Eleanor M. Hennessy, J. Robert Wolfinbarger, Irfan Batur, Nehal Ansh Srivastava, Mattheus Porto, Gabriel I. Cotlier, Madison Horgan, Ian Searles, Ryan M. Sparks, Mikhail V. Chester
{"title":"Changing boundaries, distributed control, and implications for transportation sustainability","authors":"Eleanor M. Hennessy, J. Robert Wolfinbarger, Irfan Batur, Nehal Ansh Srivastava, Mattheus Porto, Gabriel I. Cotlier, Madison Horgan, Ian Searles, Ryan M. Sparks, Mikhail V. Chester","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00016-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00016-2","url":null,"abstract":"Transportation systems are rapidly integrating with cybertechnologies and into cyberphysical ecosystems. Emerging cognitive capabilities are leading to the diffusing of traditional boundaries between transportation and other infrastructure and increasingly distributed control. This requires a new approach to sustainability, reflecting distributed cognitive capabilities of transportation systems, increasingly diffuse boundaries that challenge the historical nature of transportation, and Anthropocene complexity. Public agencies should reassess their roles to manage this increasingly complex environment.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00016-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142737642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of parsimonious models in addressing mobility challenges","authors":"Marc Barthelemy","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00011-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00011-7","url":null,"abstract":"Mobility is a complex phenomenon encompassing diverse transportation modes, infrastructure elements, and human behaviors. Tackling the persistent challenges of congestion, pollution, and accessibility requires a range of modeling approaches to optimize these systems. While AI offers transformative potential, it should not be the sole solution. Parsimonious models remain crucial in generating innovative concepts and tools and fostering collaborative efforts among researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00011-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142588280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An integrated model of electric bus energy consumption and optimised depot charging","authors":"Johannes N. Hendriks, Björn. C. P. Sturmberg","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00008-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00008-2","url":null,"abstract":"The electrification of buses, and the depots servicing them, is a high priority for sustainability but is hindered by challenges at the intersection of the mobility and electricity systems, such as trade-offs of charging infrastructure and scheduling with the stress placed on the grid. This paper presents a model for studying and co-optimise these variables. The model has two standout features. Firstly, that it integrates a data-driven model for predicting the energy consumption of electric buses based on route details with a bus depot charging optimisation algorithm that minimises the loading on the grid. Secondly, it is compatible with the publicly available route and schedule data published by bus operators and is available open-source for extension. The results foreground the impact of route topology, temperature, and traffic congestion on energy consumption, and the interdependencies of these with timetabling, charging infrastructure and battery designs in driving grid loading.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00008-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142588278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Electric vehicles limit equitable access to essential services during blackouts","authors":"Yamil Essus, Benjamin Rachunok","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00007-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00007-3","url":null,"abstract":"Electric vehicles (EVs) link mobility and electric power availability, posing a risk of making transportation unavailable during blackouts. We develop a computational framework to quantify the impact of EVs on mobility and access to services and find that existing access issues are exacerbated by EVs. Our results demonstrate that larger batteries reduce mobility constraints, but their effectiveness is dependent on the geographic distribution of services and households. We explore the trade-offs between mobility and quality-of-life improvements presented by vehicle-to-Grid technologies and the feasibility and trade-offs of public charging infrastructure as a solution to access inequalities. Equitable access to essential services (supermarkets, schools, parks, etc.) is the most important aspect of community resilience, and our results show vehicle electrification can hinder access to essential services unless properly incorporated into policy and city-scale decision-making.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00007-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142443611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scalability challenges of machine learning models for estimating walking and cycling volumes in large networks","authors":"Meead Saberi, Tanapon Lilasathapornkit","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00009-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00009-1","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the scalability of machine learning models for estimating walking and cycling volumes across the extensive New South Wales (NSW) Six Cities Region in Australia using mobile phone and crowdsourced data. Previous research has focused on localized applications, missing the complexities of larger networks. The research addresses this gap by identifying unique challenges such as the scarcity and representativeness of observed count data, gaps in the crowdsourced and mobile phone data, and inconsistencies in link-level volume estimates. We propose and demonstrate the application of strategies like enhancing geographical diversity of observed count data and employing an extensive cross-validation approach in model training and testing. By leveraging various auxiliary datasets, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of these strategies in improving model performance. These findings provide valuable insights for transportation modelers, policymakers, and urban planners, offering a robust framework for supporting sustainable transportation infrastructure and policies with advanced data-driven methodologies.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00009-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142360077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bjorn C. P. Sturmberg, Lahiru Hapuarachchi, Laura Jones, Kathryn Lucas-Healey, Justus van Biljon
{"title":"Vehicle-to-grid response to a frequency contingency in a national grid","authors":"Bjorn C. P. Sturmberg, Lahiru Hapuarachchi, Laura Jones, Kathryn Lucas-Healey, Justus van Biljon","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00010-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00010-8","url":null,"abstract":"Vehicle-to-grid technology enables electric vehicles to contribute their large, high-power batteries to power systems reserves. Here we report the first demonstration of a fleet of vehicles discharging to support system security after a frequency contingency in a national grid. Our results highlight the potential of vehicle-to-grid, with vehicles discharging within 6 s of the contingency event, and shortcomings, with vehicles recommencing charging before the power system had fully recovered.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00010-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142329431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hyper pooling private trips into high occupancy transit like attractive shared rides","authors":"Rafał Kucharski, Oded Cats","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00006-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00006-4","url":null,"abstract":"The size of the solution space associated with the trip-matching problem has made the search for high-order ride-pooling prohibitive. We introduce hyper-pooled rides along with a method to identify them within urban demand patterns. Travellers of hyper-pooled rides walk to common pick-up points, travel with a shared vehicle along a sequence of stops and are dropped off at stops from which they walk to their destinations. While closely resembling classical mass transit, hyper-pooled rides are purely demand-driven, with itineraries (stop locations, sequences, timings) optimised for all co-travellers. For 2000 trips in Amsterdam the algorithm generated 40 hyper-pooled rides transporting 225 travellers. They would require 52.5 vehicle hours to travel solo, whereas in the hyper-pooled multi-stop rides, it is reduced sixfold to 9 vehicle hours only. This efficiency gain is made possible by achieving an average occupancy of 5.8 (and a maximum of 14) while remaining attractive for all co-travellers.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00006-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142174391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transport within earth system boundaries","authors":"Joyeeta Gupta, Yang Chen, Crelis Rammelt","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00005-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00005-5","url":null,"abstract":"Achieving a socially and environmentally sustainable mobility and transport system necessitates a multifaceted approach that considers just Earth System Boundaries. Just Earth System Boundaries are domain-specific (e.g. climate change, water) thresholds beyond which significant harm is done to people and other species. We have crossed these thresholds in 7/8 domains and not yet met the minimum needs of people worldwide. The challenge is to return to the safe and just corridor while prioritising the access of the poorest people to minimum resources as called for by the principle of leaving no one behind. Within this context, the transport sector, a major contributor to climate change and environmental pollution, requires significant and swift transformations. This comment proposes six key principles for building a sustainable transport system: prioritising equitable access, enhancing public transport and limiting private transport, decarbonising fuel and fleets, decoupling freight transport from fossil fuel trade, repurposing infrastructure, and ensuring just financing. These principles may enable just living within just Earth System Boundaries.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00005-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141597205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimization of electric charging infrastructure: integrated model for routing and charging coordination with power-aware operations","authors":"Hamid R. Sayarshad","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00004-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00004-6","url":null,"abstract":"With the increasing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), optimizing charging operations has become imperative to ensure efficient and sustainable mobility. This study proposes an optimization model for the charging and routing of electric vehicles between Origin-Destination (OD) demands. The objective is to develop an efficient and reliable charging plan that ensures the successful completion of trips while considering the limited range and charging requirements of electric vehicles. This paper presents an integrated model for optimizing electric vehicle (EV) charging operations, considering additional factors of setup time, charging time, bidding price estimation, and power availability from three sources: the electricity grid, solar energy, and wind energy. One crucial aspect addressed by the model is the estimation of bidding prices for both day-ahead and intra-day electricity markets. The model also considers the total power availability from the electricity grid, solar energy, and wind energy. The alignment of charging operations with the capacity of the grid and prevailing bidding prices is essential.This ensures that the charging process is optimized and can effectively adapt to the available grid capacity and market conditions. The utilization of renewable energies led to a 42% decrease in the electricity storage capacity available in batteries at charging stations. Furthermore, this integration leads to a substantial cost reduction of approximately 69% compared to scenarios where renewable energy is not utilized. Hence, the proposed model can design renewable energy systems based on the required electricity capacity at charging stations. These findings highlight the compelling financial advantages associated with the adoption of sustainable power sources.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00004-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141489071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Planning to fail? How science can respond to reduced climate mitigation ambition","authors":"Greg Marsden, Tim Schwanen","doi":"10.1038/s44333-024-00002-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44333-024-00002-8","url":null,"abstract":"The prospect of remaining within 1.5C of planetary warming relies on developed economies tracking increasingly steep and challenging emission reduction pathways. This paper explores how the UK is now proactively planning to miss its targets, using the surface transport sector as a critical case. It discusses how the research–policy interface might both challenge downgraded ambition and provide more actionable routes forward.","PeriodicalId":501714,"journal":{"name":"npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport","volume":" ","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00002-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141079012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}