Methodological Foundations of Renewal and Expansion of Car Fleet

Currently, Russian international road transport carriers do not have sufficient potential to successfully compete with their foreign partners. The main reasons for this are significant deterioration of the car fleet and its non-compliance to modern environmental requirements, lack of own funds for timely renovation and development of the motor transport fleet, as well as systemic lag in development of transportation technologies and their logistics support.The objective of the article is to substantiate the choice of rational measures to solve the problem of expanded reproduction of car fleet used in international road haulage. The methodology used in preparation of the article is based on the use of general scientific methods in combination with special methods, including the analysis of statistical data on international road haulage, a comparative analysis of the state of the car fleet of Russian carriers, considering the basic conditions and operational characteristics, classification of the fleet of trucks based on typification of their operational characteristics with subsequent subdivision of this fleet into three main groups, an overview analysis and benchmarking of foreign operating experience and future development of car fleet, an analysis of the economic and legal possibilities of raising funds for renewal of car fleet.The article examines and studies: a) urgency of solving the problem of renewal and expansion of the car fleet used by Russian carriers in international road transportation; b) foreign experience and trends in development of fleet used for international haulage; c) the main directions of providing economic opportunities for transition to expanded renewal of vehicles; d) analysis of the legal possibilities of providing public support for expanded reproduction of the motor transport fleet of Russian international road carriers including through the use of public-private partnerships.Based on the results of the study, proposals have been developed aimed at ensuring renewal and expansion of car fleet and increasing the efficiency of international road haulage operations.

Hydrogen Storage and Transportation Technologies to Enable the Hydrogen Economy: Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers

Reliable storage and transportation of hydrogen at scale is a challenge which needs to be tackled to allow a robust and on-demand hydrogen supply when moving towards a global low carbon hydrogen economy with the aim of meeting net-zero climate goals. Numerous technologies and options are currently being explored for effective hydrogen storage and transportation to facilitate a smooth transition to the hydrogen economy. This paper provides an overview of different hydrogen storage and transportation technologies, focusing in more detail on liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), its advantages and disadvantages, and future considerations for the optimisation of the LOHC technology.

Pilot project purgatory? Assessing automated vehicle pilot projects in U.S. cities

Pilot projects have emerged in cities globally as a way to experiment with the utilization of a suite of smart mobility and emerging transportation technologies. Automated vehicles (AVs) have become central tools for such projects as city governments and industry explore the use and impact of this emerging technology. This paper presents a large-scale assessment of AV pilot projects in U.S. cities to understand how pilot projects are being used to examine the risks and benefits of AVs, how cities integrate these potentially transformative technologies into conventional policy and planning, and how and what they are learning about this technology and its future opportunities and risks. Through interviews with planning practitioners and document analysis, we demonstrate that the approaches cities take for AVs differ significantly, and often lack coherent policy goals. Key findings from this research include: (1) a disconnect between the goals of the pilot projects and a city’s transportation goals; (2) cities generally lack a long-term vision for how AVs fit into future mobility systems and how they might help address transportation goals; (3) an overemphasis of non-transportation benefits of AV pilots projects; (4) AV pilot projects exhibit a lack of policy learning and iteration; and (5) cities are not leveraging pilot projects for public benefits. Overall, urban and transportation planners and decision makers show a clear interest to discover how AVs can be used to address transportation challenges in their communities, but our research shows that while AV pilot projects purport to do this, while having numerous outcomes, they have limited value for informing transportation policy and planning questions around AVs. We also find that AV pilot projects, as presently structured, may constrain planners’ ability to re-think transportation systems within the context of rapid technological change.

Examining Opportunities, Challenges and Quality of Life in International Retirement Migration

As the world has become more interconnected due to the invention and innovation of communication and transportation technologies, more individuals than ever before have been able to travel long distances. In recent years, a growing number of physically able adults in late adulthood have chosen to move across national borders to less costly countries in order to obtain better quality of life upon reaching retirement age. In light of this under-researched but increasingly popular retirement trajectory, this research aimed to provide more insight into the opportunities and challenges that international retired migrants have encountered while retiring abroad. Through the lens of humanistic theory, this research employed a systematic review of research literature, the majority of which were peer-reviewed studies published within the last five years. The reviewed studies (n = 22) conducted spanned four out of seven continents, with heavy emphasis on Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Research results indicated that many of the international retired migrants took advantage of the opportunities of pleasant weather, lower cost of living, and various amenities offered by their host countries to enhance their quality of life by engaging in an active and meaningful lifestyle. However, language barriers, lack of social support, rising healthcare costs, increases in the cost of living, uncertain political climate, and different healthcare practices in their host countries, presented considerable challenges to many international retirees.

Classification and Evolution Analysis of Key Transportation Technologies Based on Bibliometrics

To study the classification and evolution of key technologies in the transportation field, the data of 36 authoritative SCI journals in the transportation field were collected from the Web of Science core collection database from 2001 to 2020. Based on the bibliometric method, this study used Python to process and visualize data, combined with bibliometric software VOSviewer to assist data visualization. Firstly, a preprocessing data algorithm was designed to deduplicate the collected data, merge synonyms, and extract key technologies. Then the paper records that contained the key technology lexicon were filtered out. Next, the annual number of publications and the distribution of key technologies over time were counted. The least squares method was used to fit the distribution of the annual proportion of the publications, and the slope k1 of the fitted linear regression equation was used to determine the research interest trend of key technologies. The key technologies were divided into “hot technology,” “cold technology,” and “other technologies,” according to the research heat trend. In order to further explore the research hotspots, the least squares method was also used to fit the citations of all technologies to obtain the slope k2. We use the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) algorithm to cluster k1 and k2 of each technology. As a result, the 144 technologies were divided into 13 super-key technologies, 60 key technologies, 59 relative key technologies, and 12 lower-key technologies. Then, the evolution of key technologies was analyzed from two perspectives of weighted evolution and cumulative evolution. And the technology evolution trend in the transportation field in the past 20 years was explored. Finally, the cooccurrence clustering method was adopted to divide key transportation technologies into five categories: vehicle technology and control, optimization algorithms and simulation techniques, artificial intelligence and big data, Internet of Things and computing, and communication technology. The research results can provide references for different people in the transportation field, including but not limited to researchers, journal editors, and funding agencies.

Autonomous Transport Innovation (ATI) : integration of autonomous electric vehicles into a tactical microgrid

The objective of the Autonomous Transport Innovation (ATI) technical research program is to investigate current gaps and challenges then develop solutions to integrate emerging electric transport vehicles, vehicle autonomy, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging and microgrid technologies with military legacy equipment. The ATI research area objectives are to: identify unique military requirements for autonomous transportation technologies; identify currently available technologies that can be adopted for military applications and validate the suitability of these technologies to close need gaps; identify research and operational tests for autonomous transport vehicles; investigate requirements for testing and demonstrating of bidirectional vehicle charging within a tactical environment; develop requirements for a sensored, living laboratory that will be used to assess the performance of autonomous innovations; and integrate open standards to promote interoperability and broad-platform compatibility. The research performed resulted in an approach to develop a sensored, living laboratory with operational testing capability to assess the safety, utility, interoperability, and resiliency of autonomous electric transport and V2G technologies in a tactical microgrid. The living laboratory will support research and assessment of emerging technologies and determine the prospect for implementation in defense transport operations and contingency base energy resilience.