The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme, aimed at reducing the externalities connected with the freight delivery process. Both packages destined to commercial activities and to end consumers (e-commerce) are taken into account. Each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. In the proposed transport system, freight is firstly delivered to the UDC on the border of urban areas through trucks or trains which perform the long distance transport. After, freight is reorganized and consolidated into load units, i.e. the FURBOT boxes, according to packages dimensions and to the addresses of receivers. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a FURBOT vehicle. The receivers are in charge of collecting their packages in the related unloading bays where they have been delivered. The paper concerns a methodology for optimizing this freight transport system’s performances. The overall methodology receives in input the actual freight demand and the road network, and finds the transport system parameters (number of required FURBOT boxes, their temporary unloading bay, the FURBOT fleet dimension and the FURBOT vehicle routing) that minimize the system overall cost. The overall cost is a sum of the users’ cost, which depends on the distance they have to walk for collecting their packages in the FURBOT box, and of the operator’s cost, which depends on the number of required boxes, the total distance travelled by the FURBOT vehicles and the required number of FURBOT vehicles. The overall procedure has been applied to the case study of Barreiro old town, a suburb of Lisbon, Portugal.

This paper deals with a new ITS system aimed at reducing road congestion and noise emissions on the urban roads leading to port terminals. This system is composed of: traffic video cameras, VMS panels and an app. These three components are connected and managed by an integrated ITS system management platform, called “LIST Port ITS System Central” in this paper. Video cameras measure traffic characteristics, such as flow rates, speed and composition of the vehicle stream and provide these data to the LIST Port ITS System Central. The central elaborates the data and provide the traffic flow characteristics to the app. The app calculates, in real time, the best route to/from port terminals, according to traffic congestion and noise emissions, and provides this information to the Central. Then, the app shows to the user the best route and the traffic and noise status in real time. The calculation of the best routes takes place according to the “physical capacity” and “acoustic capacity” of road infrastructures. Noise emissions are directly calculated from traffic characteristics by means of the CNOSSOS-EU model, and are after compared to the noise emission limit levels established by law. The services provided by the LIST Port ITS system are new, because, currently, routing strategies are usually based only on congestion, while noise pollution is almost always neglected. Noise pollution could be a more restrictive constraint because the “acoustic capacity” is often lower than the physical one.

In this paper, the usage of railway lines across the Alps is evaluated, both at present and after the new lines and base tunnels will be in operation. The railway network of a large part of Europe has been modelled through a graph, and the best routes between some of the most important origin/destination pairs in Italy and Europe have been determined. A new cost function has been developed for the links of the network. The proposed cost function is an improvement of those existing in the literature, because all cost components are taken into account in detail, while the traction cost and the number of locomotives utilized explicitly depend on the geometrical characteristics of rail lines. This last aspect is crucial in analyzing the rail lines across the Alps, as they are often operated in double or triple traction. The results of the study show the importance of new Alpine rail lines and base tunnels: the Ceneri base tunnel will remove a bottleneck on the Gotthard line, while the Brenner and Frejus base tunnels will take up a quota of demand currently served by other lines. Moreover, the new Alpine lines will create an east–west rail connection, through the Italian Padan Plain, alternative to the rail route which currently bypasses the Alps to the north.

The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme, aimed at reducing the externalities connected with the freight delivery process. Both packages destined to commercial activities and to end consumers (e-commerce) are taken into account. Each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. In the proposed transport system, freight is firstly delivered to the urban distribution centre on the border of urban areas through trucks or trains which perform the long distance transport. After, freight is reorganized and consolidated into special load units (FURBOT boxes), according to packages dimensions and to the addresses of receivers. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a smalllelectrically powered vehicle (FURBOT vehicle). The paper concerns a methodology for optimizing this freight transport system's performances. The input data are the actual freight demand, the road network and the public policies. The methodology determines the best number of FURBOT boxes which minimizes the system cost. The overall cost is a sum of the users cost, which depends on the distance they have to walk for collecting their packages in the FURBOT box, and of the operator cost, which depends on the number of boxes, and the total distance travelled by the FURBOT vehicles. The minimization problem has been approached by a Simulated Annealing procedure. The methodology recalls two sub-problems: a first sub-problem to determine the optimum clustering of packages in the FURBOT boxes, and a second sub problem to determine the best routing of FURBOT vehicles. The methodology has been applied to the case study of Genoa city centre, Italy

In this paper, the potential hinterland of the new container terminal of the port of Leghorn (Livorno in Italian) is studied. The study actually analyses the competitiveness of major European ports with respect to some of the most contestable regions in Europe. Travel time and monetary costs of railway paths, connecting ports to their hinterland, have been determined. The rail network of a large part of Europe was modelled using a graph. To each link, which represents a portion of the rail line, a cost function is associated. The travel time on the link is determined from the average speed, which has been determined from the maximum speed via formulae obtained through linear regression. The few cost functions that exist in current literature for the computation of the cost of a rail link are not detailed enough. Therefore, a new cost function has been developed. All cost components were determined in detail: the staff cost, the amortisation, maintenance, and insurance costs of locomotives and wagons, the cost of the usage of rail track, the traction cost. The traction cost was calculated in detail from all resistances to motion. Moreover, for each rail link, the number of locomotives needed to operate the train and the maximum towable weight were determined. The monetary value of time in freight transport registers a high variability; therefore, three different optimisations of the paths—by travel times, monetary costs, and generalised costs—between each origin–destination pair were carried out. The rates of competitiveness of the ports with respect to the examined European contestable regions were analysed.

In this paper, a new methodology for the assessment of the so-called “acoustic capacity” of a road infrastructure is proposed. This aspect is very important in the field of transportation planning as, currently, road infrastructures are verified only in terms of physical capacity; at most, the environmental capacity due to atmospheric pollutants is taken into account, while the acoustic capacity is completely neglected. The acoustic capacity is assessed based on the Harmonoise model, which is widely recognized at the European level. The Harmonoise model, starting from traffic data, such as traffic flows, average speed, and typologies of vehicles, provides the levels of noise emissions and immissions, which can be compared to the noise limit levels established by law. The validity of the proposed methodology was assessed on a test network. The results of this analysis show that, generally, the acoustic capacity is actually a capacity constraint, which involves several traffic flows: this occurs in particular in the case of an intersection, but also in the case of a bi-directional road. Furthermore, the acoustic capacity of a road infrastructure is generally lower than its physical capacity.