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Recently, sustainability has been a growing concern for many industries and especially for the transportation sector due to it being the second largest energy consumer and largest contributor of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions within the European Union. New legal restrictions on the emission rates have forced the automotive sector to examine different fuel-efficient technologies. Vehicle weight reduction is one of the most important methods of improving fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. Accordingly, lighter, safer, more fuel efficient, and environmentally sustainable vehicles are a priority for European authorities. In the present work, the passenger seat structure was considered as the area for lightweighting due to its important role in the mass of commercial vehicles in terms of numbers per vehicle. In addition, seat structures presented the best opportunity for weight reduction using new materials and design techniques. Detailed (3D) finite element models of passenger seats were developed for finite element analyses (FEA). To obtain a lightweight and safe seat structure, different materials and thicknesses of profiles were analyzed. Lightweight passenger seat prototypes were developed and an overall 20% weight reduction was achieved including the structural frame, chassis and pillar. In addition, the new passenger seat meets ECE R14 safety norms.

Modern cities worldwide are undergoing radical changes to foster a clean, sustainable and secure environment, install smart infrastructures, deliver intelligent services to residents, and facilitate access for vulnerable groups. The adoption of new technologies is at the heart of implementing many initiatives to address critical concerns in urban mobility, healthcare, water management, clean energy production and consumption, energy saving, housing, safety, and accessibility. Given the advancements in sensing and communication technologies over the past few decades, exploring the adoption of recent and innovative technologies is critical to addressing these concerns and making cities more innovative, sustainable, and safer. This article provides a broad understanding of the current urban challenges faced by smart cities. It highlights two new technological advances, edge artificial intelligence (edge AI) and Blockchain, and analyzes their transformative potential to make our cities smarter. In addition, it explores the multiple uses of edge AI and Blockchain technologies in the fields of smart mobility and smart energy and reviews relevant research efforts in these two critical areas of modern smart cities. It highlights the various algorithms to handle vehicle detection, counting, speed identification to address the problem of traffic congestion and the different use-cases of Blockchain in terms of trustworthy communications and trading between vehicles and smart energy trading. This review paper is expected to serve as a guideline for future research on adopting edge AI and Blockchain in other smart city domains.

Building underwater tube tunnel crossings to ease the urban congestion problems has become a popular approach for many cities across the globe. London, New York, Istanbul, Hamburg, Sydney and Brisbane are among these cities. However, the effectiveness and externalities of these expensive mega urban infrastructures have also been questioned widely among urban, transport and environmental planning scholars. Given the international popularity of the topic, this study places a new tube tunnel crossings project from Izmir, Turkey under the microscope. In this heuristic simulation study, policy-on scenarios were tested to determine possible impacts of the underwater tube tunnel-crossing project. The traffic impacts are discussed using simulations assigning the initial origin–destination data. The results of the study revealed that, given the two locations, outer and inner locations over the dagger-shape bay, the capacity increments on the bridge links and the links around the periphery highway did not bring any effective solutions beyond some minor improvements. The findings disclosed that the ineffectiveness of the tube tunnel crossing might be due to the excessive congestion happening all over the downtown area, which clogs the passageways to the bridge. The paper highlights the limitations of the tube tunnel-crossing project, emphasises the need for comprehensive investigations before committing to the project and advocates the emphasis to be actually given for sustainable mobility.

The limited availability of public transportation in Saudi Arabia leads to an increased demand for private vehicles. An increase in using private cars does not meet the global sustainability goals, e.g., reducing energy consumption and improving the air quality. Road users should be encouraged to use sustainable mobility modes, particularly public transportation, equally accessible to both men and women However, women’s mobility has been somewhat limited and challenged in spatio-temporal terms, and partly due to socio-cultural barriers. This study attempts to understand the gender experience of a sample of public transport users and consider their aspirations and needs into daily mobility. A survey campaign (structured interviews and online questionnaires) was launched in the Dammam Metropolitan Region (DMR), taking four different types of respondents into account. The results suggest a predominant preference for taxis for shopping and leisure activities due to a poor public transport service, pivotally characterized by limited operational routes, hours, and infrastructure. This study ponders upon the adequacy of the supporting infrastructures and interior design of the public buses to women’s needs and compare them with global best practices. The results suggest that, due to the absence of a gender-responsive design and infrastructure, women are forced to use taxis, although privacy and a sense of insecurity often become concerns when traveling alone or with children. The study results allow future research to be expanded, considering women’s mobility patterns, needs, and embedded barriers by comparing the results with current transport policies, plans, and practices.

Sustainable transportation and mobility are key components and central to sustainable development. This research aims to reveal the macro-level social, economic, and environmental impacts of alternative vehicle technologies in the U.S. The studied vehicle technologies are conventional gasoline, hybrid, plug-in hybrid with four different all-electric ranges, and full battery electric vehicles (BEV). In total, 19 macro level sustainability indicators are quantified for a scenario in which electric vehicles are charged through the existing U.S. power grid with no additional infrastructure, and an extreme scenario in which electric vehicles are fully charged with solar charging stations. The analysis covers all life cycle phases from the material extraction, processing, manufacturing, and operation phases to the end-of-life phases of vehicles and batteries. Results of this analysis revealed that the manufacturing phase is the most influential phase in terms of socio-economic impacts compared to other life cycle phases, whereas operation phase is the most dominant phase in the terms of environmental impacts and some of the socio-economic impacts such as human health and economic cost of emissions. Electric vehicles have less air pollution cost and human health impacts compared to conventional gasoline vehicles. The economic cost of emissions and human health impact reduction potential can be up to 45% and 35%, respectively, if electric vehicles are charged through solar charging stations. Electric vehicles have potential to generate income for low and medium skilled workers in the U.S. In addition to quantified sustainability indicators, some sustainability metrics were developed to compare relative sustainability performance alternative passenger vehicles. BEV has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions and ecological land footprint per $ of its contribution to the U.S. GDP, and has the lowest ecological footprint per unit of its energy consumption. The only sustainability metrics that does not favor the BEV is the water-energy ratio, where the conventional gasoline vehicle performed best.

Under many circumstances, when providing full bus priority methods, urban transport officials have to operate buses in mixed traffic based on their road network limitations. In the case of Istanbul’s Metrobus lane, for instance, when the route comes to the pre-designed Bosphorus Bridge, it has no choice but to merge with highway mixed traffic until it gets to the other side. Much has been written on the relative success of implementing Ramp Metering (RM), for example ALINEA (‘Asservissement line´ aire d’entre´ e autoroutie’) and Variable Speed Limits (VSL), two of the most widely-used “merging congestion” management strategies, in both a separate and combined manner. However, there has been no detailed study regarding the combination of these systems in the face of high bus volume. This being the case, the ultimate goal of this study is to bridge this gap by developing and proposing a combination of VSL and RM strategies in the presence of high bus volume (VSL+ALINEA/B). The proposed model has been coded using microscopic simulation software—VISSIM—and its vehicle actuated programming (VAP) feature; referred to as VisVAP. For current traffic conditions, the proposed model is able to improve total travel time by 9.0%, lower the number of average delays of mixed traffic and buses by 29.1% and 81.5% respectively, increase average speed by 12.7%, boost bottleneck throughout by 2.8%, and lower fuel consumption, Carbon Monoxide (CO), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) emissions by 17.3% compared to the existing “VSL+ALINEA” model. The results of the scenario analysis confirmed that the proposed model is not only able to decrease delay times on the Metrobus system but is also able to improve the adverse effects of high bus volume when subject to adjacent mixed traffic flow along highway sections.

With a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by developing Smart Cities (SCs) and industrial decarbonization, there is a growing desire to decarbonize the renewable energy sector by accelerating green buildings (GBs) construction, electric vehicles (EVs), and ensuring long-term stability, with the expectation that emissions will need to be reduced by at least two thirds by 2035 and by at least 90% by 2050. Implementing GBs in urban areas and encouraging the use of EVs are cornerstones of transition towards SCs, and practical actions that governments can consider to help with improving the environment and develop SCs. This paper investigates different aspects of smart cities development and introduces new feasible indicators related to GBs and EVs in designing SCs, presenting existing barriers to smart cities development, and solutions to overcome them. The results demonstrate that feasible and achievable policies such as the development of the zero-energy, attention to design parameters, implementation of effective indicators for GBs and EVs, implementing strategies to reduce the cost of production of EVs whilst maintaining good quality standards, load management, and integrating EVs successfully into the electricity system, are important in smart cities development. Therefore, strategies to governments should consider the full dynamics and potential of socio-economic and climate change by implementing new energy policies on increasing investment in EVs, and GBs development by considering energy, energy, techno-economic, and environmental benefits.