existence of an AVs-only zone leads to detours for human-driven vehicles in the early stages, but it will bring major benefits by reducing congestion as its size increases.