One of the significant side-effects of growing urbanization is the constantly increasing amount of freight transportation in cities. This is mainly performed by conventional vans and trucks and causes a variety of problems such as road congestion, noise nuisance and pollution. Yet delivering goods to residents is a necessity. Sustainable concepts of city distribution networks are one way of mitigating difficulties of freight services. In this paper we develop a two-echelon city distribution scheme with temporal and spatial synchronization between cargo bikes and vans. The resulting heuristic is based on a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure with path relinking. In our computational experiments we use artificial data as well as real-world data of the city of Vienna. Furthermore we compare three distribution policies. The results show the costs caused by temporal synchronization and can give companies decision-support in planning a sustainable city distribution concept.

This study examines the impact and potential of cargo bikes as socio-economically and ecologically beneficial modes of transportation. It focuses on the perspectives of cargo bike pool members and the challenges faced by pool operators. Three interviews were conducted with cargo bike pool operators in Sweden to understand the challenges and considerations involved in establishing and operating a pooling service, as well as their opinions on its financial future. Additionally, a user survey targeting pool members from one of the interviewed operators was conducted in 2020. The survey investigated user barriers, motivations, opinions towards the pooling service, and its effect on user mobility habits before and after joining. Although the acceptance and utilization of these services depend on factors such as proximity, pricing, availability, quality, and convenience of the service. The findings show that pooling services increase member interest in owning and using cargo bikes as a replacement for cars. However, concerns regarding the marketability of cargo-bike pools alone are raised in this study, thus, to enhance the attractiveness of cargo-bike pools, this study suggests incorporating additional modes of transportation, offering supplementary value propositions, and ensuring a user-friendly experience. On the operator side, this study highlights the importance of stakeholder collaboration in maximizing the potential of cargo bike pools for sustainable transportation enabling resource sharing, and marketing efforts, and improving the overall service by leveraging financial, spatial, and logistical benefits. Finally, this study finds that the current state of cargo bike pools necessitates collaboration and subsidies from municipalities and stakeholders. Suggesting innovations in business models and increased marketing strategies that capture a broader demographic through an enhanced value proposition that includes other forms of modality and benefits in their services, are vital for the growth of cargo biking through pooling systems.  The research provides insights for prospective operators in establishing and operating cargo bike pools, emphasizing considerations related to the physical layout, financial aspects, marketing, and value proposition of the service and has broader implications in how to encourage more sustainable mobility practices.

The thesis shows how practice theory can be applied in different ways when exploring how daily life can be supported to become more environmentally sustainable. Ultimately the thesis aims to contribute to new knowledge on how to design policies and interventions that aim at facilitating environmentally sustainable practices.  This thesis argues that practice theory is useful in the field of sustainability research since it offers as point of departure a perspective on human everyday life which decentres focus from individual behaviour and instead looks at how social practices are constructed by integrating and combining material, bodily and mental elements. The thesis discusses the following questions: i) How can the role of ICT in everyday life be conceptualized from a practice perspective?, ii) How can practice theory be used in order to describe and assess second order environmental effects? and iii) What are the key considerations from a practice perspective when designing social/physical interventions for sustainable mobility? The papers in this thesis all use practice theory as point of departure but with different outcomes. Practice theory is thus used conceptually, methodologically and analytically. The main conclusions of the thesis are:  Changes in practices due to ICT usage will inevitably have environmental impacts, both negative and positive, and for policy-makers it is imperative to take this into consideration when planning for the future and actively support and facilitate sustainable social practices. Looking at changes in practices due to new ICT usage can be one way to include second order effects in environmental assessments, in this way contributing to a discussion of potential environmental impacts from implementing a new product, application or service. Interventions, such as a cargo bike pool or restrictive work travel policies, have the potential to change existing practices. However, the potential of these changes, depend on a variety of different factors which are more or less difficult to influence for the individual practitioner such as work location, time schedules, availability of transportation means and modes. Further, it is difficult to foresee exactly how such changes will look and if they sustain in the long run. Finally, it is not necessarily so that an intervention will have the desired outcome that was intended, the outcome might be something else, consequently this means that interventions need to be analysed and assessed from other perspectives, one being a practice perspective. / Denna avhandling visar hur praktikteori (practice theory) kan tillämpas på olika sätt när man ska utforska hur det dagliga livet kan bli mer miljömässigt hållbart. Ytterst syftar avhandlingen till att bidra till ny kunskap om hur man kan utforma strategier och åtgärder som syftar till att stödja miljömässigt hållbara praktiker. Denna avhandling hävdar att praktikteori är användbart inom hållbarhetsforskning eftersom den utgår från de vardagliga praktikerna. Detta ger ett perspektiv på människors vardagsliv som lyfter fokus upp från individens beteende och istället undersöker hur praktiker skapas och omskapas genom de element (material, färdigheter och symbolisk innebörd) som utgör en social praktik. Avhandlingen behandlar följande frågor: i) Hur kan IKT: s roll i det dagliga livet begreppsliggöras?, ii) Hur kan praktikteori användas för att beskriva och andra ordningens miljöeffekter i miljöbedömningar? och iii) Vilka är de viktigaste överväganden utifrån ett praktikteoriperspektiv vid utformningen av sociala och/eller fysiska åtgärder för hållbar mobilitet? Artiklarna i denna avhandling utgår från praktikteori, men det teoretiska ramverket används på ett konceptuellt, metodologiskt eller analytiskt vis i de olika artiklarna. De viktigaste slutsatserna i avhandlingen är: Förändringar i till följd av IKT-användning kommer oundvikligen ha miljöpåverkan som kan vara både negativ och positiv.  För beslutsfattare är det viktigt att ta hänsyn till detta när man planerar för framtiden och aktivt stödja och underlätta för hållbara sociala praktiker. Miljöbedömningar behöver kunna hantera och inkludera så kallade effekter av andra ordningen för att kunna bedöma potentiell miljöpåverkan som en ny produkt, program eller en tjänst kan ha. Ett sätt att inkludera andra ordningens effekter i miljöbedömningar kan vara att titta på förändringar i vardagliga praktiker som uppstår vid användning av IKT. Interventioner och andra typer av åtgärder har potential att förändra befintliga mobilitetspraktiker. Men dessa potentiella förändringar, beror på en rad olika faktorer som är mer eller mindre svårt att påverka för den enskilde utövaren så som arbetsplatsens lokalisering, scheman, tillgång till transportmedel och transportsätt. Vidare är det svårt att förutse exakt hur sådana förändringar kommer att se ut och om de håller i sig i det långa loppet. Slutligen är det inte nödvändigtvis så att en intervention eller annan åtgärd kommer att ha det önskade resultatet som avsågs, utan resultatet kan snarare vara något annat. Detta innebär att insatser och åtgärder måste analyseras och bedömas ur andra perspektiv, till exempel ett praktikteoretiskt perspektiv. / <p>QC 20151023</p>