Bruno Moreale, Petra Staufer-Steinnocher (p), Belma Turan

Krister Sandberg

Globally, CO2 emissions from transport sector grow faster than in any other sector. The trend of urbanization leads to an increase in demand for both people and freight transportation. In order to reach the climate goals until 2050, sustainable solutions for transportation are needed. One of the solutions for freight delivery are two echelon networks, where an environmentally friendly transport mode such as cargo bike can be used for the last mile delivery. Cargo bikes have several advantages over conventional vans and have been actively considered for freight delivery by practitioners and researchers. However, there is a lack of studies of service times needed for a driver to park the cargo bike, and hand over the parcel to the customer. The service times are an important parameter for scheduling and planning of daily routes and good estimation of service times can help to better utilize the vehicles and drivers. The focus of this research is the analysis of service times obtained from a cargo bike pilot study from the city of Innsbruck, Austria. Data were collected during four weeks in 2021. Statistical metrics have been used to reliably and systematically estimate the service times and to evaluate factors which directly affect them. The results of the analysis can help logistic service providers achieve more accurate planning of delivery routes, prevent delays and increase the service level.

Irina Di Ruocco (p), Daniele Crotti, Elena Maggi

Petra Staufer-Steinnocher

The active and soft mobility program, supported by the 15-Minute city planning measures, is a moment of reflection to understand the current challenges of cities. Commuting is still a hot topic in research, and efforts are underway to understand how to balance this aspect of the transportation system with sustainability and individual well-being goals. Many studies have questioned the role of bike-to-work programs in relation to the social, political, and environmental aspects of urban space. In the European and Italian context, these challenges provide an opportunity to apply the measures of the Recovery Plan (1) in terms of quality of life and cities. Among the various measures for the ecological transformation of cities and regions, programs for cycling are central to the promotion of active mobility with the aim of improving the healthy lifestyle of users (2). Recent literature suggests that bicycle infrastructure is an important determinant of bicycle commuting and that the presence of bicycle networks can boost local economies and motivate users to bicycle to work (3). In Italy, although cycling infrastructure in major cities improved by about 50 percent between 2008 and 2015, the proportion of cyclists bicycling to work remained unchanged at 3.6 percent (4). Analysis of personal, attitudinal, and socioeconomic factors is critical to driving the environmental change that also occurs in commuting to work and to understanding spatial dynamics. Such motivations are still very limited in the literature and there are few case studies in Italy (5).
The analysis of current research shows many discrepancies between the choice of green and soft mobility and the level of satisfaction and well-being of users, both at urban and suburban level, but especially in large Italian metropolitan areas that are not yet equipped with a sustainable mobility system.
In Italy, there are not yet many studies linking mobility choices to cycling infrastructure and travel behaviour. To fill this gap, this paper focuses on the mobility decisions of cyclists when traveling between home and work. The main research question relates to the national context, with the goal of improving green commuting strategies. The main objective is to identify the psychological and geographical factors, through econometric approach, that change the demand for mobility on the home-to-work route.

Alejandro Sanchez-Zarate (p), Daniela Aguirre-Guerrero

Irina Di Ruocco

Sustainable mobility is a global strategy in cities. One way to achieve this target is to incentive mobility by bicycle. In Mexico City cycling infrastructure has increased in the last 4 years and this provoke the rise of mobility by cycling. However, the streets in Mexico City are public contested spaces. Every day it can be found violent accidents against cyclists provoked by car owners. Simultaneously, this violence in public urban spaces can be found in digital spaces like Twitter. For example, threats or violent speech against cyclists or cycling activists. In this sense, the main target of this paper is to analyse the violent speech about bike infrastructure and activists in the digital sphere and its reflection in the real realm and the struggle for public space in both dimensions. The work makes use of data science. Firstly, it is harvested tweets with mentions of cycling activists or infrastructure. Secondly, pre-process text mining is carried out. Finally, it is implemented machine learning algorithms in order to identify the violent and hate speech on tweets. The main results of the study point out two directions of reflection. Firstly, there is a spectrum of violence on cycling on Twitter. In other words, it found different and continuous levels of violence, which can be from range and sarcasm to physical and fatal threats. The second stream of results is directed to the spatial pattern of this digital violence in the city. The results of this work could be used by stakeholders in sustainable mobility and diary violence against it. At the theoretical level, this paper fills the gap in the digital dimension of mobility-contested spaces.

Krister Sandberg (p), Mikael Levin, Linda Ramstedt

Alejandro Sanchez-Zarate

In recent years, sales of rechargeable passenger cars have increased rapidly in large parts of the world. However, we know little about the distribution of electric car (EV and PHEV) ownership among different household groups. In this study we use detailed Swedish socio-economic data at the household level (4,9 million households) and their new registrations of privately owned vehicles (128 000 in total, of which 25 000 were EV and PHEV in 2020) into the Swedish Vehicle Registry, to examine who were the early adopters in 2016, and how the market has developed into the early majority in 2020. The study also includes controls for different ways of having access to a car, i.e., owning, having a company car, or leasing.

Several logit regression models are estimated to find important explanatory factors and changes over time. Findings in previous studies, dominated by stated preference studies, are partly confirmed. We show that individuals who live in houses, have more than one car in the household, and who are both highly educated and have an income above average, would be more likely to purchase an electric vehicle. By controlling for regional variations, i.e., groups of municipalities based on size and location, and urban density we find support for a higher probability to acquire an EV in larger urban areas, but at the same time a lower probability among households located in urban centers of the municipalities.

Sweden is currently far ahead in EV sales compared to most other countries. This makes Sweden a suitable case to increase the understanding of how EV ownership spreads through different socioeconomic household groups. The results will, therefore, be useful to understand how EV ownership might spread throughout other parts of the world.