Planning bicycle infrastructure significantly depends on data that provide adequate information. Various studies indicate that GPS data, which have been collected via smartphone application by cyclists themselves, could provide that information. The article presents the results of a recently conducted study that evaluates the usability of such data for bicycle traffic planning in German cities. We used different methods (web-survey, focus group interview, data analysis) to investigate data needs of German municipal traffic planners and oppose it to the information deduced and computed from commercially available data provided by Strava Inc. The article reveals that the provided data are, in general, useful, but there are also serious limitations that must be considered.

Transport infrastructure produces many externalities. Increased accessibility and the resultant economic development are among the most notable positive ones. Accidents, air and noise pollution and other environmental issues, such as impacts on biodiversity, landscape and townscape, are the most important negative ones. In the case of railway infrastructure, noise impacts have a key effect on net social benefit. Noise reduction is crucial to achieve greater social benefits. Against this background, the University of Southampton has been undertaking the Track to the Future (T2F) project, which is assessing, among other issues, how to produce a quiet ballasted track system that at the same time is cheaper to maintain and renew.

This paper considers combinations of engineering interventions that could reduce rail-related noise, including under sleeper pads, rail dampers and noise barriers which all reduce noise emissions. It extends previous analysis of under sleeper pads to compare their costs and benefits with those of rail dampers and noise barriers in the context of a UK-based installation case study.

The safety assessment of Safety Critical Systems (SCSs) is a challenging task since it involves different actors and a combination of several knowledge domains. This increases the complexity of the integration of safety requirements into the design model. Consequently, there is a need for a shared model with an unambiguous terminology aiming to avoid misunderstandings between both safety and design teams. In this paper, we propose a model-based system engineering approach in order to support the goal-oriented safety reasoning and to provide a common model between both safety and requirement engineering driven by goals. Furthermore, the present study considers the safety rules development process based on the Organization-based Access Control (Or-BAC) model, which is normally used to improve the security of the information systems. Then, the common vocabulary proposed for the interpretation of the considered notions of domains is defined. Moreover, safety requirements are expressed with a high level of abstraction according to the required railway knowledge and the requirement trace- ability process is considered through an up-bottom reasoning using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. The proposed approach aims to provide a methodology able to identify safety conditions in order to anticipate risks and to make better safety-related decisions. Finally, the proposed methodology is evaluated through a real accident scenario analysis in order to validate its adaptability to represent real critical situations.

Tourism is a fast-growing key industry, which provides an economic rationale for governments to stimulate it. The more it grows, the higher the negative environmental effects and the more the use of space, resources, pollution and travel. Sustainable tourism aims to strike a balance between the environmental, economic and social effects of tourism. The aim of this article is to find the optimal itinerary for an individual traveller to a congress hotel in Valencia. The main research question is as follows: Which itinerary has the best overall score in terms of CO₂ per passenger kilometre, travel time and direct cost? Three scenarios were compared: Airplane plus, train plus and car only. The choice of these three suits the travel purpose and length. Literature was used to find the necessary trip and vehicle data. This was fed into a microsimulation model. The main outcome of the simulation experiment is that the environment would benefit if the traveller would favour the train plus scenario. This, however, has a time penalty compared to the airplane plus scenario. A trip by car is the least preferable, because of CO₂ emissions, travel safety and time. Direct costs of all three scenarios are comparable. Rail has the low- est emissions per passenger in the scenarios, hence it is important that network improvement programs continue and ticket prices stay in line with the price of travelling by car or airplane. An individual trav- eller was chosen for different reasons. One reason is that after understanding individual touristic travel decisions and their impact, it is a small step to estimate what is feasible if many more individuals would become ecofriendly touristic travellers. A second reason is that it allows an advice for governments and businesses to target individual tourists. Finally, there is the communicative impact of simplification on individual tourists.

Recent decades have seen a shift towards more sustainable transport and support of more balanced development of all modes of transport by many governments, with scholarly articles contributing to the discourse. However, users’ attitudes and satisfaction with existing modes of transport determine ultimate acceptance of new transport opportunities. Inclusion of the public is also essential to make a change towards new and more sustainable mobility choices. Accordingly, travel satisfaction as a source of travel mode choice is a significant aspect in the analysis of urban mobility. Different travellers with varying mode choices have different needs and priorities, influencing appreciation of and satisfaction with various aspects of travel.

This paper investigates key factors influencing individual travel behaviours for different travel modes by examining the interactions of mode choice and traveller satisfaction with mobility challenges. Primary data were collected through online surveys conducted as a part of the EU-Horizon 2020-funded Cities-4-People project. Quantitative data were collected to analyse the socio-demographic characteristics of citizens moving daily in the city, their routes, mobility challenges and satisfaction with travelling. This paper presents the findings of the survey conducted in Hamburg-Altona (Germany) and Oxfordshire (UK).

Survey results confirm previous findings and contribute additional evidence suggesting that the main sources of satisfaction from sustainable transportation modes appear to be service quality and infra- structure. Deeper consideration of satisfaction by mode usage allows for some pronounced differences between user types to be analysed.

Bike sharing systems are fundamental sources of data for creating applications of monitoring the city and guiding the user’s choice for bike usage. Although many related works analyse the generated data by these urban bike systems with the scope of finding bike usage patterns, the variety of the cities and the lack of impact factors require further deeper investigations. We propose a simple, but efficient mathematical approach based on a Markovian model to predict the bike distribution for an urban shar- ing bike system considering the weather and event impacts. The model is applied for data collected from the New York city bike system. The main findings are relevant for the urban applications and are summarized as follows: (a) the model results substantially address the city’s characteristics, i.e., for the New York city, in terms of weather, only the temperature influences the bike usage, while regarding the events, the impact is insignificant, (b) the hourly bike distribution is predicted 1 day-ahead that is of particular interest to the city manager and (c) to the user who is able to know 1 day in advance the prob- ability of finding an available bike or a free parking space at a specific station. Further city comparison analysis in terms of traffic, vehicle utilization and population density is provided for future purposes. Finding the precise station’s capacity is a forthcoming feature of the proposed model.

The inherited spatial, land use and transportation form in developing countries represent various challenges in addressing effectiveness and efficiency in attaining resilience and sustainability goals and objectives for urban development. Addressing development and growth in spatial systems within urban areas in developing countries are too often guided and determined by political preferences of decision makers. This practice is applied notwithstanding the existence of planning instruments in developing countries to guide decision making in a technical and accountable preferred practice.

Priorities for development in such countries is thus determined subjectively notwithstanding the variety of needs to be addressed with restricted resources for development capital as well as allocation of funding for maintenance and operational practices related to infrastructure and transportation systems. Socio-economic realities complicate decision making further.

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the use of modelling tools to guide strategic planning and decision making in determining development priorities in urban areas within developing countries. It will consider components such as spatial and land use planning and development realities; infrastructural input and needs; application of standards and a prioritisation approach towards optimal development and application of best practices.