Strategic evaluation of cycling infrastructure in emerging contexts: a case study of high-capacity corridors in Ljubljana, Slovenia

Sustainability Challenges and Opportunities in a University Police Fleet: A Case Study of Idling, Emissions, and Electrification Potential

This case study examines fleet sustainability challenges within the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Police Department, a multicampus public safety agency operating aging gasoline vehicles central to daily patrol and administrative functions. Rising maintenance costs, increased vehicle downtime, and extensive idling created both operational strain and avoidable environmental impacts. Aging internal-combustion vehicles contributed to elevated emissions and fuel consumption, particularly under high-heat conditions and equipment demands typical of campus policing. Telematics monitoring indicated that approximately 48% of total engine-on time consisted of idling, highlighting a substantial source of avoidable fuel use and emissions. The study employed a qualitative case study design that triangulated multiyear maintenance records (FY2019–FY2024), telematics data from a 56-day observation period across eight vehicles, and semi-structured interviews with sworn, administrative, and technical personnel. Findings revealed that aging vehicles exhibited disproportionate repair frequency, increased emissions potential, and extended downtime, while idling emerged as a major driver of inefficiency. Electrification was feasible for administrative roles but remains constrained for patrol operations due to range limitations, charging infrastructure requirements, and duty-cycle demands. Governance gaps further limited evidence-based sustainability planning. The case demonstrates that sustainable fleet management in public safety contexts requires alignment between operational practices, technological capabilities, and governance structures. Role-based electrification, idle-reduction initiatives, lifecycle-based replacement, and structured fleet oversight offer practical pathways for reducing emissions while maintaining operational readiness.

Beyond Green Growth: Evaluating the Biophysical Feasibility of Rail-Centric Transport Systems in the European Union

Achieving the European Union’s (EU-27) 2050 climate neutrality goal requires a drastic reduction in transport emissions. This study utilizes the pymedeas2 integrated assessment model to evaluate trade-offs between technology-led and structure-led transitions under both continuous growth and steady-state economic paradigms. Our results reveal that relying primarily on private vehicle electrification falls short of emission targets. The baseline REF-G scenario—following current institutional roadmaps centred on rapid technological substitution and sustained economic growth—maintains a high final energy demand and requires a cumulative extraction of 2.35 Mt of lithium by 2050, claiming nearly 6.4% of current global proven reserves solely for European mobility. Conversely, combining a modal shift toward electrified rail with macroeconomic stabilization (RAIL-SSE) reduces transport final energy demand by 68% relative to the projected 2024 peak and decreases lithium requirements by 57%. This sufficiency-driven pathway achieves the deepest absolute climate mitigation, dropping residual transport emissions to approximately 90 MtCO2/year. Furthermore, despite the front-loaded costs of rail expansion, RAIL-SSE emerges as the least capital-intensive pathway, requiring a total investment of USD 19.83 trillion—a systemic saving of USD 7.27 trillion relative to the REF-G baseline. We conclude that reaching absolute sustainability in the EU transport sector necessitates a policy shift away from resource-intensive green growth strategies toward demand sufficiency and durable public infrastructure.

Feasibility assessment of an integrated green urban transportation system for Kathmandu Valley

Kathmandu Valley faces acute urban mobility challenges, including severe traffic congestion, a disproportionately high share of fossil fuel dependent private vehicles, severely degraded pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, and decades of unplanned urban expansion that has consumed road reserves and public space. These conditions impose measurable costs on public health, economic productivity, and environmental sustainability, and they require a structured, evidence informed response grounded in local spatial conditions rather than generic policy templates. This study presents a planning level feasibility assessment for an integrated green urban transportation system specifically tailored to the Kathmandu Valley context, with the Gaushala-Ratopul corridor selected as a representative pilot study area. Field observations were conducted at four locations within the corridor during weekday morning peak hours (8:00–9:00 am), recording vehicle counts ranging from approximately 85 vehicles per hour at the heritage adjacent Jaya Bageshwori Road to approximately 560 vehicles per hour on the Ring Road segment, with motorcycles and microbuses constituting the dominant modes. An Origin and Destination (O&D) survey engaged 35 respondents across five stakeholder categories: daily commuters, shop owners, students, transport workers, and traffic police through purposive sampling at key corridor nodes. A pedestrianisation acceptance survey administered to eight accessible residents and business operators along Jaya Bageshwori Road recorded positive opinions from six respondents (75%), treated as an exploratory qualitative indicator rather than a statistically representative finding. Based on these field observations and secondary evidence from international case studies, the study proposes a phased framework of interventions encompassing pedestrian zone creation, dedicated cycling infrastructure across three spatial typologies, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor development on two proposed routes, electric vehicle (EV) adoption incentives, smart traffic management through Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), and integrated digital mobility platforms. Alignment with Sustainable Development Goals 6, 7, and 11 is articulated through measurable indicator linkages supported by international precedent evidence. The proposed framework explicitly acknowledges the absence of transport simulation, emission modelling, and demand forecasting limitations that constrain the study to a planning level contribution and identifies these as priorities for future engineering level investigation.

Journal of Engineering Issues and Solutions Closing the Willingness–Infrastructure Gap in End-of-Life EV Battery Management: Stakeholder Evidence and Policy Pathways for Urban Nepal

Modeling Supply-Chain and Transport Resilience to Climate Risks: Lessons from Four Regions

Building resilience to natural hazards requires more than identifying critical assets. It requires understanding how supply chains respond to disruptions: where suppliers are located, what inventories firms hold, how diversified their sourcing is, and how products are transported. This paper summarizes key insights from DisruptSC, a spatial agent-based model that jointly represents the transport network and firm-level supply chains, applied to four countries or regions: Tanzania, Cambodia, Ecuador, and the Middle Corridor (Central Asia and South Caucasus). Five policy-relevant findings emerge. First, the duration of a disruption is a primary driver of total economic losses, making fast recovery a crucial lever for risk reduction. Second, the distribution of direct damages across firms and facilities matters as much as the total damages in determining total economic losses. Third, compounding events striking in close succession amplify losses in non-trivial ways, so that individual events cannot be assessed in isolation. Fourth, shorter supply chains do not always increase resilience: they buffer small, frequent disruptions but amplify large ones, reflecting a trade-off between efficiency and resilience that depends on the characteristics of the firm network and the nature of the risks. And fifth, resilience is a network externality—its benefits spill across firms and across borders — so markets under-provide it, and coordinated policy, within and between countries, has a role to play. The paper also illustrates how the model can be used for operational risk assessments or investment prioritization through transport investment stress testing, hotspot identification, and cost-benefit analyses that capture supply chain impacts.

Cycling Infrastructure, Sustainable Mobility, and Regional Urban Development in Latin America: A Systematic Review (2020–2026)

Cycling infrastructure has emerged as a strategic lever for sustainable urban development in Latin America, yet the factors that determine its effectiveness remain poorly understood and dispersed across fragmented literature. This systematic review, conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines, synthesizes evidence from 16 peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and January 2026 to identify the key determinants of cycling infrastructure effectiveness in Latin American cities. Five critical dimensions emerged from the analysis: physically segregated infrastructure, gender-responsive design, multimodal connectivity, environmental and public health co-benefits, and adaptation to topographical and climatic conditions. The evidence reveals that segregated bike lanes increase cycling uptake by 48–187%, multimodal integration boosts combined trips by approximately 34%, and gender-sensitive interventions increase female cycling participation by up to 89%. These findings converge on a central insight: infrastructure effectiveness is not achieved through isolated investments but through the coherent, simultaneous implementation of multiple interconnected dimensions. This review contributes an original multidimensional analytical framework to guide evidence-based public policy and investment in sustainable urban mobility across the region.