The problem of sustainable transport system development is currently very important and frequently analysed. It concerns promotion of such transport, which is efficient, cost effective and meets the expectations of the society. At the same time, such transport should minimize its negative impact on public health, environment, and economy or urban planning. This paper deals with selected aspects of developing sustainable transport systems and assessing them based on their negative impact on society (amount of pollution and noise emissions). A number of different scenarios for the sustainable transport system development were presented. In addition, a procedure for evaluating these scenarios was proposed (using appropriate evaluation criteria and indicators, including noise and pollutant emissions from road transport). The studies presented in this paper were carried out using the PTV Visum tool and transport models developed in it (e.g. EMITRANSYS or MTAW 2015).

Development of railway infrastructure at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the speeds of trains in passenger and freight traffic are the result of improving the structure of modern rail vehicles and railway infrastructure optimization. The structure of the railway surface, which enables high speeds and transferring ever greater loads and pressures of up to 25–30 t/vehicle axis, must meet very strict strength and durability requirements. This paper discusses mathematical and numerical tools used in simulation and experimental tests of railway surfaces, as well as its selected elements. Issues addressed in this paper concern, among others, modeling of the railway track, calculations related to its static and dynamic loading, and simulation of the technological process of selected elements of railway turnout. Selected results of the simulation tests on numerical models showing their behavior under different loads are also presented in this paper. The concept of symmetry is included in the possibility of applying the method described in the article both for testing other sections of railway lines, as well as for testing other elements in which stresses occur.

This article presents research results on a multi-aspect assessment of delivery planning in the urban transport network. The distribution of goods and the operation of a network of small services in urban agglomerations is a very important decision-making problem. This is due, on one hand, to the dense development of urban areas and, on the other hand, to the increasing restrictions on minimizing harmful exhaust gases emitted by cars. Hence, many researchers are looking for decision support methods that take into account many partial points of view in the field of transport services for small service companies located in urban areas. The authors present a method of multi-criteria decision support in the planning of urban supplies, taking into account the minimization of emissions of harmful compounds (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter), the cost, time, and amount of ecosystem exposure to these compounds. An important aspect of this research was to identify partial criteria of the decision support methodology and the definition of decision variants. The partial criteria included cost, time, and the amount of exposure of the ecosystem to harmful compounds. The Saaty method was used to determine the weights of the criteria.

The issues addressed by the article concern the assessment of energy efficiency in rail transport, resulting from the proper organization of rail traffic. The problems related to energy consumption and, thus, the negative impact of rail transport on the natural environment are highly significant in terms of the green deal concept, climate change and sustainable development. In this article, energy efficiency is investigated in the context of minimizing the energy consumption necessary to satisfy a specific transport requirement. The essence of this article is to present an approach to energy-efficient planning of rail freight traffic. This article aims to develop a method covers the allocation of railway vehicles dedicated to freight traffic (locomotives and railcars) to perform a defined transport task, taking into account the energy efficiency assessment of the solution, routing the train launched with regard to the accomplishment of the defined transport task on the railway network, and determining the conditions of transport for a defined transport task, taking into account the allocated rolling stock (locomotives and railcars) and the route. In this article, based on the presented state of knowledge, a decision-making model has been proposed, including the model’s parameters, the values being searched for, indicators for assessing the quality of the solution, as well as the limitations and boundary conditions of the problem. The function of minimizing the energy consumption necessary to transport a shipment within the railway network (determining the energy efficiency of the proposed solution) has been proposed as the criterion. In addition, a description of the proprietary method of selecting rolling stock for accomplishing tasks, based on the assessment of the energy efficiency of the solution and a case study illustrating the operation of the method on the example of the area of Poland, has been presented.