Abstract

The already significant volume of freight vehicles moving within city limits is steadily growing, and is expected to continue increasing at an even faster rate. Many European cities, however, have historical urban heritages and constraints that make them a logistics nightmare, where traffic congestion can result from improperly parked vehicles. In this paper, we focus on the location and sizing of commercial parking lay-bys in urban centres, where it is possible to park for a limited amount of time to perform loading/unloading operations and deliveries. The problem has been formulated and addressed with reference to a central district in the city of Bergamo, with a strong commercial presence, and characterized by significant problems of traffic congestion. We present a mixed analytic-Monte Carlo simulation approach in order to find an optimal distribution and relative sizes of the lay-by areas according to the demand and location of the business activities.

Abstract

This study evaluates the attractiveness of self-hubbing in terms of the (a) symmetry of itineraries and the consequences for passengers in the case of missed flights. We compute the most attractive European origin-destination (O-D) pairs through self-connection and evaluate their robustness by estimating the expected delays relative to connecting times and the travel options available when a connection is missed. Results show that the potential of self-connecting markets is reduced when accounting for asymmetrical travel options and the consequences for travelers in the case of missed flights. In terms of frequencies, self-connecting passengers are, on average, found to have fewer alternatives to complete a given O-D pair than in the case of alliance-based connections (− 33%). Our findings moderate the confidence of past evidence on self-hubbing in light of the concrete reliability of self-connections for passengers. The itinerary choice made by passengers inevitably depends on the evaluation of travel quality attributes related to the (a) symmetry of the itineraries and the costs incurred through missed connections. Document type: Article