Since the emergence of COVID-19, travel restrictions due to the pandemic have influenced several activities, in particular the mobility patterns of individuals. Our main goal is to draw the attention of scholars and policy makers to a specific segment of the population, namely (1) older people, (2) persons with disabilities (PwDs), (3) females, and (4) low-income population that are more vulnerable for travel behaviour change due to crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This article systematically reviews the studies that have explored the implications of COVID-19 for the mobility and activities of individuals pre-, during, and post-pandemic using the PRISMA method. It is found that there are a few studies regarding the travel and mobility needs and challenges of older people and PwDs, and there is no direct study concerning female and low-income individuals while such crisis exist. Questions such as “What are the adverse impacts of restrictions on their travel behaviour?”, “How can they travel safely to work, shopping, and medical centres?”, “Which transportation modes can be more effective for them?”, and “What are the government and policy makers’ role in providing accessible and affordable mobility services in the presence of such crisis?” are without relevant answers in the literature.

Dispersed settlement areas (e.g., Slovenia) result in lower development of fixed public transport lines and thereby car-dependent lifestyles. To avoid congestion inside the cities and on highways in these areas, shared mobility modes e.g., carpooling, is one of the effective solutions, increasing the occupancy of personal vehicles. However, passenger pick-up and drop-off locations still remain an important challenge for carpool users and transport officials. As a collection point for carpooling, we can consider “park and pool (P+P)” lots near highways’ interchanges. This study aims to examine the impacts of P+P lots near interchanges on carpooling behavior of users and on improving sustainable mobility on highways in such dispersed settlement areas. To do so, we employed a field survey, incorporated the P+P lots into the mode choice model, and examined different scenarios using the macroscopic transport model. It is found that factors such as travel cost, public transport service limitations, and improved parking facilities impact highway users’ mode choice. Sixty percent of respondents are willing to leave their car in P+P lots near interchanges. The results also show that P+P lots can increase the number of carpool users. It causes remarkable savings in terms of operating and external costs because of the reduction in total distance and time travelled by personal vehicles as well as parking demand reduction in cities. At the moment, especially in Central Europe, it is easier to invest in a “demand reduction” infrastructure than to increase the capacity of infrastructure. Therefore, P+P lots could be a “win-win” situation for both users and operators.

This paper introduces a numerical variable speed limit (VSL) control method on a motorway, modeled by the system of partial differential equations (PDEs) of a non- equilibrium continuum traffic model. The method consists of a macroscopic simulation (i.e., numerical solution of the system of PDEs of the continuum model), introduction of the solution-based cost function and numerical optimization with a differential evolution algorithm (DE). Due to the numerical solution scheme, the method enables application of a wide range of continuum traffic models without prior discretization of PDEs. In this way, the method overcomes the limitations of the basic continuum models and represents a step towards more accurate traffic modelling in control strategies. In this paper, we determine optimal variable speed limits with the DE algorithm on a motorway section modeled by the modified switching curve model, which is a non-equilibrium continuum model consistent with the three-phase traffic flow theory. The effectiveness of the determined variable speed limits is validated using microsimulations of the test section, which show promising reductions of queue lengths and number of stops.

To meet the collective goal of providing an efficient, sustainable, and safe transportation system, motorway managers are oriented toward establishing an optimal traffic management system (TMS). However, there are no straightforward guidelines through which to deploy the optimal integration scenario for traffic control centers (TCCs). An important component of TMSs is traffic control decisions, implying that human resources represent a critical feature of a TMS. In this study, we introduce human resource management (HRM) into the process of selecting the most appropriate integration scenario, which is achieved by developing a model to determine the number of employees. We formulated the problem as the mixed integer nonlinear programming problem based on the analysis of traffic incidents and road infrastructure data, considering also the employee voice and some HRM specificities in incident situations. Combining these findings with a SWOT analysis of the possible integration scenarios in Slovenia, we propose the most suitable scenario, in which TMS is organized as a cloud service. Moreover, this study predicts TCCs’ space requirements and identifies threats of neglecting HRM in TMS design. This paper can serve as a guideline and a baseline of expertise for motorway managers to create an effective and sustainable TMS in their region.

In many European countries and also in Slovenia, the highway network was rapidly built in order to reduce congestion and to increase the level of traffic safety on congested sections of the road network, thus enabling a higher level of service and accelerating polycentric development. Unfortunately, traffic demand is growing over all limits, be it tourist car traffic or transit-heavy vehicle traffic. Thus, countries are forced to actively manage road freight traffic, which is present all year round. Accordingly, in Slovenia, permanent and timed restrictions were introduced for trucks regarding overtaking on highways. Overtaking is prohibited during the day but trucks are allowed to change lanes at night. It should be noted, however, that there may be circumstances that can restrict the normal travel of heavy vehicles in all lanes in one way or another, whether at night or during the day. We would like to convince highway traffic managers that weather-responsive adaptive traffic control could be more efficient when weather conditions are considered. This article presents an approach to simulate traffic flow on a short section of a two-lane unidirectional carriageway under various weather conditions. Using two scenarios for lane traffic control, i.e., with and without a truck overtaking ban, as examples, we show that knowledge of the traffic characteristics of each lane in different weather conditions is important for decision-making and for the timeliness of traffic management. We found that under certain traffic and weather conditions, prohibiting vehicles from overtaking with limited speed limits on four-lane divided highways or proper traffic lane control has a positive effect on the traffic fluency or available conditional capacity of the highway. To some extent, this confirms that the decision of the operator of the Slovenian highway system regarding the driving regime for heavy vehicles was correct. Through our research, we found that dynamic bans can be more effective when we include the dynamics of traffic demand, and environmental and weather conditions.