• Energy Research

The development of urban logistics is closely related to the inhabitants of specific areas. People are changing their shopping habits, hence the growing share of online shopping. The consequence of the foregoing is increased demand for parcel delivery to customers’ addresses as well as in-store and automated pick-up points. This has increased the number of couriers that provide parcel delivery services. To achieve sustainable development, there is a real need to convert conventional combustion engine fleets using greener solutions such as electric vehicles. However, introducing such vehicles on a large scale involves constraints such as the vehicle running range on a single charge, the price of a new fleet and of its maintenance, and the location of charging stations. This article focuses on the strategies for siting of charging stations intended to be used by the providers of parcel delivery services. Different strategies as well as a method for identifying optimal goal-specific locations have been proposed. The results show the limitations and challenges facing both the operators of parcel delivery services and local authorities that should also be involved in the development of charging points. Additionally, based on the method presented in the paper, operators can choose between different strategies depending on the particular requirements and local conditions.

Among the activities that cities are taking to reduce the emissions of harmful substances emitted by conventional engine-powered vehicles is replacing the fleet with electric vehicles in public transport that can operate in urban areas. Fleet conversion is a process in which one of the decisions that must be made is the choice of lines that should be served in the first place by electric buses. Due to the specificity of the battery charging process, the routes of lines serviced by electric vehicles should run through sections that are as little exposed to disruptions as possible, which can adversely affect the travel time of these sections. The main goal of the article was to develop a method that supports the search for bus lines that are characterized by the highest level of reliability and punctuality and therefore also by the stability of the travel time between stops. The proposed method makes it possible to indicate critical interstop sections that have the greatest impact on the sensitivity of the line to disturbances. It was assumed that the more critical sections of the route, the greater the risk of bus delay, which may be disadvantageous in the case of electric vehicles due to the need to reach the battery charging station in time. The method was implemented on the example of selected lines in the Upper Silesian region (Poland) for data covering four years (2016–2019). The proposed approach allowed for the development of the ranking of lines, corresponding to the order in which the conventional fleet should be changed to electric.

The development of sustainable transport is a priority in cities. It should aim to increase the number of trips made by public transport while minimizing social costs and the negative impact on the environment. The intensive development of cities from industrial to service-oriented and the phenomenon of suburbanization require changes in public transport services. However, often, operators do not change existing lines and stops or timetables justifying it with passenger habits. This approach may cause a discrepancy between the accessibility of public transport services and the demand for these services. Therefore, planning and improving the public transport system should be based on careful analyses. There are various approaches to this problem. The article presents a method to assess accessibility of public transport services using spatial and temporal analysis. The proposed method is based on dividing the area into basic fields and then, using appropriately selected measures, each field is assessed in terms of both the current level of accessibility of public transport services and the potential transport demand. A comparative analysis with the use of spatial tools indicates the degree of matching of these values and enables the identification of areas (basic fields) in which improvement of public transport services is required. For the proposed method, a case study was carried out for the city of Czeladź, located in Metropolis GZM in the southern part of Poland. The method can support decision making to improve the current public transport system.

Development of electromobility in urban areas requires an appropriate level of vehicle charging infrastructure. Numerous methods for siting of charging stations have been developed to date, and they appear to be delivering diverse outcomes for the same area, which is why local authorities face the problem of choosing the right station layout. The solution proposed in this article is to use a travel planner to evaluate the distribution of charging stations over the area of a metropolis. The decision making support is achieved by determining optimal travel routes for electric vehicles according to their initial state of charge for the three selected station siting methods. The evaluation focused on the following three aspects: (1) number of travels that cannot be made (due to the lack of a charging station at a certain distance around the start point), (2) extension of the travel caused by the need to recharge the vehicle on-route, and (3) additional energy consumption by electric vehicles required to reach the charging station (necessity of departing from the optimal route). An analysis of the results has made it possible to determine a solution which is superior to others. For the case study analysed in the paper, i.e., the territory of the Metropolis of Upper Silesia and Dabrową Basin (Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia, GZM), the distribution of charging stations established in line with method I has returned the best results. What the method in question also makes possible is to indicate a safe minimum energy reserve to complete the travel by eliminating situations of unexpected vehicle immobilisation due to on-route energy depletion and by minimising the phenomenon referred to as range anxiety.

The intense growth of cities affects their inhabitants to a considerable extent. The issues facing the traveling population include congestion and growing harmful emissions. Urban transport requires changes towards eco-friendly solutions. However, even though new forms of traveling (sharing services) are being implemented, their integration with public transport remains problematic. On account of the large number of available services combined with the absence of their integration, city inhabitants are faced with the dilemma of choosing between one or several transport modes which would enable them to make the given trip. The main goal of this article is to propose a model for integration of different transport services which could support those who intend to travel in the decision-making process. Therefore, the parameters of a model of urban sharing services were identified and classified. The parameters discussed in the paper with reference to an extensive literature review describe how individual sharing services are functioning. What has also been identified is the location-specific factors as well as those related to the potential area of operation which affect the integration with public transport. In order to take all the relevant parameters into account and find a solution to the problem at hand, a multi-criteria decision-making approach has been proposed. To this end, scores and weights determining their impact on the model have been established. For purposes of the solution in question, the relevant calculations were conducted by referring to an actual need to travel between selected locations.

The paper presents a method of the assessment of spatial integration of bike-sharing stations in urban agglomerations based on GIS tools for analyses. The method uses four sub-models: system of bike-sharing stations, road and street network, demand for bike-sharing ridership, bike-sharing ridership routing, and value matrix of spatial integration measures. The presented method allows the identification of different categories of segments of the road and street network used for bike travels and enables the identification of the set of segments that should be upgraded into bike-friendly infrastructure offering bike lanes or cycle paths in order to ensure the appropriate level of spatial integration of bike-sharing stations. The possibility of the application of the method has been studied on the example of the existing bike-sharing system in Katowice, a city in southern Poland. The research presented in the paper has been conducted based on data on bike rentals and bike trips from eight months of 2018. Selected results of the spatial integration assessment of bike-sharing stations, which may be useful for making investment decisions in the bike-sharing system development, are presented.