Parking Policies for Supporting Sustainable Mobility

AbstractParking policies have become an integral part of modern urban planning strategies as transportation planners and engineers have recognized the substantial impact they may have on mode choice and travel routes, directly affecting urban mobility characteristics. For parking policies to be truly valuable and effective, they should be carefully integrated into a transport development plan aiming to achieve the long–term targets of sustainable mobility. To this end, this paper investigates the impact of parking policies on urban mobility characteristics and then highlights, through a case study in a medium–sized Greek city, the actions to be undertaken for their successful implementation

External costs due to congestion, accidents, energy consumption and emissions before and into the economic crisis: Pilot study along selected roadways of Thessaloniki, Greece

Prior to the economic crisis, forecasts indicated a continuous increase of traffic in European cities, highlighting the need of a policy to alleviate the external impacts of transport. The crisis, however, generated pressures on all sectors of activity, with transport being an indicative example. The reduction of income and employment, the increased vehicle maintenance and renewal costs and the transport related taxation seem to affect the transport system and its external impacts. Thus, taking for granted that Europe will eventually achieve “sustainable recovery” from the crisis, the current period presents an opportunity for promoting sustainable mobility policies and interventions in the most affected by the crisis European cities. Towards this goal, it is essential to capitalise on contemporary techniques for the monitoring of changes in transport external costs. The purpose of the paper is the development of a methodology for the estimation of external costs due to congestion, air pollution, climate change and accidents, based on road traffic data. The methodology is applied along road arteries in Thessaloniki for the period “before and after” the emergence of the crisis. As a result, an overall decrease in external costs is observed, creating an unforeseen “surplus” for the society during the crisis

Infrastructure Planning for Autonomous Electric Vehicles, Integrating Safety and Sustainability Aspects: A Multi-Criteria Analysis Approach

After the awareness-raising of recent years for coping with the global societal, economic and environmental challenges, the need for sustainable planning in the transport sector has become even more evident. Initiatives aiming at promoting sustainable and innovative mobility solutions, especially in urban areas where mobility needs are higher and transport problems are more intense, have been launched by different organizations around the world. In this context, autonomous electric vehicles are emerging as a promising solution; however, they are accompanied by new infrastructure requirements, along with safety concerns. Policymakers will be confronted with an array of choices, such as plug-in or wireless, dynamic or stationary charging and mixed flow with conventional vehicles or dedicated lanes, taking into account the uncertain impacts of innovation on safety and sustainability. Within this scope, these infrastructure alternatives are evaluated and prioritized, for the first time, in the present study, through the combined application of two hybrid multi-criteria analysis models, with the participation of experts. The analysis is based on a set of safety and sustainability criteria. Road safety and exposure to electromagnetic radiation emerge as the most important criteria, with the optimum solution—based on current data—consisting of plug-in charging and the circulation of autonomous electric vehicles in dedicated lanes

The use of a transport simulation system (AIMSUN) to determine the environmental effects of pedestrianization and traffic management in the center of Thessaloniki

Traffic congestion in urban areas results in increased energy consumption and vehicle emissions. Traffic management that alleviates traffic congestion also mitigates the environmental effects of vehicular traffic. This study uses the transport simulation model AIMSUN to evaluate the environmental effect of a set of traffic management and pedestrianization schemes. The effects of the pedestrianization of specific sections of roads, converting two-way roads into one-way roads for traffic and changing the direction of flow of traffic along one-way roads were simulated for different areas of Thessaloniki’s city centre network. The assessment of the environmental effect was done by determining the predicted fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and air pollutants. Fuel consumption and the environmental indicators were quantified directly using the fuel consumption and emissions model in AIMSUN. A typical weekday morning peak period, between 09:00am–10:00am, was simulated and the demand data obtained using a macroscopic traffic assignment model previously developed for the wider area of Thessaloniki. The results presented in this paper are for network-wide simulation statistics (i.e. fuel consumed, carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM))