How can urban policies and planning approaches help in achieving a safer mobility and carbon reduction in the transport sector? The attention of planners and policy makers towards the promotion of sustainability and reduction of environmental impacts has grown in recent years. This paper investigates the role that Urban Planning plays in the long term towards a safer and climate friendlier mobility, highlighting the need for integrated approaches gathering spatial planning and mobility management. After a review of several urban policies and planning strategies, initiatives, and approaches, mainly based on the urban scale, the paper presents an urban regeneration case study leading to an increase of pedestrian accessibility at the neighborhood level. This can be seen as a support tool to foster sustainable, safe, and climate friendly mobility in cities. The results of the performed analysis show a dependency of accessibility from two different factors: the distribution of services and the capillarity of the soft mobility network, which can contribute to creating a more walkable space.

The top Formula 1 and Indycar teams make large use of computer simulation to improve the performance of their cars and make the set-up process quicker on the circuit. The paper aims to present a lap time simulation software dedicated to racing cars. It is based on the background of vehicle dynamics research developed at the University of Brescia, Italy (see [1]). It should be stated that racecar dynamics is strongly non-linear due to the fact that tyres are always very near the limit of adhesion. Moreover this makes the effect of lateral load transfer fundamental for the general balance of the car. Therefore Pacejka's Magic Formula has been used for lateral force/slip while longitudinal force computation is based on the assumption of a maximum longitudinal coefficient of friction μ. This is not only for simplicity but it is also due to lack of available data. The combined case is then based on the so-called “traction circle”. Lateral and longitudinal load transfer and downforce as well as their effects on tyre load are taken into account. The vehicle model is capable of following a trajectory acquired with the on-board instrumentation. Also, the use of genetic algorithms enables the program to find the optimum cornering line for any given track. Some results are shown and compared with real world data.

Traffic calming devices on urban streets, such as elevated pedestrian crossings, speed bumps and roundabouts, are increasingly used, raising a real problem in relation to the on-board comfort that passengers perceive. To measure vibrational comfort related to traffic calming devices that passengers of the public transport perceive, an acquisition system called ASGCM (Autonomous System for Geo-referenced Comfort Measurements) has been developed, taking as a reference the European regulations on rail transports. ASGCM permits to link each measurement of vibration, ground velocity and acceleration with geographical information resulting from a GPS. In this way a map of a comfort index, statistical surveys and correlation between on-board comfort and traffic calming, can be directly obtained by any Geographic Information System (GIS), able to query a centralized remote database, which was developed ad- hoc. A large number of experimental tests has been performed to define a vibrational comfort index and to collect a large dataset that allows statistically significant comparisons between different infrastructures and their characterization. The proposed technique can also be useful for diagnostics purposes, such as vehicle comparison and road maintenance state monitoring.