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Abstract Background Personal transportation in urban areas is characterised by different transportation technologies with significantly varying properties regarding usability, infrastructural requirements and environmental impacts. This characterisation motivates the objective evaluation of mobility solutions, based on different criteria. State of the art evaluations in the scientific literature mainly focus on one specific criterion at a time. The most common criteria investigated are found in energy demand or equivalent fuel consumption. Other parameters include the traffic space demand or mean velocity as a reference for the user-related criterion “travel time”. Since different modes of transport show various potentials in different criteria, an interesting point for scientific research is consideration of the different criteria in a more comprehensive evaluation approach. To address this issue, the aim of this study is to present a new approach for an objective evaluation and comparison of different transport technologies under consideration of pre-defined range of criteria and defined boundary conditions and requirements for personal mobility in cities. Besides technical-oriented aspects like driving range, transport capability and life cycle-related consumption of resources, additional factors influencing user-behaviour and traffic density are reflected. The evaluation method is presented, based on a generated exemplary data collection regarding technical and in-use characteristics of different modes of transport, mainly investigated in the city of Graz, Austria. Methods The study focuses on different means of transport, in particular walking, bicycling, the use of powered two-wheelers, passenger cars with different propulsion systems and public transport systems. It is based on the determination of selected criteria, considering ecologic, infrastructural and user-related aspects. With respect to ecologic criteria, the study considers resources and energy consumption as also the resulting CO2 equivalent emissions. The mean velocity and transport capacity are considered in the context of user-related criteria. Traffic space demand is an important and limited resource, especially in urban areas. The present study thus includes the determination and comparison of the relative traffic and parking space demands for the different modes of transport. The evaluation is based on a specifically developed evaluation methodology, considering weighted traffic performance indices, which are also proposed and discussed. Results Within the present study, a database providing specific mobility-related criteria and parameters has been generated, representing technical characteristics and the effects of the use of different vehicles and means of transportation in urban areas. The illustrated results allow an objective evaluation of a broad range of different means of transportation and vehicles, based on introduced “weighted traffic performance indices” (WTPI). Conclusions The study contributes to a discussion of transportation technologies and allows a derivation of measures for further research topics to face future intra-urban mobility demands. This represents a basis for decision making on the priorisation of the most suitable transport systems for urban areas. It is shown that the motorised individual passenger transport as dominated by the use of private passenger cars in particular represents today the most inefficient form of inner-urban mobility.

The article discusses the possibility of the application of the NFC technology as a system of selling tickets in passenger rail transport. The NFC (Near Field Communication) technology is a wireless and contactless technology of transmission of radio data over short distances (max. 5 cm). This technology is very similar to the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. It is assumed that this technology will spread rapidly and that already in 2015 around 85% of the payments in the EU will be made via mobile phones. This paper presents a research of passenger interest in this method of payment for tickets in the passenger rail transport in Slovakia. Further, an analysis of the applications of the NFC technology as a system of selling tickets in passenger rail transport, including the protection of data in mobile phones, the processes in case of losing a mobile phone and ensuring the communication between both parties was presented in the article. The last part of this analysis shows the possibility of purchasing tickets regardless of the carrier and the transport type.

The growing popularity of traveling with electric scooters in recent years is, on the one hand, a great opportunity to shift from the current forms of mobility to a new service among the public, but it is also a huge challenge for urban centers and operators. One of the main challenges related to electric scooters is the growing demand for high energy consumption, which is currently a big issue due to the growing interest in electromobility used in mobility as a service (MaaS) systems. However, in order to properly estimate the level of energy consumption of scooters, there is a real need for reliable scientific information on the actual electricity consumption of electric scooters used in shared mobility systems. An extensive literature analysis indicates the lack of research conducted in this area. Noting this research gap, studies were conducted to determine the factors influencing the energy consumption of an electric scooter. The study attempts to determine these values on the basis of the proposed research experiment. The scientific experiment was based on a three-factor plan; an experimental plan. The author conducted the research by driving and measuring electric scooters in order to compare the actual consumption with the data provided by vehicle manufacturers. The result of the research was to determine the influence of factors that influence the significant energy consumption of electric scooters from shared mobility systems. Interestingly, the results generated show that the electricity requirements for six scooters corresponded to one electric car. This proposal raises the question of whether scooters are the best form of electric mobility for the environment. In addition, the work also includes guidelines for scooter users and recommendations for shared mobility operators on the energy consumption of electric scooters.

Forests are the main sources of wood chips delivered to the end customers by road or railway. This research analysed the impact of the quarter of the year: Q1 (January–March), Q2 (April–June), Q3 (July–September), Q4 (October–December) when wood chips were obtained over two consecutive years (2019–2020) and the type of transport used (railway and road) on the thermophysical properties of wood chips and the cost of their delivery. The mean moisture content in the wood chips was 38.28% and it was the highest (45.55%) in Q1, while in Q2 and Q3, this parameter was 8 and 17 percentage points (p.p.) lower. The mean lower heating value (LHV) of the chips was 10.46 GJ Mg−1. The chips delivered by road transport had a 4% higher LHV compared to those shipped by railway transport. The wood chips contained 3.42% d.m. of ash. The road transport at a distance of 200 km was found to be approximately 10% cheaper compared to the transport by rail for most of the study period, both with respect to 1 Mg of fresh or dry mass and 1 GJ of energy in the chips. The railway transport was cheaper in the winter (Q1).

Cities have been struggling for many years with many transport problems, including the impact of carbon monoxide emitted by vehicles on the environment, traffic jams, high energy consumption, numerous accidents or high infrastructure costs. There is also a dynamic growth of vehicles on the roads, which is why an increasing number of cities are introducing intelligent transportation systems (ITS), which is part of the concept of smart cities. This paper proposes a new matrix to assess the effects of the ITS implementation in the context of a concept Smart City, which consists of five criteria: (1) movement speed; (2) safety; (3) environmental; (4) economic; (5) satisfaction and amenities for society/passengers. In this new approach the benchmark values of the indicators assigned to the criteria are involved and, therefore, it is possible to determine the level of effectiveness of the ITS in public transport that uses low-carbon energy. This research used literature studies to establish the criteria of effectiveness of ITS as well as a case study, namely public transport that uses low-carbon energy in a Polish city, which had the largest fleet of electric buses in Poland and implements and uses an ITS. Both, the theoretical and the empirical research results demonstrate the usefulness and potency of the proposed matrix to assess the effects of the ITS implementation in cities in the context of the development of a smart city. In that way, the proposed approach may be a useful tool for measuring the effects of ITS implementation in cities.

The paper provides an analysis of a transportation system with a long stator linear drive. The presented analysis for an in-house transportation system may be easily scaled into large transportation systems like maglev and hyperloop. It investigates the impact of the division of the stator into shorter parts which are sequentially supplied. Then it compares the concept of single-inverter and multi-inverter drive systems. The presented research includes the analysis of drive system power parameters. The drive system characteristics depending on the length of the active part of the linear motor are presented for each configuration, followed by a description of differences in the required inverter power and the obtained average thrust force. The paper proposes a new arrangement of the multi-inverter drive system incorporating multi-level inverters, which allows decreasing voltage oscillations in the DC circuit of drive inverters. The operation of the transportation system is presented in a simulation study. The paper is concluded with the verification of the concept in an experimental study in a 50 m test track.

Science-based, multinational management of the Baltic Sea offers lessons on amelioration of highly disturbed marine ecosystems.