López, C.; Ruíz-Benítez, R.; Vargas-Machuca, C. On the Environmental and Social Sustainability of Technological Innovations in Urban Bus Transport: The EU Case. Sustainability2019, 11, 1413.
López, C.; Ruíz-Benítez, R.; Vargas-Machuca, C. On the Environmental and Social Sustainability of Technological Innovations in Urban Bus Transport: The EU Case. Sustainability 2019, 11, 1413.
López, C.; Ruíz-Benítez, R.; Vargas-Machuca, C. On the Environmental and Social Sustainability of Technological Innovations in Urban Bus Transport: The EU Case. Sustainability2019, 11, 1413.
López, C.; Ruíz-Benítez, R.; Vargas-Machuca, C. On the Environmental and Social Sustainability of Technological Innovations in Urban Bus Transport: The EU Case. Sustainability 2019, 11, 1413.
Abstract
Logistics in urban areas are currently suffering a radical transformation due to increasingly population concentration and the massive use of cars as the preferred transport mode. These issues have resulted in higher pollution levels in urban environments and traffic congestion impacting the world globally. Facilitating the use of sustainable transport modes is widely regarded as a necessity to cope with these adverse effects on citizens’ life quality. Hence, some regions, as the European Union, are encouraging bus transport firms to make their business models more environmentally and socially sustainable. The aim of this research is thus to explore how practices adopted by urban bus companies can improve cities’ sustainability. With this in mind, a combined Importance Performance Analysis (IPA)-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was applied. In this way, both environmental and social sustainability effects of developed practices were represented through hierarchical structures separately. Subsequently, importance and performance ratings of practices in each sustainability dimension were estimated, and thus two IPA grids were generated. These grids support managers in the establishment of more effective action plans to improve logistics sustainability in cities. Findings also provide guidance to governments on the practices that should be promoted in future urban mobility plans.
Keywords
city logistics; environmental sustainability; social sustainability; urban bus transport; IPA; AHP
Subject
Social Sciences, Transportation
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
