Abstract

hough the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area where there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if it is compared with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognize different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper the authors address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally the paper ends with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and the paper provides some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.

Abstract

In countries with transition economies a common serious challenge relating to vehicle transport is the increasing shortage of high octane gasoline and its inherent low quality. The aim of this work is to develop a low cost, rapidimplementation method aimed at reducing a vehicle engine's dependency on a gasoline octane rating, the consumption of fuel and the emission of toxic substances in the exhaust gases. The influence of the removal of carbon formation in engines on the improvement of the efficiency of vehicles and the subsequent reduction of their environmental impact was discussed and scientifically substantiated. The technology of coating an engine's working surfaces with ultrafine metal having catalytic activity in redox reactions was developed. A single application of the developed method will provide long-term elimination of carbon deposits on working surfaces. This will reduce the need for high gasoline octane ratings, significantly improve fuel efficiency and also reduce the environmental impact of gasoline engines. © 2013 WIT Press.