Loading bays are public spaces reserved for the operation of freight vehicles, and it is well known that there are significant problems concerning their use due to non-compliance with existing regulations. Unlawful use of loading bays leads to double parking, or to parking on the pavement or in restricted areas. This article has two objectives: Firstly, the study and analysis of the use of loading bays (type of demand, parking duration, illegal use, etc.), as well as their use according to their morphology. Secondly, the quantitative assessment of the influence of illegal use with regard to the efficient use of public urban space. Illegal use is quantitatively assessed by calculating the number of loading bays that are used inappropriately and the surface area (m2) of public space used incorrectly. In the analysis carried out in the city of Santander (Spain), it can be observed that the urban morphology of loading zones influences their use: The greater the capacity of the loading zone, the less efficient is its use. Moreover, it is observed that the degree of illegal use within loading zones is very high and that illegally excessive parking durations have a greater impact on the use of the ground space than vehicle type.

The impact of freight transport in cities is significant, and as such correct planning and management thereof help reduce their enormous negative impact. Above all, the special large vehicles have a greater impact than the remainder of freight vehicles, so a special attention should be paid to them. The vehicles which supply or pick up large amounts of goods at specific points throughout the city are an example of this type of vehicles. The aim of this paper is to minimize the cost of this freight transport type from a social, economic, and environmental viewpoint. To this effect, an optimization model has been proposed based on bilevel mathematical programming which minimizes the total system costs. City network model data are obtained on the lower level such as vehicle flow and travelling times, which are then used on the upper level to calculate total system costs. The model has been applied to a real case in Santander (Spain), whose final result shows the size and typology of the fleet of vehicles necessary to have the least impact on the city. The greater the vehicles size is (i.e., using fewer trucks), the less the cost of the freight transport is.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The purpose of this paper is to design a model that allows to suggest new planning proposals on school transport, so that greater efficiency operational will be achieved. It is a multiobjective optimization problem including the minimization of the cost of busing and minimizes the total travel time of all students. The foundation of the model is the planning routes made by bus due to changes in the starting time in schools, so the buses are able to perform more than one route.The methodology is based on the School Bus Routing Problem, so that routes from different schools within a given time window are connected, and within the restrictions of the problem, the system costs are minimized. The proposed model is programmed to be applied in any generic case. This is a multi-objective problem, in which there will be several possible solutions, depending on the weight to be assigned to each of the variables involved, economic point of view versus social point of view. Therefore, the proposed model is helpful for policy planning school transportation, supporting the decision making under conditions of economic and social efficiency.The model has been applied in some schools located in an area of Cantabria (Spain), resulting in 71 possible optimal options that minimize the cost of school transport between 2,7% and 35,1% regarding to the current routes of school transport, with different school start time and minimum travel time for students. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). financial burden for them. This is partially due to the difficulties companies have in using the vehicles for other purposes during the rest of the day, and the existence of historically defined routes which have never been subjected to a process of scrutiny to optimise them as well as the rigid school timetables.The main goal of this study is to design an optimisation model which will allow proposals for route planning to be defined in such a way that they will maximise efficiency from operational, economic and social points of view. Opening and closing times of schools will be modified by establishing time windows which will allow the buses to cover one school route and then be able to cover another school route (see Figure 1). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). all of which reduce the economic costs by between 2,7% and 35,1% and in certain cases even managed to reduce journey times of the school buses.

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