Tools and Methodologies for the Analysis of Home-to-Work Shuttle Service Impacts: The ENEA “Casaccia” Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the interesting article. Below I attached my comments:

- about the abstract one sentence is connected with a methodology for assessing sustainability but next specify that the method does not include many kinds of transport systems. Management of sustainability as a Plan for an area is much more complicated. Please rewrite that in the whole article; 

- please add more information in abstract what is the new income from your method;

- the similar situation is with title, which suggests many transport services;

- please repair references;

- Please add chapter with literature review and compare existing method with yours, read more literatures;

- show the research gap;

- line from 115 is more like case study please modify that;

- fig 1 please add specific things for maps and what is the dots without a line?;

- please calculate and show results if that number of surveys is sufficient for this area and show the value of expected errors;

- please add the scheme of your method;

- please improve the quality of the figures;

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Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a case study where is analysed the effectiveness of a shuttle service operating in the ENEA 'Casaccia' Research Center, Italy. The study focuses on two alternative mobility scenarios - with and without the use of the shuttle service and are compared the total mileage travelled, energy consumption and pollutant emissions. In the final is performed an economic analysis.

The paper is well organized in terms of its structure and touches a very interesting and actual topic. One of its objectives is very relevant to demonstrate the need to promote sustainable mobility practices. However, it is also said that the main goal of the article is to propose a methodology for assessing the sustainability of the home-work travel management. In the reviewer opinion this goal was not achieve because what is presented is a specific case study and not a general framework to perform such kind of studies.

English is relatively good, but if revised by a native speaker is possible to improve the overall quality of the paper. There are some typos and several formatting issues, such as, the references to the figures that are missing.

In terms of content there are several issues that need to be reformulated and clarified.

The authors should include in the “Introduction” section a literature review about the topic that they are presenting. No similar studies are presented and discussed. That is a very important part that is missing.

In the section 2 “Materials and Methods” the methodology used is presented, but as said before a general methodological framework is missing. On the other hand, the way the methodology is presented is too confusing. The reader gets easily lost in the rationale used. The use of some schematics may facilitate the reader to more easily understand the methodology used. Also, the use of tables with the values considered during the analyses can help this understanding and ease of reading. Another aspect that should be clarified is what was assumed in each scenario. For example, modal split.

The main results are presented. However, sometimes is not clear how the different scenarios are compared. For example, is terms of emissions. Are total emissions being compared, or emissions per person transported in each of the scenarios? It is because the use of public transport has a totally different impact when you normalize the analysis.

Some limitations of the study and the transport policy perspective could also be presented and discussed.

In conclusion the paper needs several improvements. However, by clarifying the aspects that were highlighted, it is possible to have a paper with interesting and relevant contributions to the study of strategies that promote sustainable mobility on commuting trips.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors improved the article. Please fix some more things:

- fig 3 - please add the scale of the map and show north;

- table 3 need headers for the column and please consider also EV;

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Please read the whole text one more time and check all spelling.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the last round of edits and improvements. The authors have responded to my main concerns and improved the paper. They have made some of their statements clearer, provided new references and with that improved the overall quality of the paper. It is a very interesting paper and I have no further comments about it.Therefore, I am happy to recommend acceptance of this manuscript for publication in its present form.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf