Electric mobility is an emerging market around the world. Electric vehicles have remarkable environmental gains compared to conventional vehicles, they contribute to decreasing fossil energy dependence, but they need huge investments in charging infra-structure and their market price is much above regular ones. The conditions for market penetration are generally critical in emerging economies, where the purchasing power is far below that of developed economies. In addition, further technical and regulatory barriers hinder the market uptake and augmentation. This paper aims to discover and analyze the current market conditions of electric vehicles in selected emerging economies and to set up augmentation pathways, based on experiences in developed and in developing countries.

In cognisance of the urgent need to decarbonise the transport sector to limit its impact on climate change and to internalise other negative transport externalities, regulating vehicle access in urban areas is essential. However, urban areas often struggle to implement these regulations due to concerns relating to social acceptability, heterogeneity of citizen preferences, lack of information on preferred measure attributes, and other factors that can boost the acceptance of urban vehicle access regulations. This study explores the acceptability and willingness to support Urban Vehicle Access Regulations (UVAR) in Budapest, Hungary to reduce transportation emissions and promote sustainable urban mobility. Using a structured questionnaire, which includes a choice-based conjoint exercise, the study finds that 42% of respondents were willing to support a car-free policy measure. Results were analysed to elicit preferences for specific UVAR measure attributes, identify population subgroups, and assess factors influencing willingness to support UVAR implementation. Access fee and proportion of revenue earmarked for transport development were the most important attributes to respondents. The study also identified three distinct subgroups of respondents with differing preferences, which could be characterised based on access to passenger cars, age, and employment status. The findings suggest that for effective UVAR, access fees for non-compliant vehicles should be excluded from measure designs, and the attribute preference approach highlights the importance of considering the heterogeneity of residents’ preferences in UVAR measure planning.

Background Urban Vehicle Access Regulations (UVAR) hold great potential to reduce negative transport externalities driven by increased mobility demand and rapid urbanisation. However, as they are potential measures to the wicked problem of climate change mitigation and achieving overall sustainability, their implementation pathways are often complex due to the multidimensionality of sustainability and other challenges. Although decision support tools like the multi-criteria decision analysis might help simplify these complexities, selecting the appropriate criteria based on the peculiarity of UVAR remains pertinent. This study contributes to the sustainable transport decision support literature to address this challenge by identifying relevant criteria for the UVAR measure planning process using the Delphi survey approach. Results It begins with 23 criteria systematically selected from scientific literature and clustered into four dimensions in the first round. This was expanded into 30 criteria and five dimensions in the second survey round based on the participating experts' ratings and rankings. The consensus results showed that most of the identified criteria were considered to be of great potential in UVAR measure planning, with public acceptability, stakeholder engagement, political agenda, and the potential impacts on air pollution and accessibility considered the most important. Conclusions Apart from helping urban authorities select feasible and effective UVAR measures, the resulting assessment structure will also help identify the main barriers and drivers for UVAR adoption. The assessment structure will also aid the monitoring and evaluation phases of the measures upon implementation.

To promote sustainable urban mobility and reduce environmental pollution, transportation policies worldwide aim to decrease reliance on fossil fuels. This requires reducing private car use through policy instruments such as urban vehicle access regulations (UVARs) and promoting alternative sustainable transport technologies such as electromobility. Considering that the deployment of such regulations and the market penetration of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is still low in Hungary, this study aimed to examine the willingness of urban dwellers in Budapest, Hungary, to adopt battery electric vehicles (BEVs) upon implementation of an UVAR measure. The study analysed the BEV adoption intention of 409 urban residents who participated in an UVAR study in 2022. The results show that age is a significant factor, with individuals aged 35–44 most likely to adopt BEVs. However, other socio-demographic characteristics did not significantly affect willingness to adopt BEVs. Additionally, pro-environmental behaviour or attitude did not significantly predict BEV adoption. Based on these findings, this study highlights the importance of considering multiple interrelated factors and provides policy insights for promoting sustainable transportation technology adoption.

Using waste materials in road construction is a sustainable technique that will promote waste reduction, a cleaner environment, cost savings in road construction projects, and serve as an alternative material. This study evaluated the performance of hospital waste ash (HWA) modified asphalt mixtures. The modified asphalt mixtures were produced using HWA as mineral filler at 0%–100% at an interval of 10% by weight. The performance of the mixtures was evaluated with the Marshall, Cantabro, and retained strength index (RSI) tests. The Marshall parameters indicate that the modified asphalt mixtures met the General Specification for Roads and Bridges of Nigeria with satisfactory results. Except for mixes prepared with 90% and 100%, HWA-modified mixtures fulfill the RSI and Cantabro durability requirement at up to 80% filler content. However, to ensure the optimum performance of the HWA-modified asphalt mixtures, a 40% HWA is recommended.