Matteo Ignaccolo

University of Catania | UNICT · Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture

This paper introduces the concept of UaaS App, i.e. “University as a Service” App, based on the well-known Mobility as a Service (MaaS) concept, and explores the acceptability and willingness to use a digital application capable of providing transport (and other) services offered to a university community. The case study is the University of Catani...

This paper aims at analysing tourist satisfaction towards transport systems of the touristic destination using online reviews from TripAdvisor, the most well-known online review platform used in the tourism sector for researchers and customers. First, a web scraping method was used to retrieve online reviews available on TripAdvisor related to tran...

In recent years, we have witnessed an increase in maritime freight transport, leading to great economic performance for the ports and regions in which they are located; this has also led to an increase in related externalities, with environmental issues occurring during all the phases of navigation, and especially at terminals [...]

Nowadays, alongside the traditional statistical and semi-probabilistic methods, through which it is possible to obtain an estimate of the road network performances whatever its geometric-functional configuration, the use of microscopic traffic simulation techniques is widespread, allowing a “dynamic” approach to the problem (e.g. evaluation of infr...

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...

Background The recent health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to change their mobility habits, with the reduction of non-essential travels and the promotion online activities. During the first phase of the emergency in 2020, governments considered several mobility restrictions to avoid the pandemic diffusion. However, it is d...

Recent sustainable mobility scenarios, aimed at the decarbonization in urban and non-urban contexts, seek to promote an increasing use of electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) by 2030, considering their attractiveness not only for private use but also as shared mobility alternatives by different categories of users. It...

Feeder transport services are fundamental as first and last-mile connectors of mass rapid transit (MRT). They are especially beneficial in low-demand areas where private transport is usually the main transport mode. Besides, the rapid spread of new technologies such as vehicle automation and the shared mobility paradigm gave rise to new mobility-on...

This paper poses the question of the redesign of urbanized arterial roads following a multi-objective approach. These infrastructures usually have wide lanes that allow high speeds and low safety conditions, resulting in the roads with the highest accident rates in suburban areas. However, since they experienced a rapid urbanization, they need to b...

Public transport is one of the first mode used by students in Italy and this is confirmed by official data by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Catania, a city in the south of Italy, takes the distance from these standards by having a modal share of public transport trips, especially train trips, lower than in many other Italian cities....

The rapid spread of micromobility, characterized by the use of e-scooters and other electric micromobility devices, has brought both urban and transport planners to deal with the presence of a huge number of new vehicles with different size and technology with respect to those traditionally circulating in urban areas. In particular, the massive use...

This paper proposes a new agent-based model (ABM) to explore different scenarios of e-commerce urban deliveries, comparing door-to-door deliveries with consolidation-based strategies. The ABM reproduces operation under different demand patterns and include the possible matching of customer systematic trips and collection/delivery points with small...

The COVID-19 has significantly led to changes in the mobility needs and in user travel behavior, due to the measures adopted to reduce the spread of the virus. While on the one hand this has resulted in a reduction in the number of trips, on the other this has entailed an increase in the use of the private car, considered as the safest form of tran...

Italy was one of the first country in Europe which was severely affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Several critical issues emerged during the different pandemic phases, especially in the health and mobility sector. Restrictions on public transport reduced the supply of transport, highlighting the need to rethink complementary transport systems. Since M...

Micromobility has a high potential to change mobility habits towards the use of sustainable transport modes. The shared mobility paradigm encourages the development of new mobility services, such as bike and e-scooter sharing, potentially reducing the need of car ownership, enlarging the accessibility of public transport and enriching the transport...

Recent events related to the COVID-19 pandemic event highlighted some criticalities of transport systems, especially the public sector. The respect for social distancing and a widespread fear of contagion have reduced travel on public transport. In addition, the new trend to reduce daily long-range mobility needs due to the increase in teleworking...

Historical centres are crucial areas where urban and transport planners should aim at enhancing adequate walkability conditions. This should be considered a priority in order to allow all users, including the most vulnerable ones, to access the activities they wish to engage in.

The development of sustainable mobility is linked to technological developments and different forms of vehicle power supply. Despite all the difficulties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore, it is necessary to provide road users with an adequate network of public recharging infrastructures and to facilitate the setting-up of private recharg...

In recent decades, maritime transport is facing a continuous growth generating a rapid development of port infrastructures but also the need to adopt synergy policies between neighbouring ports in order to optimize spaces and resources. In this respect, the knowledge of the main maritime routes and traffic volumes for freight and passenger in each...

This paper explores the potential integration of freight transport into a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) environment. MaaS is a user-oriented service concept providing door-to-door mobility solutions for people. It integrates services of multiple providers, enabling searching, booking, and payment through a single digital platform. Although MaaS is o...

The term shared mobility refers to a variety of transport modes (e.g. cars, bikes, scooters) that are shared on an as-needed basis. With its advent, the ownership is not required and users can avail themselves of shared transport services, which leverage digital platforms for the provision of them. The benefits deriving from this new innovative tra...

Public participation is a fundamental step of decision-making processes to achieve a good social sharing and robustness of the decision itself. In transport decisions spatial criteria assume a key role, since their assessment, and therefore their classification, is also dependent on the spatial distribution of people affected by a project. In this...

Increasing the Quality of Service (QoS) of Public Transport (PT), in order to attract more users, is one of the goals of transport companies and urban policy-makers. A continuous monitoring of data on users’ satisfaction is desirable, but most of the time such process is costly. Finding correlations between PT accessibility, user satisfaction and P...

Nowadays, cities are increasingly required to be smart, sustainable, resilient and adaptive and, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, an integrated approach to transport planning needs to be adopted. In fact, European policies have adopted a series of limitations in the transport sector that led the scientific community to put into questio...

The mobility scenarios have been modified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Catastrophic and health events cause strong repercussions on daily activities and related mobility habits. In Italy, as in other contexts, we have witnessed a period of lockdown that has led to an almost zero travel. This work shows an overview of the changes in mobility choices be...

The rapidly increasing transport in the last decades, characterized by high motorization rate especially in urban areas, constitutes a relevant contemporary issue addressed by scholars, planners and policy-makers, aiming to promote sustainable mobility. Nowadays, the COVID-19 crisis has influencing transport behaviour with a massive blow to public...

Container terminals are the main hubs of the global supply chain but, conversely, they play an important role in energy consumption, environmental pollution and even climate change due to carbon emissions. Assessing the environmental impact of this type of port terminal and choosing appropriate mitigation measures is essential to pursue the goals r...

Mobility restriction is considered one of the main policies to contain COVID-10 spreading. However, there are multiple ways to reduce mobility via differentiated restrictions, and it is not easy to predict the actual impact on virus spreading. This is a limitation for policy-makers who need to implement effective and timely measures. Notwithstandin...

Shared mobility is an innovative transportation strategy defined as the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle or other mode which enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an as-needed basis. Bike-sharing systems have rapidly expanded around the world with important implications for urban areas. Considering the benefits regardin...

Public transport in urban and suburban areas is not always able to meet population’s need of accessibility to jobs, education, health and other opportunities in terms of routes and frequencies; therefore, those who do not own a private vehicle, or who cannot afford public individual transport (e.g. taxis), often find themselves in a condition of so...

Crowdshipping, i.e. delivering goods via the crowd, aims at combining passenger with freight trips. This concept is particularly useful, especially in urban contexts, since it allows using the spare capacity of vehicles and reducing the negative impacts of urban freight transport. While attractive in principle, a crowdshipping service needs to be a...

Transport planning is a technical and political decision-making process based on rationality, aimed at defining and implementing transport infrastructures and their operations, and mobility management, in order to achieve the objectives reflecting the collective preferences of a community within a territory. Modeling and simulation for transport pl...

The objective of this work is to evaluate the walkability of urban environments from the perspective of visually impaired people, developing a qualitative analysis based on Commented Paths Method (CPM) to derive subjective evaluations from the practical experience of specific paths. Multiple-choice questions, in applying Likert scale were used to a...

Abstract This paper presents the first results of an agent-based model aimed at solving a Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) for inbound logistics using a novel Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm, developed and implemented in the NetLogo multi-agent modelling environment. The proposed methodology has been applied to the case study of a...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

The benefits of cycling as mode of transport are well known. It contributes to the reduction of environmental pollution, climate change impacts and traffic congestion, and to the improvement of safety, well-being and health of citizens and transport affordability of low-income population. Moreover, cycling has the potential to enhance co-modality,...

Cycle mobility is a valid solution to externalities produced by private traffic, ensuring a reduced spatial and environmental footprint and guaranteeing maximum energy efficiency in terms of trips made and physical effort applied. It is also a healthy solution since it is a form of active mobility, concurring to improve both the quality of life of...

Sharing mobility has led to a reduction of car ownership with consequent decrease in impacts from a multiple economic, social and environmental perspective. One way of promoting sustainable mobility is to establish the use of electric vehicles (EVs), but insufficient knowledge and high uncertainty towards EV technology can represent a barrier to th...

The spread and development of shared mobility makes it possible to offer users various forms of shared service that promote a sustainable approach. The choice of transport mode often depends on the distance travelled and the motivation for the journey. Among the conditions and variables that most influence the propensity to use a shared transport m...

Sharing mobility has led to a reduction of car ownership with consequent decrease in impacts from a multiple economic, social and environmental perspective. One way of reducing emissions in traffic is to establish the use of electric vehicles (EVs). Insufficient knowledge and high uncertainty towards EV technology can represent a barrier to the acc...

Cities play a fundamental role not only in the growth processes under the sustainability paradigm, but also as a driving-force behind economy and they constitute places of connectivity and innovation. More than two thirds of the European population live in urban areas and this percentage is continuously growing. Therefore, cities are fundamental hu...

This paper presents a new procedure for a simplified stakeholder analysis aimed at categorizing transport stakeholders according to their level of competence, interest, and power in decision-making in a three-dimensional space that we call "participation cube". Knowing in advance what role each stakeholder can play in the final decision and how she...

The purpose of this work is to propose a methodological framework to evaluate the reuse of areas located close to the port as “retro-port”, in order to reduce the externalities caused by Ro-Ro freight terminal operation and the burden of freight deliveries in urban areas. In this regard, an analysis of the main variables involved in this process is...

Guaranteeing permeability between port and city areas is a complex issue since, in recent years, there have been deep changes, due to the evolution of maritime transport, traffic volumes and port infrastructures, which have profoundly influenced the port-city relationship. The recent growing of the cruise and yachting sectors, however, highlighted...

This paper presents a spatial approach to support the design of new on-demand flexible transport services in urban areas, characterized by inefficient public transport and modal imbalance in favour of private cars. These services, enabled by technologies and inspired by the shared mobility paradigm, can complement and improve conventional public tr...

The commercial and industrial growth of the urban areas with consequent specialization of the maritime and land traffic deeply modified in the last centuries the spatial and functional relationship between port and city. Ports became a complex of functions and interactions with the city sharing its commercial, recreational, tourist, cultural, urban...

Increase in city population and size leads to growing transport demand and heterogeneous mobility habits. In turn, this may result in economic and social inequalities within the context of rapid economic growth. Provision of flexible transit in fast-growing cities is a promising strategy to overcome the limits of conventional public transport and a...

This paper presents a procedure based on a spatial analysis to assess the pedestrian compatibility of streets in an urban area. The aim is to provide decision-makers with a planning-support method that can aid them to decide the priority of investments, based on street pedestrian compatibility. The case study is Acireale, a small town of 50,000 inh...

The special issue “Transport infrastructure and systems in a changing world: towards sustainable mobility planning” stems from the AIIT 2nd International Congress on Transport Infrastructure and Systems in a changing world (TIS ROMA 2019), which was held in Rome on 23rd-24th September 2019 (https://tisroma.aiit.it/). It was organized by AIIT, the I...

The sustainable development of urban areas, characterized by the expansion of university centers, can benefit from car sharing services, expanding the potential of public transport, especially when the population is almost represented by off-side students and commuters. This work focuses on the investigation of a set of attributes able to interpret...

This paper presents the case of Cartagena de Indias, a well-known international touristic destination in Colombia, which experiences serious problems of traffic congestion and accessibility to the city center. Promoting pedestrian mobility is one of the public administration’s main goals, by enhancing and re-designing different pedestrian paths. De...

This paper presents the first results of an agent-based model aimed at designing feeder bus routes able to cover the gap between public transport coverage and ridership in weak demand areas. The optimized design of feeder bus routes has been approached as a Vehicle Routing Problem applied to passenger transport, using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)...

Port systems, especially if close to the city centre, are affected by significant traffic flows from and towards the port area causing congestion issues, security and several externalities on the mobility system. In fact, the main problems affecting port cities are generated by the mismatch between different vehicle flows (of goods, citizens, cruis...

This paper presents the case of Catania, a medium-sized city (300,000 inhabitants) located in southern Italy, where University students are experiencing Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) since October 2018. This strategy is one of the main results of a strict collaboration between the Mobility Management office of the University of Catania, and two...

This paper presents a modelling framework to investigate the potential acceptability of digitalized services connected to groceries, i.e. e-grocery, via a discrete choice agent-based approach. A preliminary investigation of consumers’ preferences for buying groceries on-line has been performed via a stated preference survey. Besides, a new agent-ba...

Transport decision-making problems are typically spatially based and involve a set of feasible alternatives with multiple evaluation criteria. Besides, transport decisions affect citizens’ quality of life, as well as specific interests of general stakeholders (e.g., transport companies), thus needing a participatory approach to decision-making. Geo...

Limiting private cars’ use while promoting sustainable modes of transport is one of the main challenges of urban transport planning. In this context, characterized by scarce resources and increasing demand for mobility, Demand Responsive Shared Transport (DRST) services can bridge the gap between shared low-quality public transport and unsustainabl...

This paper presents a multi-criteria-based methodology to involve the general public in transport decision-making, aiming at collecting information useful to design a technically sound and well-accepted transport service. The case study presented is part of a wider participation procedure, involving experts and key stakeholders in the definition of...

This paper presents a framework to encompass stakeholder involvement in port planning processes, by specifically focusing on long-term strategic plans aimed at sustainability and designed to satisfy the needs of a port community and its surroundings. A classification of the main port stakeholders is presented, together with some traditional and non...

This paper presents the first results of a wider research aimed at defining the characteristics of a proactive multimodal traveler information service (MTIS), able to provide real-time information to public transport users, while receiving their feedback, so to record their travel experience and monitor the service quality. The design of a MTIS req...