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The recent pandemic has changed the modal choices of users in the urban context, highlighting in the last two years an increase in the diffusion of electric scooters, which is not homogeneous in the Italian context. At the beginning of 2020, the first e-scooter services were launched in Sicily, with the city of Palermo leading the way. A survey was therefore conducted in Sicily involving approximately 550 regular users of e-scooter services. The descriptive statistical analysis undertaken compared three different periods pre, during and post pandemic, with particular attention to the gender and age gap and different trends in the diffusion of multimodality. The results provide not only some suggestions for the improvement of services by managers but some suggestions to local administrators for implementation of democratic and sustainable planning steps, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travel restrictions due to COVID-19 initiated a radical rethink of the urban planning process, focussing on a concept initially proposed by Carlos Moreno in 2016; the "15-Minute City" model, aiming at the improvement of quality of life by creating or rearranging cities so that residents' needs can be reached within 15-minutes on foot or by bicycle or by public transit. In continuation to a research in 2020, this paper quantifies the attractiveness of the model to residents in nine regions of Sicily in 2022. Based on statistical analysis concerning the respondents' opinion, the model examined promotes walking as an anti-stress method and improves the overall health conditions at a community level. Therefore, policy makers can revalue the existing planning process and create a blueprint for a healthier and car-free lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are often characterised by the presence of universities and by a greater number of students, often commuters, with an average age of less than 30 years. The study focused on the city of Enna (Italy), where the university students represent a significant percentage of residents and also a good rate of local travel demand. The survey campaign was conducted over a period of more than one year. A bivariate statistical method was applied highlighting significant variables regarding several features of a car sharing system. Additionally, non-parametric statistics and a before and after analysis were performed to evaluate the influence of implementation of the shared transport service. The results can also offer insights into the improvement of transport supply in urban context and the possible implementation of the co-creation actions between the companies managing the service with the end-users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vital mode of transportation for short term mobility is paratransit. There are several studies on paratransit safety in developed nations but the developing nations like Bangladesh pay less attention to the issue. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to evaluate the safety of paratransit using the perceptions of riders and drivers. Negative binomial model (NBM) was used to calibrate the safety of paratransit using 451 responses in Chittagong city. The study's findings highlight the significance of perceptions of travel safety in enhancing accessibility during the routine travel. Vehicle speed limits (km/h), which reduce the chance of accidents and having an institutional driver's license are among the variables that have emerged for the betterment of safety. Therefore, identifying factors that can makes these transportation systems safer will allow service managers and controllers to optimize passenger and driver safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, the Italian road transport system has been characterized by severe and consistent traffic congestion and in particular Rome is one of the Italian cities most affected by this problem. In this study, a Leven berg Marquardt (LM) artificial neural network heuristic model was used to predict the traffic flow of non-autonomous vehicles. Traffic datasets were collected using both inductive loop detectors and video cameras as acquisition systems and selecting some parameters including vehicle speed, time of day, traffic volume and number of vehicles. The model showed a training, test and regression value (R² ) of 0.99892, 0.99615 and 0.99714 respectively. The results of this research add to the growing body of literature on traffic flow modelling and help urban planners and traffic managers in terms of the traffic control and the provision of convenient travel routes for pedestrians and motorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic congestion is one of the most significant problems in urban transportation. It has been increasing, especially in regions close to intersections. Several methods have been developed to reduce the traffic congestion. One of the analysis methods is social network analysis (SNA). This method, which has increased use in transportation, can quickly identify the most central intersections in transportation networks. Improvements to central intersections, identified in a road network structure, speed up the traffic flow across the entire network structure. In this study, the Istanbul highway transportation network has been examined and values for a series of network centrality measures have been calculated using the SNA. The accuracy and error scales of the centrality values were compared using a machine learning algorithm. The Bonacich power centrality has been the best performance. Based on the study results the most central intersections in Istanbul have been determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]