This paper discusses selected environmental and technological issues of routing freight vehicles in urban areas. The conditions of organizing...

Transport is a sector that is said to be negatively affecting the environment. The continuous development of transport increases the negative impact on the environment and civilization. In the article authors present the parameters that were used to describe the size of harmful transport exhaust emissions, in particular by means of road transport and the factors affecting their size. The areas where the level of concentrations of air pollutants are exceeded in Poland were characterized and analysed. Also examples of the stream traffic distribution in the selected area of the transport network were presented.

The process of urbanisation is one of the most characteristic features of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. All economic and demographic forecasts indicate that the process of urbanisation will continue to develop dynamically. Continuous urbanisation generates a number of problems that are connected with issues such as urban freight transport, i.e., the problem of traffic congestion, noise and air pollution. Therefore, recent years have seen a dynamic growth in programmes intended to alleviate the negative impact of transport on the urban environment. A number of international projects have been implemented or initiated and resulted in the development of interesting solutions that enabled the rationalisation of transport and contributed to the development of sustainable urban logistics, e.g., BESTUFS, CITY PORTS, CityLog, CityMove, C-LIEGE, FREIGHTWISE, GRASS, NOVELOG, SMARTFREIGHT and SUGAR. Especially worthy of note amongst those initiatives are those which are concentrated on the implementation of BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles). The authors of this paper have compared selected vehicles of the same brand and the same manufacturer, with the only difference being their N1 category power source (commercial vehicles with GVW of up to 3.5 tonnes), that are commonly used for the distribution of goods in urban conditions. The main purpose of the analysis was to answer the following question: can an electrical commercial vehicle compete in everyday use with a combustion-powered vehicle in the current market conditions? To this end, the authors developed a formula to calculate the total cost of ownership, in which all key criteria for vehicle use were taken into account, utilizing a scenario method. The utilitarian value of this research arises from the fact that Poland and its problems related to the issues analysed can serve as a source of preliminary analysis for other countries.

There is a plethora of methods in the global literature that can be used to measure CO₂ emissions from electrified transport. But are these methods reliable, and do they offer us a true view of how much exactly of this greenhouse gas is being produced by electric rail transport? We answer this question by proposing an improved CO₂ emission estimation model based on cargo transport. Unlike other works, our studies include four crucial steps: (1) estimation of energy consumption in electrified rail cargo transport; (2) estimation of energy losses in the railway traction system and high voltage transmission lines; (3) CO₂ emission estimation in traditional powerhouses; and (4) determination of the intensity of the CO₂ emissions from electrified rail cargo transport. Based on our method, we concluded that the intensity of CO₂ depends not only on the type of fossil fuel used for energy production but also on the parameters of the cargo train, such as its length and weight or the total number of wagon axles (which depend on wagon type). The achieved intensity of CO₂ emissions in electrified rail cargo transport slightly varies from those reported in the global literature. Among the most important reasons responsible for this are the conditions under which these tests were conducted. Nevertheless, our results shed new light on how CO₂ should be measured. We proved that the decarbonization of electrified rail cargo transport will never be possible without infrastructure modernization. In addition, based on a case study, we also delivered knowledge on how to reduce the environmental impact of electrified rail cargo transport.

This paper presents multi-criteria warehouses location problem in the logistics network. In order to solve this problem the location model was developed. The limitations and optimization criteria of the model were determined. Optimization criteria refer to transportation costs, costs associated with warehouses, e.g.: local taxes, expenditure on starting the warehouse, the constant costs, the labour force costs, the purchase costs of the additional land for the expansion, the transition costs of the raw material via the warehouses. The final location of warehouse facilities was obtained using a genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm was developed in order to solve the multi-criteria warehouses location problem. This paper describes the stages of the genetic algorithm i.e. the stage of designating the initial population, the crossover and mutation process, the adaptation function. In this paper, the process of calibration of this algorithm was presented. The results of the genetic algorithm were compared with the random results.