See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315987337 Case studies on transport policy Article in Case Studies on Transport Policy · April 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.cstp.2017.04.001 CITATIONS READS 0 1,205 2 authors: Antonio Musso Bruno Dalla Chiara Sapienza University of Rome Politecnico di Torino 67 PUBLICATIONS 391 CITATIONS 58 PUBLICATIONS 397 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Outsourcing strategies and business implications View project vulnerable user mobility View project All content following this page was uploaded by Bruno Dalla Chiara on 08 June 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. SEE PROFILE Case Studies on Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Case Studies on Transport Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cstp Editorial Case studies on transport policy Flexible use of modern metropolitan transport networks In Italy, there is an official categorisation of academic groups, based on their main disciplines: one of these groups, within the Engineering area, is entitled “Transport Systems”, and it includes transport planning, together with all the related policies and analyses. Every two years, the academics belonging to this group meet together, in order to share their scientific and technical results, during a scientific seminar; the most recent one took place at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) in September 2015; this special Issue has been developed by selecting five of the forty-three papers presented at the Turin scientific seminar which were considered to be relevant as far as Case Studies on Transport Policy are concerned. The main issues dealt with in this Seminar can be summarised as pertaining to innovative transport system services and solutions; special attention was paid to topics related to a gradual independence from the main energy source that transport systems are based upon, and to the use of lower energy per unit mass in motorised mobility in order to reduce the energy consumption per person and – consequently – greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time preserving safety, which not all of the most energy-efficient transport systems can guarantee. The findings of this selection of papers have pointed out some recurring constraints in the governance of densely populated, compact and consolidated urban areas pertaining to both pricing policies and restricted access to passenger cars during given time-windows, sometimes because of pollution reasons; these issues are steering transport policies and user’s choices towards a more flexible use of transport networks: since the arrival of the new century, some medium and large-size metropolitan areas have registered an increase in the use of bicycles and motorbikes, as well as in bike and car sharing services; in some cases, this is also evidenced by the major modal share in favour of modern transit, especially when its quality meets the users’ higher expectations, since they are accustomed to up-to-date automobiles. In modern metropolitan networks, the choice of travellers therefore becomes more flexible, with more opportunities for unplanned travelling decisions; however, at the same time, local administrators should be prompt in redesigning interchange and parking facilities, electric charging areas, and in realigning pricing policies to the new trends of local mobility and logistics. The selected papers all contribute to obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of some of the current trends regarding the choice of hybrid models for personal journeys and also of the network use or design to meet the most advanced energy or environmental requirements. Powered and unpowered (bicycles) two-wheelers are therefore becoming more relevant, especially when efficiency and safety requirements have to be met. More and more requests are being made for parking areas to be equipped with charging spots, and even managed by pricing schemes to differentiate both the demand and energy charging according to the time of the day and the kind of electric charging. Urban distribution and freight modes, which are new constraints that should be added to the abovementioned ones, also need to be satisfied. All these topics have been well dealt with clearly in the papers selected for this Special Issue. The need to reduce the use of private vehicles has led to the development of “soft” measures, aimed at raising the awareness of car users, through information processes on the benefits of more environmentally friendly modes, thus encouraging them to voluntarily change their travel choice behavior, and at the same time attempting to guarantee a roughly unchanged level of service characteristics. The objective of the work by Sottile et al. (“Hybrid choice model to disentangle the effect of awareness from attitudes: application test of soft measures in medium size city”) was to provide empirical evidence on the effect of the awareness and individual attitudes towards the switch from driving to more sustainable modes, such as Park and Ride. The results of their case study show that the more people consider the information about stress useful, the more they tend to behave sustainably, thus suggesting the importance of giving feedback about stress in personalised travel plans to promote sustainable mobility. Interestingly, the information about pollution instead had less impact in steering the behavior of car users towards sustainable modes. According to the Guest Editors, an updated metropolitan transport network should include, in this context, the current needs of urban societies: - energy efficiency, that is, the ratio of used power to transported passengers; the consequent pollution, related to the kind of used power; the quality of travelling, safety and security. It should also be considered that most cities are populated by people with rather different budgets and therefore different available funds for mobility, which sometimes intensifies the use of motor-bikes, bicycles, public transport; a differentiation of the use of private cars is also pursued, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2017.04.001 2213-624X/ © 2017 World Conference on Transport Research Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Case Studies on Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Editorial according to the affordability of new hybrid, flexible vehicles, or of full-electric vehicles in a shared form, when the budget of a person or a family is not sufficient to allow them to buy a modern plug-in hybrid car that would be compliant with the aforementioned current constraints. Caggiani et al. in “A Transportation Network Design Model with Equity Constraints: evidences from an empirical study” underlined that most of the models adopted to solve the transportation Network Design Problem (NDP) neglect equity goals which, considering the societal function of transportation systems, should instead play an important role. The NDP should be addressed to solutions in which the outcomes of the design (costs and/or benefits) are distributed as fairly as possible among the potential users or classes of users. An Equity Based NDP was proposed in the paper, in which the optimal layout of a road network was determined by minimizing the total cost of the system under flexible equity constraints, while taking into account the choice of route behavior of the network users. The obtained NDP model is a multi-objective fuzzy programming model that allows the most equitable solution to be determined with the aim of reducing the realization costs according to a given set of constraints. This paper, notwithstanding the network design approach, leads the readers to consider the operation of a transport network according to the previously mentioned flexible use approach, and which is also recalled later on, when dealing with park and ride areas. Co-modality and the current sensitivity towards energy and environmental issues are encouraging a number of cities in the most industrialized countries to increase the availability of facilities in order to attain a more sustainable and modal-mixed form of mobility: each mode is used when and where it is most suitable and compliant with the needs, that is, both the systematic ones and the variable ones, which nowadays can also rely on connected mobile devices. The consequent remarkable increase in powered and unpowered (bicycles) two-wheelers in urban areas of many industrialised countries, frequently for short rides to connect with other modes (generally public transport) to reach the starting point or the destination of the trip, and the increase in the number of accidents have led researchers to explore the cyclists’ behaviour and perception of hazards. In their study “Cyclist gaze behavior in urban space: an eye-tracking experiment on the bicycle network of Bologna”, Mantuano et al. offered a better understanding of the elements that can represent interferences, and which can impact on the safety of a user's trip. Field tests were performed in the urban centre of Bologna (Italy), and suggestions are provided in their conclusions. Although, on the one hand, the use of powered and unpowered two-wheels satisfies the need for a more flexible and frequently oil-independent urban transport system as a whole, on the other hand it is necessary to recall that two-wheel riders are among the most at risk and exposed travellers, according to many statistics. Therefore, a methodology for the evaluation of road accidents and health care costs for powered two-wheelers has been set up by Corazza et al. through a case study in the city of Rome (“A Methodology for the Evaluation of Road Accidents Health Care Costs for Powered Two-Wheelers: the Rome Case Study”). The study is based on the acknowledged high vulnerability of cyclists and riders and on the overall underestimation of the health care costs necessary to recover and rehabilitate those involved in road accidents, especially riders. After a literature review on how health care costs are calculated throughout the world (often as part of the overall road safety social costs), the paper analyzes the road accidents that had occurred in Rome during the analysed period, defines the actual health care costs that were incurred and revises the results, taking into account the level of vulnerability of the involved powered two-wheeler victims and the gravity of the event, in order to provide more accurate estimations of such costs. Finally, co-modality also means a better usage of park and ride areas, interconnections with metros, and people movers, as well as shared mobility stations, either for cars or for bikes. Maternini et al. studied this aspect in “Application of variable parking pricing techniques to innovate parking strategies. The case study of Brescia” from the point of view of the application of variable parking pricing techniques or schemes to innovate parking strategies. The analysis of some European and American case studies (London, the UK, and San Francisco, the USA) reveals the existence of innovative plans and actions in urban planning and parking strategies. Such innovative tools can be considered the starting point of a new parking management optimization process. In particular, the variability of parking pricing, in relation to the occupancy index, is considered a good method to ensure an “ideal” maximum percentage of occupied parking spaces (ranging between 60% and 80%) mainly for “off-street” parking. The paper also has the aim of providing guidance for a future application of the performance-based pricing schemes to the Italian context, on the basis of the results of a recent experiment on variable pricing techniques in San Francisco, California (the “SFpark” programme). The whole Special Issue can be summarised by stating that modern cities require flexibility in the choice of their modals, and that the Public administrations have to be acquainted with the fact that the introduced urban policies need to satisfy these new needs: more interchange areas, policies for shared vehicles, policies to favour all the alternative modes, including variable pricing of both the city centres – such as a variable fee to access byroads around the middle of a town or protected areas, according to the kind of traction or propulsion of the motor vehicle – and of parking areas. Antonio Musso Full Professor of “Transportation Networks and Vehicles” at the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering (DICEA) of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. President of the Italian Society of Transportation Academicians (SIDT). Member of the Steering Committee of the World Conference on Transport Research Society (WCTRS). He is the author of more than 140 papers in international scientific journals in the field of freight transport, urban transport planning and railway technology. He has more than 40 years of experience in independent consultancy services for a broad range of international clients, including transport administrations, local authorities, community groups and funding agencies. 2 Case Studies on Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Editorial Bruno Dalla Chiara has been an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino in the field of Transport Systems since 2005; he obtained the national qualification as full Professor in Transport Systems in 2014. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, with specialisation in transport systems, engineering and economics (1993), and a Ph.D. in Transport Engineering, with specialisation in ITS (1997). He holds the chair, at the Politecnico di Torino, in “Engineering and operation of Transport Systems”. He is the author of several publications, mainly concerning the engineering and design of transport systems, ITS, rail and intermodal transport. ⁎ Antonio Musso Università di Roma La Sapienza, Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering, Italy E-mail address: [email protected] Bruno Dalla Chiara Politecnico di Torino, Dept. DIATI – Transport Systems, Italy E-mail address: [email protected] ⁎ Corresponding author. 3 View publication stats
