Hi, José

Lets talk about it. I work a lot with this subject and I believe we could work togheter.

Send me an e-mail: [email protected]

Hi José

We have done some (limited) work on the topic. Feel free to share some of your work, so I can check the overlap - our work is a bit more technical, but has a direct economic impact. You can find mine and contact details at http://ee.sun.ac.za/staff/mjbooysen/

T

Dear Marthinus, thank you for your response and for sharing your contact. Please, below you find my contact details. Nice to know about the technical work in this area as well.

http://jose-vidal.wix.com/jgvv

Hi José

Happy to discuss working on this project. Our experience is largely on passenger transport, as opposed to freight, with a particular focus on sustainable mobility.

You can contact me on [email protected]

Regards

Dr Elliot Fishman

Director, Transport Innovation

Institute for Sensible Transport

Dear José,

since 1998 PIMR is promoting implementation of the new truck-gooseneck trailers and car-trailer  unis that aret equipped with better brakes then surge (inertia) type brake. In our road units we want to implement innovative electronically steered braking systems but with one except (Idiada Spain/Poland) nobody is eager to issue Type Approval for Brake -By_Wire braking systems. I wrote few papers of problems neede to be solve in Europe to brake down monopoly of firms like AL-KO, KNOTT - manufacturers of archaic and very dangerous inertia type brakes. Implementation of new electric brake systems (not a European bad copy of electric brakles meda in USA) should help to implement units with total weight up to 7 -12 t . Such units could help to transport goods without need of use very big 40t units. For personal cars trailers with newest braking systems like PIMR-EBS or EMB system from Haldex (system was developed in Europe for over 30 mio euros and stiil it is without type approval because truck and trailer are not connected by hydraulic or pneumatic hoses!!!! You can contact me on [email protected] , best regards Adam Dubowski

Hello!

Regulations depend on problem scale.  Some regulations neccessary in big cities are useless in small cities.  I understand you cope mainly with freight transport - the questions for regulations to be asked are:

- limiting freight mobility, in other words instead of one truck delivering coca-cola and another delivering pepsi cola to the same shop in a city center you might put limits so that both products travel from a logistic center in the city outskirts in one truck, reducing the truck's burden on the city.  This is done by quotas for trucks or for shops.  Swiss have a lot of experience with that

- limiting time, for example outside peak hour.  In Leszno in city center their is a paid parking zone, deliveries can park free of charge until 11AM, later if the deliver, they have to pay for parking during delivery

- regulations where the delivery van or truck can stop.  Drivers will want to park as close as possible, but there can be limits put to that.  On the other hand you should make sure the van can park within a reasonable distance, otherwise you can be sure the driver will brake the rules

- for trucks regulations concerning which street they use to reach their destination.

If you have questions or want to work with details, send me an email to: [email protected] ... and be patient.

Dear José,

I'm also working on the issue, mainly related to rail transport. In addition to the opinions above, I can raise the following questions:

differences in organizational and financial scheme between competing infrastructures (rail and road)

mismatching of the payer (government) and the recipient of benefits (carriers and residents of the cities)

comparison of non-financial transport statistic data

I would be very interested in your findings, please share them to [email protected] 

Hi José,

in my opinion a first attempt to reduce traffic congestion due to freight distribution is to solve a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), a quite simple task. Then, the model can be tailored, introducing the constraints that reproduce to the best your special system.

This could be a difficult part of the work.

Anyway, if you're interested in a co-operation, feel free to contact me at:

[email protected]

Dear Mauro,

I agree that to reduce traffic congestion, first we need to sove the VRP problem.

However, in  large cities, mainly in developing countries, we also have other issues like lack of suitable load/unload/parking areas; narrow streets, theft of cargo (in peripherical areas); delivery time window which retailers and carriers have different perspectives, etc. My guess, by viewing the problem of congestion bottlenecks too narrowly, without considering the system as a whole, we may find only partial solutions that address only traffic congestion and not the entire construct (e.g.,cargo theft, impact of the detour on logistical performance; moving of distribution centers to other places because the little access to the zone regulations for cargo ,etc.).

Nice to exchange those ideas with all of researchers.

Hi José

I have an interest primarily in road safety issues in developing countries, which doesn't necessarily fit with your need, however I wanted to make a point which applies equally to freight distribution regulation as to traffic safety regulation.  That is: the effectiveness of regulation depends very much on the effectiveness of enforcement, and this in turn is linked to governance issues like corruption,  Having sound regulations but lax or corrupt enforcement is not much better than having no regulations at all.

Regards Mark [email protected]

Mark, I agree with your statement. Very little impact if not enforced. In SA we have a broken enforcement system, which leads to total disregard of the regulations. There is another interesting aspect we have found though - understanding of the regulation is also limited in countries where education systems are lacking. We have found that average speed regulation does not work specifically in the informal sector, and determined that limited understanding of the concept of average speed enforcement meant most drivers assumed it was an instantaneous speed camera. So yes, regulation must be backed by enforcement, but enforcement must be preceded by either educational drives or careful consideration of the general understanding of the regulation. 

T

Hi Marthinus - yes, very true.  One of our PhD students recently completed research on drink driving in China where a major barrier to effective regulation and enforcement is widespread lack of knowledge of the legal blood alcohol limits and the relationship between drinks consumed and blood alcohol level.

Dear José, your guess goes exactly in the direction of my proposal: lack of suitable load/unload/parking areas; narrow streets; theft of cargo; delivery time window are just constraints useful to better define the VRP in your case. As you possibly know, in Italy most of the historical towns suffer from these problems, since they've medieval plants. So, we're dealing with these problems.

To  broaden the point of view, I don't agree with concentrating shops in mega-distribution centers, because this results in a more intensive use of the car, as I experienced in US outskirts, and kills the daily life in those towns. 

Kindly send further in instructions on this email: [email protected]

Dear Mark,

Thank you very much for this information and ideas. I agree the regulations depends on the effectiveness of enforcement. I found little researches about traffic safety regulation in urban logistics. To investigate issues like corruptions seem to be interesting in this case. Can you provide us any research related to?

Best regards, José

Dear Mauro,

Yet. It seems to be true. It contributes to use of many smaller vehicles to complete  the deliveries. But, how solve this problem in order to balance the traffic and deliveries inside megacities? An other problem is: Because of the zone regulation of trucks and heavy traffic around this peripheral area, companies are leaving  and moving to outskirts. Best regards, José

Dear Clélia,

Thank you for your interest. Very interesting your work. Could you share it with us? Best regards, José

www.jose-vidal.wix.com/jgvv

Hi José, Firstly, I would ask you to clearly define the problem you have. Is it economic, social, environmental or safety? Good, clear problem definitions result in good solutions. What outcome are you trying to improve?

For transport in cities we have economic, land use, environmental and safety regulation. These may be different for different modes - probably road and rail for freight, but developing cities can be peculiarly different. And the type of regulation may be different for different modes - e.g. road and rail safety are managed and regulated very differently. Safety regulation in transport can target vehicles, drivers, companies, dangerous goods or infrastructure.

For industry in general we also have commercial, competition, occupational and other regulation.

Finally, regulation may not be the best solution, since it may be relatively costly and ineffective,

Good luck!

Dear Brett,

Thank you for your reply. The problem is related to safety and environmental. In Brazil, the transport system of goods is based on road. Consequently, we have a lot of problem in terms of high cost, externalities (mainly gas emission), noise, accidents, thefts of goods and also spare vehicle parts, etc. Certainly, we need to plan the land use, to have regulations/traffic control of freight vehicles inside large centers. It is the point, I have been investigating the regulations and their impact on performance of the companies. For example, overnight delivery can be a alternative for the companies and the Government as well, however it is not safety and makes noise for neighborhood. Some companies have moved from large cities to country side in order to avoid taxes/fee, regulations etc; however the movement of vehicles from/to centers contributes to increase the externalities and less local taxes.

Therefore, I am looking forward to receiving more opinions/ideas and I am open to work collaboratively.

Thank you for your concerns and nice comments.

José

Dear José,

In Brasil there is Leslie Kelly de Oliveira who works on city logistics, mainly for the city of Belo Horizonte. Also Rosario Macario, From Instituto Tecnico in Lisbon, is working a lot with Brasil.

Personally, I'm working on urban logistics demand estimation, sustainability evaluation, qualitative data collection and scenario assessment, among others. I'm working with Latin-America, mainly Colombia and Mexico, and starting with Peru. We can see, if you are interested, if some collaborations can be made.

Dear  Jesus,

Thank you for your suggestion. Actually, I know Leise, we have been working together.

I have interest in this collaboration. I would like to compare cases about urban logistics in Mexico city, Bogotá and São Paulo. I leave my e-mail in order to keep in touch.

[email protected]

The best. José

There is a quite good research in this activities around, but may be you could have some inspiration on this reports bookhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/301561840_Rumbo_a_la_carbono_neutralidad_en_el_transporte_publico_en_Costa_Rica 

Regards

Book Rumbo a la carbono neutralidad en el transporte público en Costa Rica.