Encouraging the Sustainable Adoption of Autonomous Vehicles for Public Transport in Belgium: Citizen Acceptance, Business Models, and Policy Aspects

Several mobility-related issues persist in and around urban areas. Autonomous vehicles promise substantial environmental, safety, and economic benefits but may also cause unintended adverse effects that stem from single-passenger mobility becoming more affordable and accessible. While using them for public transport (i.e., autonomous shuttles) can help avoid such downsides, there are many challenges to their adoption, particularly ones that are related to citizen acceptance and economic aspects. Based on a novel survey of Brussels’ citizens, we provide insights from user opinions on last-mile autonomous shuttle services and analyze the effect of various attitudinal and socio-demographic factors affecting such acceptance. Our respondents exhibit an overall positive acceptance albeit with a limited willingness to pay for it. In addition, based on expert interviews, we provide a discussion on appropriate business models and policy recommendations to help ensure the timely adoption of AVs in Belgium that adapts to mobility needs and policy goals.

Assessing the Impacts of Crowdshipping Using Public Transport: A Case Study in a Middle-Sized Greek City

Crowdsourced deliveries or crowdshipping is identified in recent literature as an emerging urban freight transport solution, aiming at reducing delivery costs, congestion, and environmental impacts. By leveraging the pervasive use of mobile technology, crowdshipping is an emerging solution of the sharing economy in the transport domain, as parcels are delivered by commuters rather than corporations. The objective of this research is to evaluate the impacts of crowdshipping through alternative scenarios that consider various levels of demand and adoption by public transport users who act as crowdshippers, based on a case study example in the city of Volos, Greece. This is achieved through the establishment of a tailored evaluation framework and a city-scale urban freight traffic microsimulation model. Results show that crowdshipping has the potential to mitigate last-mile delivery impacts and effectively contribute to improving the system’s performance.

Robot-Based Last-Mile Deliveries With Pedestrian Zones

Since delivery robots share sidewalks with pedestrians, it may be beneficial to choose paths for them that avoid zones with high pedestrian density. In this paper, we investigate a robot-based last-mile delivery problem considering path flexibility given the presence of zones with varying pedestrian level of service (LOS). Pedestrian LOS is a measure of pedestrian flow density. We model this new problem with stochastic travel times and soft customer time windows. The model includes an objective that reflects customer service quality based on early and late arrivals. The heuristic solution approach uses the minimum travel time paths from different LOS zones (path flexibility). We demonstrate that the presence of pedestrian zones leads to alternative path choices in 30% of all cases. In addition, we find that extended time windows may help increase service quality in zones with high pedestrian density by up to 40%.

Insights From Supply Chain Disruptions in the COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a devastating impact on supply chains. Especially, transportation disruptions, the slowdown in manufacturing, supply-demand imbalances, operational inefficiency in last-mile, and deficiencies in dealing with the crisis can be seen as main headings. This chapter aims to reveal the problems and learn lessons in these areas where significant risks are faced. During the COVID era, the need for resilient supply chains that are not affected by instantaneous changes has come to the fore. Accordingly, the second aim of the chapter is to offer solutions toward the short, medium, and long terms of the first-mile, production, and last-mile processes as enhancing the responsiveness of supply chains by the elements of supply chain resilience. This study is prepared as a review article in an exploratory approach through the supply chain literature and current practical examples. As a result of the study, digital-intensive business models, collaborative network design, and sustainability are highlighted as the main concepts to reach more resilient networks.

Automation of Detection and Fault Management Response of Common Last-Mile Loss-Of-Connectivity Outages Within the Access Network

The article to assesses whether it may be possible to recommend a solution to enable automation of the process of detection and fault management of common conclusive loss-of-connectivity last-mile outages, within the access network. To ascertain the utility of the research, UK based MPLS VPN managed service providers, their fault management staff and their business customers, were surveyed using online questionnaires for their views. UK public Internet users were additionally surveyed via five UK Internet forums. UK communication providers offering MPLS VPN solutions were characterised. Access network connectivity technologies and fault management functions were compared, contrasted and analysed. An aspiration for the solution to be beneficial to the largest potential population, meant that current non-proprietary Internet Standard technologies were selected, justified and identified which could be recommended for use. It was found that of the participating survey respondents, two-thirds were in favour of automation. Many current communication provider processes were found to be mostly automated. The article concludes with recommendations of how an automated solution could potentially be enabled. This involves further use of business-to-business interfacing between communication providers, automation of their Fault Management Systems and introducing Bi-Directional forwarding for detection between last-mile active network elements.