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The Swedish government is likely to implement longer and heavier road freight vehicles, so-called high-capacity vehicles (HCVs), in the near future. The purpose of this paper is to analysis the expected effects on the whole transport system regarding tonne-kilometres, vehicle-kilometres on road, CO₂ and socio-economics with three possible implementation strategies (HCVs on all roads, a designated road network and a designated road network with a kilometre-based truck charge) and two vehicle types (74 t/25.25 m and 74 t/34 m).

Calculations are based on two well-established scenarios for transport development in Sweden. Changes per tonne-kilometre are modelled for ten product groups with considerations taken to their transport networks. Socio-economic effects are analysed using the net present value rating method over a 40-year period.

The study shows the increase in demand for transport and the modal shift, from rail and sea to road, in terms of tonne-kilometres, vehicle-kilometres and CO₂ emissions for three implementation strategies of HCVs in two scenarios. All implementation strategies show a positive social net-benefit with the introduction of HCVs.

The results reveal potential benefits to the implementation of HCVs. The results are limited by possible over/under-estimations of effects considered in the calculations, due to uncertainties and assumptions.

The results highlight expected levels of modal shift and induced transport for different HCV implementation strategies and how they depend on transport and climate policies and the expected growth of tonne-kilometres.

The calculations consider socio-economic effects, particularly from increased CO₂ emissions due to modal shift and induced traffic, which is lacking in previous studies. To balance conflicting economic and environmental goals, the findings indicate that the implementation of HCVs could be accompanied by other policy measures. The findings are based on the Swedish context, but the model can be adapted to other countries or regions and to study other freight transport reforms.

This chapter examines the systems used to collect data on the long-distance movement of freight by road for modelling, market research and other purposes. It begins by listing the features of an ideal long-distance freight data set that would fully meet the needs of policy makers, business analysts, academic researchers and freight operators. It then reviews the existing data-collection systems in Europe, highlighting their shortcomings and how they might be overcome. The third section analyses the strengths and limitations of several alternative approaches to collecting and analysing road freight data, some of which are at an early stage of development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the growing importance of generic mobile computing for ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) development and governance. Specifically, building on theories of open innovation and pertinent examples, the paper aims to inform future ITS policymaking.

Using a wide range of national, regional, and industry roadmaps together with scientific reports on the impact of specific ITS services, conclusions for ITS governance and policymaking are drawn.

This paper finds that it is imperative to proactively embrace the rapidly expanding generic mobile computing service industry and critically reassert investments in dedicated ITS‐infrastructure. This is of equal importance for developed and developing countries.

Previous literature has mainly dealt with ITS in terms of mobility of people. This paper addresses ITS in a freight context, an area that has received scarce attention in the literature.

This paper presents important insights for infrastructure policy makers on opportunities to take advantage of freely available data in improving freight mobility.

The trend of producing and consuming data simultaneously (so called “prosuming”) is currently re‐shaping the ITS landscape and will in the near future affect millions of daily commuters.

The paper gives an account of current worldwide ITS policies in context. The assessment of services is intended to inform both industry and policymakers.

Construction logistics is an essential part of Construction Supply Chain Management for both project management and cost aspects. The quantum of money that is embodied in the transportation of materials to site could be 39–58 per cent of total logistics costs and between 4 and 10 per cent of the product selling price for many firms. However, limited attention has been paid to measure the logistics performance at the operational level in the construction industry. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge about managing logistics costs by setting a key performance indicator (KPI) based on the number of vehicle movements to the construction site.

A case study approach was adopted with on-site observations and interviews. Observations were performed from the start of construction until “hand-over” to the building owner. A selection of construction suppliers and subcontractors involved in the studied project were interviewed.

Data analysis of vehicle movements suggested that construction transportation costs can be monitored and managed. The identified number of vehicle movements as a KPI offers a significant step towards logistics performance management in construction projects.

This research paper demonstrates that framework of using vehicular movements meet the criterion of effective KPI and is able to detect rooms for improvements. The key findings shed valuable insight for industry practitioners in initiating the measurement and monitor “the invisible logistics costs and performance”. It provides a basis for benchmarking that enables comparison, learning and improvement and thereby continuous enhancement of best practice at the operational level, which may accelerate the slow SCM implementation in the construction industry.

In the last two decades, different policy initiatives have been set up to increase the share of intermodal freight transport through a modal shift. In the design of these policies, often critical break-even distances are set, showing the cost or price competitiveness of intermodal transport to delineate transport routes that qualify for such a modal shift. In this chapter, we discuss to which extent such break-even distances can be generalized on a larger scale and how they are calculated.

We use two price-based models to calculate break-even distances for an intermodal rail and an intermodal barge transport case. General break-even values do not show the price variation in the transport market and vagueness in the calculation of these values adds to this problem.

We find that for the inland waterway case, intermodal barge transport shows potential on shorter distances as well. In addition, different ways to lower the break-even distance are discussed and a framework for calculating break-even distances is suggested.

The research elaborates on break-even distances in a European context using price data which are fluctuating over time, location specific and often not publicly available.

Policy initiatives promoting intermodal transport should not focus solely on long distance transport. Moreover, evaluating the competitiveness of the intermodal sector solely on a price comparison dishonours its true potential.

This chapter challenges the current European policy on intermodal transport by showing the price competitiveness of intermodal transport in two cases.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the measures outlined in frameworks for guiding CO_2e emissions reduction in road freight transport in the academic literature are actually being realised at a practical level.

A qualitative evaluation is carried out of the transport-related CO_2e measurement and reduction initiatives in the German logistics sector through ten case study logistics service providers. For each, senior managers are interviewed with the findings synthesised through content-analysis. The initiatives are evaluated against an accepted leading framework model used to categorise CO_2e emissions reduction initiatives.

The investigated firms, although at different evolutionary stages, understand that logistics and ecology do not, for the most part, contradict each other and both need to be considered in their companies’ long-term planning. The framework used to categorise CO_2e emissions reduction initiatives in logistics provision is largely confirmed, but also refined.

The research reaffirms and refines frameworks developed to encourage and assess green logistics practice, in a specific country's (Germany) logistics industry.

The analysis shows strong evidence that the options identified in theory are also valid for the German logistics service provider companies that were investigated. Most of the participating companies apply many of the operational options to reduce the environmental impact, although no one company is pursuing all the possible initiatives.

There is a lack of empirical studies which assess the application of green logistics initiatives identified in academic literature to practice. This paper contributes to filling this gap.

Freight transportation practices accounted for a significant share of environmental degradation and climate change over the years. Therefore, environmentally responsible transport practices (ERTPs) become a serious concern of freight shippers and transport service providers. Past studies generally ignored the assessment of ERTPs of freight transport companies during a transport service contract. To bridge the above literature gap, this paper proposed a hierarchical framework for evaluating freight transport companies based on ERTPs.

In a data-driven decision-making environment, transport firm selection is affected by multiple expert inputs, lack of information availability, decision-making ambiguity and background of experts. The evaluation of such decisions requires a multi-criteria decision-making method under a group decision-making approach. This paper used a data-driven method based on the intuitionistic fuzzy-set-based analytic hierarchy process (IF-AHP) and VIseKriterijumska Kompromisno Rangiranje (IF-VIKOR) method. The applicability of the proposed framework is validated with the Indian freight transport industry.

The result analysis shows that environmental knowledge sharing among freight transport actors, quality of organizations human resource, collaborative green awareness training programs, promoting environmental awareness program for employees and compliance of government transport emission law and practice have been ranked top five ERTPs which significantly contribute to the environmental sustainability of freight transport industry. The proposed framework also ranked freight transport companies based on ERTPs.

This research is expected to provide a reference to develop ERTPs in the emerging economies freight transport industry and contribute to the development of a sustainable freight transport system.

This study assesses the environmental responsibility of the freight transportation industry. The emerging economies logistics planners can use proposed framework for assessing the performance of freight transportation companies based on ERTPs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the aerodynamic effects of rear spoiler geometry on a sports car. Today, due to economical, safety and even environmental concerns, vehicle aerodynamics play a much more significant role in design considerations and rear spoilers play a major role in this area.

A 2-D vehicle geometry of a race car is created and solved using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver FLUENT version 6.3. The aerodynamic effects are analyzed under various vehicle speeds with and without a rear spoiler. The main results are compared to a wind tunnel experiment conducted with 1/18 replica of a Nascar.

By the CFD analysis, the drag coefficient without the spoiler is calculated to be 0.31. When the spoiler is added to the geometry, the drag coefficient increases to 0.36. The computational results with the spoiler are compared with the experimental data, and a good agreement is obtained within a 5.8 percent error band. The uncertainty associated with the experimental results of the drag coefficient is calculated to be 6.1 percent for the wind tunnel testing. The sources of discrepancies between the experimental and numerical results are identified and potential improvements on the model and experiments are provided in the paper. Furthermore, in the CFD model, it is found that the addition of the spoiler caused a decrease in the lift coefficient from 0.26 to 0.05.

This paper examines the effects of rear spoiler geometry on vehicle aerodynamic drag by comparing the CFD analysis with wind tunnel experimentation and conducting an uncertainty analysis to assess the reliability of the obtained results.

Interest in product‐level carbon auditing and labelling has been growing in both business and government circles. The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical problems and costs associated with highly disaggregated analyses of greenhouse gas emissions from supply chains. It then weighs these problems and costs against the potential benefits of the carbon labelling of products.

The views expressed in this paper are based on a review of relevant literature, informal discussions with senior managers and personal experience with the practices being investigated.

Stock‐keeping unit‐level carbon auditing of supply chains and the related carbon labelling of products will be fraught with difficulty and very costly. While simplification of the auditing process, the use of data inventories and software support may assist these processes, the practicality of applying them to all consumer products seems very doubtful. The resulting benefits to companies and consumers are also highly questionable. The main conclusion, therefore, is that product‐level carbon auditing and labelling is a “wasteful distraction” and that it would be better to devote management time and resources to other decarbonisation initiatives.

To date relatively few firms have carbon audited their supply chains at a product level and so industrial experience is limited. Market research on the likely behavioural response to carbon labelling is also at an early stage. There is sufficient evidence available, however, to conduct an initial critique of product level carbon auditing and labelling.

Some companies and government agencies should reconsider their plans for the carbon labelling of products.

This is the first paper in the logistics/supply chain literature to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this new form of carbon footprinting and labelling. It is intended to stimulate debate among logistics academics and practitioners.

For the expected increase in the capacity of existing transportation systems and efficient energy utilisation, smart maintenance solutions that are supported by online and integrated condition monitoring systems are required. Industrial internet is one of the smart maintenance solutions which enables real-time acquisition and analysis of asset condition by linking intelligent devices with different stakeholders’ applications and databases. The purpose of this paper is to present some aspects of industrial internet application as required for integrating weather information and floating road condition data from vehicle mounted sensors to enhance effective and efficient winter maintenance.

The concept of real-time road condition assessment using in-vehicle sensors is demonstrated in a case study of a 3.5 km road section located in Northern Sweden. The main floating data sources were acceleration and position sensors from a smartphone positioned on the dash board of a truck. Features extracted from the acceleration signal were two road roughness estimations. To extract targeted information and knowledge, the floating data were further processed to produce time series data of the road condition using Kalman filtering. The time series data were thereafter combined with weather data to assess the condition of the road.

In the case study, examples of visualisation and analytics to support winter maintenance planning, execution and resource allocation were presented. Reasonable correlation was shown between estimated road roughness and annual road survey data to validate and prove the presented results wider applicability.

The paper describes a concept of floating data for an industrial internet application for efficient road maintenance. The resulting improvement in winter maintenance will promote dependable, safe and sustainable transportation of goods and people, especially in Northern Nordic region with harsh and sometimes unpredictable weather conditions.