Mobility Managers Research Articles

Reflection of the sustainable urban mobility paradigm shift in teaching at three European universities

Over the last few decades, the urban transport planning framework has changed significantly towards sustainable mobility planning. It brings new requirements for the education of transport experts. In the paper, we discuss the future of academic education concerning these changes based on case studies of two prestigious technical faculties in Germany and Poland and a social science faculty in Czechia offering study programmes related to sustainable urban mobility planning. We applied a self-assessment questionnaire to investigate how the study programmes prepare future mobility managers and present the concept of sustainable mobility to students. Our results show that the existing study programmes do not cover all steps of sustainable urban mobility plan development. We identified a few gaps common to the technical and social science faculties, such as consensus-seeking knowledge and methods, monitoring and evaluation tools and approaches, and the development of soft skills (presentation and communication skills and stakeholder involvement techniques).

Pedestrian mobility and University campus accessibility: an analysis of student preferences

Prioritizing pedestrian mobility is crucial to foster urban liveability and sustainability, particularly on university campuses that are experienced by students. This paper examines the University of Catania (Italy) campus, a significant open space facing accessibility challenges. Two surveys were conducted within a Living Lab framework to assess student opinions on campus walking experiences and identify key criteria for promoting walking to and within the campus. The Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) algorithm and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were chosen for the analysis, deriving insights for policy-makers and mobility managers to enhance accessibility and encourage active mobility. The specific case study demonstrates the importance of creating pedestrian-friendly environments to foster sustainable lifestyles by addressing accessibility barriers in large open spaces. However, this research provides a wider framework which is applicable to urban planning in similar contexts, emphasizing the pivotal role of pedestrian-centric design in creating vibrant and sustainable university environments.

SAN ANTONIO TRANSPORTATION PLANNING SYSTEM: MAPPING INFRASTRUCTURE CAPACITY AND COORDINATION

Abstract Ride Connect Texas and its partnering agencies seek to develop an expanded senior mobility management system supported by a One Call One Click transportation planning system. Its purpose is to enhance on-demand transportation system coordination and the application of technology, providing consumers, service providers, and mobility managers with direct access to comprehensive transportation information. GIS mapping is used to help develop a spatial awareness of the transportation challenges among older people and individuals with a disability and the current system capacity. Interviews with transit, non-transit, and health and human service agencies will reveal factors that influence coordination among providers and opportunities for capacity expansion. Surveys and focus groups of older adults and individuals with disability will show differentiating characteristics of riders and transportation needs and challenges. GIS mapping will allow us to geocode these findings relative to the user’s street address and zip code, illustrating variations in specialized client needs, service availability, travel behavior, and available amenities for basic daily living. Mapping will identify gaps in transportation services, hot zones revealing high user demand and low system capacity, and the ability to reduce fragmentation of service through seamless technology-based coordination. The mapping element informs the measurement of a community’s transportation system capacity for this user group. The value proposition of this tool is its ability to help any community measure its readiness toward developing a comprehensive implementation strategy for coordinated demand response transportation, including resource mobilization strategies, capacity augmentation, phasing of the system, and implementation timeline.

Discovering stop and parking behaviors of last mile delivery vehicles for urban areas based on not well conditioned GPS traces, expert knowledge and machine learning

Nowadays urban traffic is one of the most serious challenges for local authorities around the world. This challenge implies issues regarding health, energy, safety, environment and quality of life. Achieving a fair traffic outcome is a key priority for city traffic managers while maintaining city’s attractiveness for citizens and travelers and those carrying out commercial activities. As a part of this challenge, delivery and similar companies are relevant stakeholders in optimizing their routes, deliveries, and operational services. It is in this respect that urban traffic and its regulations play a key role.The conditions in which urban traffic takes place thus have to be known and one way to deal with this is based on available and accessible data. In the IoT age, there could be huge amounts of available data generated by countless sensors and systems involved in our lives, cities, infrastructures, etc.... Taking advantage of such data, when the accessibility and quality is good enough, can help us to achieve the desired goals concerning the urban traffic and its consequences. However, in practice, the availability and access to such data is currently a very serious challenge.Following on with this, data generated from the ever-increasing number of sensors on board vehicles could be very useful, not only for checking the vehicle condition, but also to gain a better of the “real-time” traffic situation or to discover traffic behaviors/patterns from the said data. In this work, a real case based study has been carried out gathering basic real GPS information regarding delivery vehicles in a city environment and OpenData to “discover” where, when and how long time delivery vehicles use the regulated parking zones for loading/unloading in the city center. Based on Expert Rules, a stop detection criteria is defined and formulated to be applied to real cases in urban areas, focusing on city centers and Machine Learning techniques to discover stop and park behaviors on last mile deliveries in a real urban area.All this is used to plan traffic strategies and facilities which can permit better and more fluent services. On the other hand, the results provide invaluable knowledge support for the expert knowledge of mobility managers, while also supplying new “findings” about the daily challenges, showing that machine learning techniques and other linked technologies are powerful tools for this challenge.

Transit Agency Assessment of Their Capability to Adopt New Mobility Strategies

This research identified current challenges, constraints and interest in the implementation and management of new mobility services (on-demand and micromobility) for United States transit agencies. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews with employees of transit agencies were conducted, and NVivo, a qualitative analysis software, was used to classify agency involvement, constraints, and challenges with services. The most common constraints and challenges for on-demand services (cited by more than five agencies) were labor shortages, software performance, fare integration, vehicle shortages, and funding. For agencies not offering on-demand services, developing strong backbone networks with fixed-routes was a priority, and cost-effectiveness, service area design, and funding were additional concerns. The top constraints and challenges among transit agencies with respect to micromobility (cited by more than four agencies) included fare integration, obstruction of public space, funding, adequate supporting infrastructure, and development of equitable service. For integrating new mobility services, most transit agencies (14 of 20, 70%) expressed interest in becoming mobility managers, but larger agencies (those with more than 10 million unlinked passenger trips) were split between mobility manager and partner roles. This research suggests that transit agencies have evolved in the new mobility space, but some constraints and challenges still stand in their way. Policy makers and decision makers can help transit agencies by encouraging open-source software development, improving labor contracts, increasing funding opportunities, and coordinating land-use, transportation, and transit planning. Future research should continue investigating barriers to entry for new mobility services and identify how transit agencies can increase coordination with technology and micromobility companies.

Behavioural norms or personal gains? – An empirical analysis of commuters‘ intention to switch to multimodal mobility behaviour

Existing research has revealed that there is a growing dominance of multimodality in urban areas, which is frequently considered to be an important part of the solution to the burdens associated with heavy car use, such as traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution, as well as associated risks to human health. Yet, while the role of private motorized transport is decreasing in densely populated urban areas, monomodal travel patterns, as exemplified by single occupancy car use, are still dominating work-related mobility. To date, studies on modal shift have investigated the decision-making processes with regard to particular travel modes. However, the intention to switch to multimodal mobility in a commuting context, which may represent a first step towards car use reduction, remains relatively unexplored. Therefore, this paper aims to understand and identify the predecessors of car commuters’ intention to switch to multimodal commuting via an online questionnaire. Our theoretical framework is based on an extension of Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) with Lindenberg and Steg’s Goal-framing Theory (GFT), including a novel fourth goal frame, habit, and person-organisation fit (POF) as additional constructs. Contrary to our expectations, gain and hedonic goals, as well as POF and habit, were not found to affect switching intention. Instead, our findings suggest that a switch to multimodal mobility is strongly dependent on people's normative goals, underlining the need for employers to encourage and reward sustainable multimodal commuting. These findings can assist policy makers, corporate mobility, and HR managers to promote more sustainable, multimodal mobility behaviour.

Effect of prestressing corrosion on failure in bridges

AbstractInfrastructures (viaducts, bridges, tunnels, railways, and roads) are fundamental to allow people and goods move around a country. In particular, in Italy, due to its orographic and morphological complexity, the ratio between the number of viaducts and the national geographical extension is the largest in Europe. This kind of structure constitutes a weakness of the road networks, especially those over 50 years old, and among these, prestressed concrete structures are the most vulnerable. Therefore, the study of the robustness of an infrastructure network is a quite useful topic for modern societies and public mobility managers. The aim of the present work is to develop a reliable and fast analysis tool capable of processing many structures in a relatively short time. In order to calibrate the most suitable instrument, starting from the study of an experimental campaign on six prototypes of artificially corroded posttensioned concrete beams, the reliability of concentrated plasticity models was investigated to reproduce force‐displacement diagrams and in particular, the effect of corrosion on the moment‐curvature relationship. In fact, this method could provide a well‐defined nonlinear analysis of prestressed elements, especially in the case of grillage decks where external girders could be more affected by corrosion damage in opposition to internal girders or diaphragms. A numerical model by FEM analysis is also presented to reproduce a vulnerability study on an actual structure.

Role of geography in the reorganization of the Italian National Health Service: Implementation of geographic information in the logistics and resilience of organizational structures

The study, carried out at the Local Healthcare Authority in Reggio Emilia, Italy, focused on required travel of its employees with reference to length of travel route, degree of coverage through local public transport, degree of overlapping travel (useful to assess the feasibility of car sharing initiatives) and plans for shift work. The goal was to identify main obstacles when attempting to improve the reliability and scalability of this type of analysis, so that it can be used for regular updates. It was found that, on the one hand, it is necessary to promptly identify changes in the staff structure due to turnover that particularly affects health practitioners, such as doctors and fixed-term employees, while, on the other it is mandatory to comply with the provisions of Italian Law according to which, mobility managers must draw up annual commuting plans with an analysis of the routes travelled. The results of this work are likely to have useful implications for the improvement of the logistics system and, in particular, for the resilience of healthcare organizations.

Reducing the carbon footprint in college mobility: The car commuters' perspective in an Italian case study

Despite the negative environmental impact of private cars, especially when driven alone, thousands of college commuters around the World are still car dependent. In order to promote eco-friendly commuting and reduce the GHGs caused by cars, different Travel Demand Management (TDM) policies are in place at many colleges, but they do not usually consider the car commuters' point of view when identifying proper measures. In this paper, by using survey data from an Italian medium-size public university, we study what TDM policies are perceived by car users as the most effective in reducing the number of solo-drivers and consequently their carbon footprint. By estimating a multinomial logit model, we found that restrictive parking policies are statistically supported by female car commuters, students and employees belonging to science departments, and those who know that driving alone could impede alternative modes. Indeed, transit-oriented and multimodal options (including bikes) are chosen by faculty/staff car users, by users willing to leave their cars at home when the weather is good, and in general by people living in towns without railway stations. Instead, probably due to inadequate rail services, car users living in areas far from the college are weakly inclined to use transit-plus-bikes modes. Beyond improving TDM policies, these results can help mobility managers design localized tools to reduce the environmental impact of college commuting.

Making decisions: the normal interventions of Nissan ‘mobility managers’

ABSTRACT In this article I investigate a decentralized infrastructure meant to assist autonomous vehicles in making decisions. More akin to a call centre than a centralized control room, Nissan’s ‘Seamless Autonomous Mobility’ (SAM) project imagines that remote ‘mobility managers’ will intervene in the decision-making of autonomous vehicles, with the assistance of live video streams and other sensor data. Different from other kinds of AI microwork in which human workers prepare, imitate, or verify AI, mobility managers are envisioned instead as ‘interveners’, meant to directly and actively intervene in the movements of ‘autonomous’ vehicles when unable to negotiate an obstacle. Firstly, through a comparison between SAM and a traffic management system in Los Angeles, I argue that the former ‘normalizes’ intervention, in which decision-making delays become ordinary, if not altogether desirable. Secondly, through an analysis of a video in which such normalized interventions are imagined, I consider how SAM offers a kind of speculative mundanity in which remote workers, enabled by a technological infrastructure, embody a novel logic that modifies the social settings of driving.

Developing consensus-based referral criteria for low vision services in Australia.

To develop expert consensus on referral criteria for low vision services in Australia. In a modified online Delphi process, a panel of 38 Australian experts in low vision (including ophthalmologists, optometrists, orthoptists, occupational therapists, orientation and mobility professionals, researchers and managers) participated in three rounds of consensus building over a period of 5months commencing in 2019. Initially, 90statements were developed, addressing what should be included in best-practice low vision referral criteria, currently used criteria, timing of referral and responsibility for referral. By the third round, these had been reduced and refined to a total of four statements. In three Delphi rounds, the expert panel produced three key recommendations for low vision referral: (1) that low vision referral should be based mainly on the impact of uncorrectable vision impairment on function and well-being; (2) clinical measures of visual acuity and visual field might be a secondary consideration and (3) it is important to fully inform a person about low vision services at an early stage of vision loss and to involve them in decision making about referral. There was consensus on the need for clear referral pathways and that both ophthalmologists and optometrists have primary responsibility to refer for low vision services. Although recommendations and guidelines should not replace sound individual clinical judgement, promotion and adoption of these consensus recommendations could assist health care professionals in providing appropriate and timely referral for low vision services to the benefit of people with vision impairment.

Characterization of COVID-19's Impact on Mobility and Short-Term Prediction of Public Transport Demand in a Mid-Size City in Spain.

COVID-19 has dramatically struck each section of our society: health, economy, employment, and mobility. This work presents a data-driven characterization of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on public and private mobility in a mid-size city in Spain (Fuenlabrada). Our analysis used real data collected from the public transport smart card system and a Bluetooth traffic monitoring network, from February to September 2020, thus covering relevant phases of the pandemic. Our results show that, at the peak of the pandemic, public and private mobility dramatically decreased to and of their pre-COVID-19 values, after which the latter experienced a faster recovery. In addition, our analysis of daily patterns evidenced a clear change in the behavior of users towards mobility during the different phases of the pandemic. Based on these findings, we developed short-term predictors of future public transport demand to provide operators and mobility managers with accurate information to optimize their service and avoid crowded areas. Our prediction model achieved a high performance for pre- and post-state-of-alarm phases. Consequently, this work contributes to enlarging the knowledge about the impact of pandemic on mobility, providing a deep analysis about how it affected each transport mode in a mid-size city.

Transition of mobility in companies – A semi-systematic literature review and bibliographic analysis on corporate mobility and its management

Advancement measures and negative externalities of the current transport system have been extensively researched but significant changes concerning greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction is yet to be achieved. The expected mobility changes, triggered by the introduction of electric mobility, sharing concepts, modern vehicle concepts, new planning approaches and future autonomous vehicle concepts open up new options for an improved efficiency in the corporate mobility sector. The purpose of this article is to review literature between 2016 and mid-2020 on all transport-related activities of corporations and critically review research conclusions and their implication to determine research gaps for potential alternative ways of system transition. This is achieved by a semi-systematic review of international scientific journals and conference papers independently from their research field with a set of a-priori defined terms on corporate mobility and logistics. The article concludes with a summary of major research motivations and outcomes to the mobility transition in companies and identified research gaps with potential added value to the transport system. The review reveals that the major objective of analysed articles is the zero-emission future. An examination of new mobility solutions, technologies, and their potential impact is ongoing. The potentials to design future systems and ways of system transition have yet to be sufficiently examined. The relevant question is how mobility management in corporations could be upgraded. The integration into companies’ strategic management and inter-company mobility concepts could be potential fields. These findings are important for policymakers and mobility managers to jointly work on the zero-emission future.

Sustainable Urban Transportation Criteria and Measurement—A Systematic Literature Review

Sustainable transportation plays a key role in social participation and climate change. However, no universally accepted set of criteria for tracking the progress of urban sustainable transportation projects currently exists; one reason for this is the absence of a standardized lexicon for sustainability measurement elements. Therefore, this paper conducts a systematic literature review and analysis of sustainable transportation criteria using 21 papers from journals listed in the German rating system JOURQUAL3 (JQ3) and published between 2010 and 2020. The paper thus develops a unified vocabulary for sustainability measurement elements that is structured into a hierarchy. The goal (sustainable transportation) presides over the following three sustainability dimensions: objectives (e.g., minimization of traffic clogging), criteria (e.g., congestion), and indicators (e.g., cost of traffic congestion). Within the hierarchy, the main criteria for urban multimodal sustainable transportation are identified as follows: 13 social, 11 economic, and 9 environmental main criteria are determined. The three main criteria used most in the literature exclusively concern the environment. Future research is recommended to assess the interrelations between the criteria as their assignment to sustainability dimensions is ambiguous in the existing literature. This paper helps mobility managers to make decisions about urban transportation concepts and while overseeing projects.

Company Mobility in the Modern Economy

While the modern economy demonstrates an increase in company mobility, neither economists nor company managers pay due attention to this developing socio-economic phenomenon. Therefore, we analysed how new organisations enter the market of companies and old enterprises leave it after losing their viability, noting the specific features of these processes. We examined the market of companies in Russia in general and in the Federal Districts of the Russian Federation in particular. We used the data from 1 January 2001 to 1 January 2020 published in the Statistical Register of Organisations of Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). The research methodology includes synthesis, analysis, comparison methods, and systemic-structural approach. The obtained results showed that, since 2016, the share of officially liquidated companies in the Russian Federation and most of its regions exceeds the birth rate of organisations. This is inextricably linked to the worsening economic situation in Russia, including the business environment. We noted that privately owned companies and organisations with joint Russian and foreign ownership have the highest turnover. The average annual turnover of organisations in Russia amounted to 16.8% in the period 2001–2019. Among the federal districts of the Russian Federation, organisations of the Siberian and Ural Federal Districts have demonstrated the greatest dynamics of the market of companies over the 19-year period (18.1 % and 17.4 %, respectively). Corresponding changes have taken place in the structure of organisations in the market of Russian companies. The share of companies providing various services has sharply increased, including transport and communication companies, and real estate organisations. New organisations with an established business reputation are mostly registered in the regions with higher competitive immunity, characterised by a favourable business environment for small- and medium-sized enterprises. The research results can be used by authorities for managing the spatial development of territories, and determining the support for certain types of business activities in a particular region or municipality.

A Holistic Approach to Electric Shared Mobility Systems Development—Modelling and Optimization Aspects

Due to the development of the shared economy, increasingly more shared mobility providers have launched services based on the use of electric vehicles. The increasing growth of electric shared mobility services has produced various types of problems that do not occur (or occur with a limited effect) under conventional shared mobility systems. This increase in electric shared mobility problems has led to many effects, including limitations of the system zones or going out of business. To avoid difficulties in the functioning of electric shared mobility systems, various scientific studies have been undertaken to model and optimize the operation of these systems. Modeling and optimization mainly relate to one category of the system—for example, only to bike sharing. However, to understand the system of electric shared mobility holistically, there is a need to define the criteria generally as stimulants or destimulants. Based on these assumptions, we conducted research on the identification of factors influencing the development of electric shared mobility services. We conducted our own expert research based on the Social Network Analysis method. The aim of this study was to determine the factors that influence the development or recession of services in the entire electric shared mobility market in reference to selected stakeholders. The obtained results indicate a non-standard approach to the modeling and optimization of electric shared mobility services. This study could be used as support for creating electric shared mobility models and could also be helpful for service providers or local mobility managers through the developed recommendations.

A panel data analysis of tour-based university students’ travel behaviour

To date, although young adults seem to be less interested in obtaining a driving licence and a car, in several countries private vehicles are still the most widely used means of transport. The growing interest in promoting sustainable modes has motivated Mobility Managers (MM) to start awareness campaigns among workers who commute by private vehicle. University students, who regularly commute to their campuses, represent a major segment of the working population. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated university students' commuting habits.The aim of this work is to examine in depth the tour-based university students’ travel behaviour, using panel data from a sample of students from Roma Tre University.The contribution of this paper consists in understanding the processes underlying daily travel behaviour choices, to help MMs identify the right steps to promote a correct culture and to improve public transport (PT) services.The data used were collected during a panel survey, split into two 2-days phases. Between the two phases, a personalised travel plan was provided in order to promote more sustainable means of transport. Daily travel behaviour was monitored by collecting data through a smartphone app which registered trips/activities in real-time. The data were then exhaustively analysed by classifying the tours into many layers (main purpose, time of day, mode used and user attributes).Analysis of the results indicate how the preferred mode of transport is the private mode and that 25% of tours were related to non-study purposes, which could be a barrier to PT mode choice.

Developing a Sustainable Mobility Action Plan for University Campuses

University campuses are a microcosmos of the urban landscape and an excellent testbed for implementing and evaluating novel mobility policies. However, no scientific contribution has ever aimed to provide a template for university mobility managers to develop an action plan for an efficient and effective sustainable university mobility plan tailored to the needs and characteristics of the campus. Based on the above, the present research has two main objectives. The first is to present the state of the art regarding mobility plans that have been implemented in universities in Europe. The second and core of the overall research is to present a template of an action plan that can be used by universities as a guide for the planning and implementation of a comprehensive mobility plan. The proposed action plan is a strategic guide with a sequence of steps that planners are encouraged to follow in order to create a sustainable university mobility plan. This plan takes into consideration both universities situated within the urban area as well as campuses located outside the city centre. The proposed action plan offers suggestions to satisfy, particularly the needs of students and university staff members considering the technical, economic, social and environmental sustainability of the proposed mobility solutions. Moreover, the action plan considers the fact that a University Campus is embedded into the overarching mobility context that see other end-users of the mobility services sharing with the University’s end-user’s infrastructures and services.

What is a legitimate mobility manager? Juxtaposing migration brokers with the EU

ABSTRACTThis article juxtaposes two types of actors who offer migration services: a state-managed EU programme in Cape Verde and two Cameroonian development NGOs run by businessmen. By framing both as managers of mobility, the article contributes to debates on migration management and the migration industry. The article takes the paradox between official narratives and migrant experiences as a starting point to ask why and how both types of mobility managers can mobilise legitimacy. Staying clear of normative evaluations of the respective legitimacy and success of market and state actors, the article shows that both types of migration managers are involved in producing ‘the legal migrant’ in different ways. On the basis of ethnographic material from Cameroon (2007–2014) and Cape Verde (2010–2012), the article discusses the functioning of the two kinds of mobility managers, their relations with aspiring migrants and respective modes of self-representation. In conclusion, the article shows that despite apparent differences between migration brokers and the EU, the article’s mobility managers share the use of ‘development’ as a trope for legitimising their activities.

Developing Sustainability Mobility Controls: The Case of Four Belgian Local Governments

ABSTRACTPurpose: This paper explores the links between management controls, strategy, and sustainability in the context of the public sector. Institutional theory is used as a theoretical lens to explore how institutional influences enable or constrain the development of management controls in Belgian local governments, particularly those pertaining to sustainability mobility strategies.Research method: An exploratory case study method was used for the purposes of this study. Further, the package of mobility controls developed by Belgian local governments is explored with reference to the model proposed by Malmi and Brown (2008). The case study utilised semi-structured interviews with mobility managers in four Belgian local governments. To strengthen the analysis, secondary data from these local governments, including reports on mobility, strategy, urban development and infrastructure, were collected and analysed.Findings: The four Belgian local governments plan, implement, and control their sustainability mobility strategies differently, depending on their specific practices and routines, and the interactions between relevant actors. Even if sustainability is a strategic component of their urban development, the understanding of the link between sustainability, management controls, and mobility strategy differs according to local government challenges. Institutional influences are both enabling and constraining the development of management controls in support of sustainability mobility strategies in local governments. More specifically, political support and regulations enable control planning. However, limits in the support of mobility actors, and weak decision power for mobility managers, constrain the monitoring and updating of control indicators.Contribution/implications: This paper contributes to the literature by exploring both institutional enablers and constraints on the development of management controls for sustainability in the public-sector context. More specifically, it explores how practices, routines, and interactions can enable or constrain the potential contribution of management controls to sustainability transitions of local governments.