Helicopter operations: the environmental impact and ground facilities. Procedures and operational standards for the system’s acceptance.

The link between the heliports, environmental quality and safety is an important challenge in the field of helicopter transport. This challenge is especially crucial when the helicopter operations are carried out on densely urbanized areas. Often these areas have significant constraints and obstacles, particularly in terms of noise pollution. These constraints make the approach/takeoff maneuvers very complicated. The theme of the environmental sustainability of the rotorcraft is strongly felt in many countries. The production of noise is subjected to numerous rules and procedures, which tend to improve the acceptability of the helicopter by residents in neighboring areas to verti/heliports. The attention of manufacturers towards the problems of noise compatibility has produced technological innovations to reduce emissions, such as the shape of the tip of rotor blades, a speed reduction of rotation of the rotors, etc. Environmental concerns are becoming increasingly important when siting all aviation facilities. In particular, heliport facilities generate both positive and negative impacts on the surrounding environment. Negative impacts are mainly related to soil quality, water resources, safety issues, air environment (especially during the construction phase), noise (during operations) and biological environment. Positive ones could occur by the increase of emergency services, revenue generation, and the provision of a better connectivity with the neighborhoods located nearby the facility, the raise of employment opportunities and the general improvement of air transport facilities. The current international regulatory framework on heliport facilities seems to be lacking with regards to the evaluation of the environmental impacts of the heliport facilities. Moreover, the national rules on this topic are often undefined or vague. For this reason, it seems necessary to define guidelines to improve the awareness of the consequences which spontaneously arise from the planning and designing phase of heliports. Already from the site selection stage, heliport planners have to take into account all potential environmental issues. Noise is always the primary concern in these cases. A candidate site must be compatible with its surroundings. Compatibility must include any increase in activity resulting from IFR capability. Additional issues that citizens and municipalities are concerned about include air pollution, water pollution, ground access, and safety flight operations. Air pollution by helicopters is negligible although this issue may be brought up by concerned citizens and communities. Water pollution caused by fueling or maintenance facilities at a verti/heliport is coming under greater scrutiny. The ability to deal with all these public issues must be addressed during final site selection and community standards must be upheld. Ground access to a new transportation mode may increase traffic at and en route to that location and create a potential increase in noise and air pollution. These concerns must be dealt with in the design of ground access to the facility and by incorporating the individual community's standards, regulations, and goals. The receptivity of community leaders to work with the vertical landing facility to solve these problems should be measured in the final site selection process. Beyond the direct benefit of affecting the environment as little as possible, addressing environmental issues is an additional, albeit indirect tool, in obtaining and keeping good relations with the local government and its citizens. A heliport that has been developed into an IFR facility must be viable for a sufficient length of time to realize a return on investment (ROI) and to also achieve a contribution to the transportation system. In order to select a potentially viable heliport it is vital to consider the compatibility of surrounding land uses, both existing and future. A heliport that, at the present time, is considered by its neighbors as a nuisance cannot be counted on to remain in operation for an acceptable amount of time. Plans for future land use in the area must be determined through an investigation of planning documents at the appropriate levels (city, county, regional, etc.). Issues that instead will be addressed are related to the identification of the flight phases producing noise, by analyzing the different type of noise emission regarding the flight phase. Moreover, the role of helicopter’s pilot into the restraint of helicopter’s noise with particular regards to the driving behavior and its impact on noisiness’ reduction will be treated. In general, it can be stated that pilots have to do everything for reducing helicopter’s noise while remaining within the safety range’s parameters of the rotorcraft. Here comes the need of developing a worldwide analysis of the regulatory constraints for restricting helicopters’ impact on the populations residing nearby ground facilities. These constraints dictate operational rules for departure and approach phases of rotorcraft. Others factors affecting noise emissions are, for instance, temperature, humidity, wind, rotor blades. Standard procedures for noise abatement are: to fly at the highest altitude possible among those compatible with the airspace and safety rules; to enhance the awareness of the different noise perception that can be induced depending on the overflown environment (e.g. urban areas or country); The proposed study is articulated as follow: identification of measures to be implemented for reducing the environmental impact; analysis of current standard rules in several countries with regards to environmental constraints; proposals for initiatives aiming to the rules’ standardization regarding operations on heliports and helipads; samples of operational actions to be implemented for departure and approach phases; review of international experiences in the flight procedures applied for noise abatement

La riqualificazione della viabilità costiera per la mobilità dolce: il caso di Palermo

The attractiveness and the availability of services offered in urban areas nearby the port terminals are conditioned by the improvement of the connection of different urban transport systems and by the enhancement of the accessibility. But they should be based on the overall improvement of urban mobility. The structural organization of the territory is favored by the presence of links, which realize an infrastructure system to the different levels of connection and accessibility. The interventions could include the requalification of the coastal strip, including the road network component. Attention should be given to the supply quality, the rationalization of a linear model based on the coastal viability and on the access to the poles of the city and its hinterland. It should be also took in to account a rationalization of urban traffic, using exchange parking areas with enhanced public transport systems, and of the creation of pedestrian and bicycle paths for soft mobility on the short and medium range distances

IL RUOLO DELLA QUALITÀ PERCEPITA DEI PERCORSI PEDONALI NELLA SCELTA DEL TRASPORTO PUBBLICO

Il fenomeno del pendolarismo oggigiorno coinvolge ampie fasce della popolazione, manifestandosi attraverso spostamenti sistematici, spesso quotidiani, dal proprio luogo di residenza verso altra destinazione, per motivi di studio o di lavoro. La definizione di spostamento pendolare prescinde dalla distanza percorsa o dal tempo di viaggio. Tipicamente, i pendolari si spostano tra differenti aree di regioni metropolitane, seguendo percorsi multimodali, costituiti anche da itinerari di “mobilità dolce” (pedonale o ciclabile). La mancanza di una cultura della pianificazione urbanistica, la diffusione sul territorio delle funzioni residenziali e l’accentramento delle attività produttive e commerciali hanno determinato, negli ultimi decenni, una crescita intensa dei fenomeni di pendolarismo. A causa del notevole sviluppo dei centri urbani, divenuti delle vere e proprie “città diffuse”, la durata degli spostamenti pendolari ha subito forti incrementi, occupando, in molti casi, gran parte della vita dei viaggiatori. Il pendolarismo, inoltre, è considerato uno dei fattori che maggiormente contribuiscono all’inquinamento atmosferico, a causa della congestione della rete stradale metropolitana. Ne deriva un crescente degrado della “qualità” della vita per gli stessi pendolari e per gli individui residenti nelle aree limitrofe alle grandi arterie di collegamento. Per risolvere questi problemi, si è da tempo affermato l’orientamento ad elaborare politiche per la promozione dell’uso del trasporto collettivo, volte, in particolare, a conseguire miglioramenti dei servizi pubblici sia sul piano dell’efficienza sia su quello dell’efficacia. Tuttavia, in generale, l’attenzione è rivolta alla progettazione dell’offerta del singolo modo di trasporto pubblico, senza considerare l’integrazione con altre forme di trasporto collettivo e con le modalità di “mobilità dolce”. Ne discende una scarsa competitività dei servizi di trasporto pubblico, con la conseguenza di una ripartizione modale molto sbilanciata a favore dell’auto

Infrastructure, Tariff and Legal Action: How to Achieve a Climate-Friendly Transport System

Transportation absorbs about 70% of oil consumption in EU countries. The fuels that burn in the field of transport are composed of 96% of oil. Energy efficiency of road and air traffic must also be improved. But transport environmental impacts reductions should be made necessarily through a transfer of traffic from the car, lorries and aircraft to train, ship, and non motorized two-wheelers into the EU cities. In fact the former are large producers of greenhouse gases, while the latter are more environmentally friendly means of transport in climate. Reaching an annual increase of 1% of the modal split in favour of more sustainable means of transport on the environment must be set as a goal ecologic. Legal, infrastructure and tariff measures have to be proposed, in addition to technical measures (reduction of traffic, growth in the energy efficiency of vehicles, reduction of ravelled distances, improved logistics, etc.). Legal measures refer to possible law limits in terms on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions due to traffic set by the EU. Infrastructure measures can be distinguished on the basis of the concerned territory. On the one hand there is the city, where it seems appropriate to move with intermodal chain, more secure and environmentally friendly. On the other hand there are fundamentally the suburbs, where investment in new transport infrastructures may be contradictory in terms of climate protection. Tariff measures express the already established concept of "who produces pollution, he pays". The external costs generated by different modes of transport have to be progressively turned over to users