I piani settoriali a scala urbana

Il contributo propone un focus su alcuni strumenti di settore che affrontano specifiche tematiche alla scala urbana, con particolare riferimento agli strumenti per la tutela della qualità ambientale e per il governo della mobilità. Si evidenziano, in entrambi i casi, le significative interrelazioni tra problematiche ambientali e scelte relative all’evoluzione/trasformazione dei contesti urbani e al governo della mobilità e la conseguente necessità di una più stretta integrazione tra strumenti generali e settoriali, difficilmente conseguibile attraverso il solo coordinamento a posteriori tra strumenti elaborati separatamente e sulla base di approcci settoriali

Road pricing as a citizen-candidate game

We construct a political economy model to analyze the political acceptability of road pricing policies. We use a citizen-candidate framework with a population composed by three groups differing for their income level. We show that road pricing policies are never applied when there is no redistribution of the resources in favour of other modes of transport or when the congestion of these types of transport is relatively high. The results suggest that the efficiency of the redistribution of resources from road to the alternative types of transport as well as the fraction of the population that uses the road transport are key factors in explaining the adoption of road pricing schemes

Evaluation of the implementation process of urban road pricing schemes in the United Kingdom and Italy

This paper is based upon detailed research that has taken place in the UK and Italy, on the implementation strategies for urban road pricing schemes. In the UK, both in London and Durham, the Road User Charging schemes required new legislation, and were implemented rapidly. The time from announcement to implementation took three years and the schemes were introduced after short periods of intensive planning, consultations and stakeholder networking. In Italy, the situation has been very different. The road pricing schemes in Rome and Genoa were not introduced under specific legislation but rather evolved from access control zones originally implemented in historic urban centres. The incremental introduction of the Italian road pricing experiments has taken approximately ten years. The paper undertakes a comparison of these different strategies to introduce urban road pricing and the lessons they contain for the development of similar measures elsewhere. The comparison of the different implementing experiences is undertaken using Strategic Policy Niche Management, a method designed to explore, among other factors, the dynamics of the stakeholder networks involved in planning, introducing, marketing and managing radical urban Travel Demand Management policies

Strategic environmental assessment implementation of transport and mobility plans. The case of italian regions and provinces

Transport and mobility plans imply strategies and actions that affect the environment. The European Union has introduced in 2001 the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to take into account and mitigate adverse environmental effects in planning and decision-making. SEA limited implementation has attracted the interest of many scholars that have sought methods able to assess the quality of SEA processes by identifying vices and virtues in practice. In this paper, we measure the quality of eight SEAs for transport and mobility plans of regional and provincial administrations of Italy. Results show that the overall quality level of SEA reports is only barely sufficient, Abruzzo is among the virtuous and Piedmont among the critical administrations. We also stress that the determination of impact significance has received the worse quality score. We finally compare our results to other Italian and British homologous cases finding interesting and generally confirmative evidence

Safety ranking definition for infrastructures with high PTW flow

Powered two-wheelers (PTWs) provide a suitable mode for a large portion of population in many cities due to rider's personal convenience and the vehicle supposed easiness of manoeuvring. At the same time PTWs present serious safety issues compared to other motorized vehicles. This paper reports the main outcome of study carried out in Rome, where this mode is very popular and assesses the economic efforts to make infrastructure safer for PTWs. The methodology, extensively described in the paper, includes three steps: the accident analysis, the development of economic indicators of accidents costs, the maintenance priority. In the first step the location of the PTWs local accidents are identified, then the accidents are analyzed by means of the suitable indicators and, among these the safety potential (SAPO). Lastly, according to the results of the analyzed indicators the need of infrastructure maintenance will be defined. Usually SAPO is applied to rural areas, but here it has been adapted to describe the phenomena of the urban area in hand. As a result, the estimation of the saving potential to improve the infrastructure safety levels, thus reducing the amount of accidents, is presented, along with recommendations on how to upscale the SAPO at city level

La Gestione dei trasporti in emergenza: attività, prodotti e risultati dell'esercitazione nazionale di Protezione Civile in Valtellina

L'articolo riporta l’esperienza maturata dal Laboratorio Mobilità e Trasporti del Politecnico di Milano in qualità di Centro di Competenza per la Gestione e la Sicurezza dei Trasporti per il Dipartimento di Protezione Civile Nazionale durante l’esercitazione nazionale di Protezione Civile in Valtellina. Le attività svolte, i prodotti realizzati e utilizzati ma soprattutto i risultati e l’esperienza emersi da una esercitazione temporalmente estesa e di estremo rilievo in ambito di Protezione Civile, si ritiene siano ancora estremamente attuali e utili come esempio per la gestione dei trasporti in caso di emergenze rilevanti

New trends on urban goods movement: Modelling and simulation of e-commerce distribution

In this paper, a modelling framework to complete the recent scientific works on urban goods modelling is proposed. More precisely, we introduce a substitution procedure that estimates the number of trips and the corresponding travelled distances for shopping drive, home delivery and reception points' strategies. Moreover, an appraisal of scenarios is proposed in order to study how these three new forms of proximity delivery services impact on the overall urban goods movement distribution. Starting from four extreme situations, we introduce more realistic scenarios in order to find a suitable combination of delivery strategies. All the scenarios are simulated using the proposed framework, and the main traffic issues related to e-commerce distribution channel are discussed. The best realistic combination promotes the joint usage of home deliveries and proximity reception points and allows a reduction of about 13% of the road occupancy rates in urban areas.urban goods movement, modelling, shopping trips, e-commerce

Costs and efficiency of highway concessionaires: a survey of Italian operators

Measuring the productivity of highway concessionaires is very relevant, especially when a price cap regulation is applied where tariff increases are based on expected improvements of productivity. Output may be measured in terms of traffic or network length, or a combination of both, while quality of service should ideally be accounted for. To measure productivity we consider only operating costs, as amortization and financial costs depend upon the original highway design and historical costs. A cross section analysis of the Italian concessionaires shows that: 1) operating costs depend on both traffic and capacity; 2) economies of scale are relevant but their estimate is very sensitive to the model specification; 3) there are large differences in efficiency among operators, indicating that there could be significant room for yardstick competition. We subsequently consider the main economic data regarding the major Italian concessionaire (Autostrade spa) over two decades. Revenues increased greatly, even more than traffic, while operating costs remained substantially stable in real terms, as the automation of toll collection allowed the company to reduce the number of collectors by almost half. Finally, a comparison between Italian and French concessionaires shows that the latter have much lower operating costs, which cannot be entirely explained by economies of scale or lower personnel costs.Highway; Regulation; Productivity; Price-cap

Heuristics and Biases in Travel Mode Choice

This study applies experimental methods to analyze travel mode choice. Two different scenarios are considered. In the first scenario, subjects have to decide whether to commute by car or by metro. Metro costs are fixed, while car costs are uncertain and determined by the joint effect of casual events and traffic congestion. In the second scenario, subjects have to decide whether to travel by car or by bus, both modes in which costs are determined by the combination of chance and congestion. Subjects receive feedback information on the actual travel times of both modes. We find that individuals exhibit a marked preference for cars, are inclined to confirm their first choice and demonstrate travel mode stickiness. We conclude that travel mode choice is subject to heuristics and biases that lead to robust deviations from rational choicetravel mode choice, learning, information, heuristics, cognitive biases