Towards Sustainable Mobility: The Integration of Transportation, Energy, Environment and Health

Dear Colleagues,

a. Focus

This Special Issue focuses on advancing interdisciplinary research that integrates transportation systems, energy consumption patterns, and environmental impacts to support the transition towards sustainable mobility. As global urbanization accelerates and transportation demand rises, the transport sector faces increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions, enhance energy efficiency, and promote equitable and environmentally responsible mobility. This Special Issue seeks to consolidate theoretical, empirical, and methodological advancements that provide actionable insights for sustainable transport development.

b. Scope

The Special Issue welcomes studies that address the multifaceted interactions among transport systems, energy use, and environmental outcomes. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Low-carbon and energy-efficient transport systems, including multimodal mobility, electrification, renewable-powered mobility, and the life-cycle environmental footprint of transport modes.
• Integrated transport–energy–environment models, covering big-data analytics, simulation, systems modeling, GIS-based spatial analysis, and AI-driven decision tools.
• Sustainable mobility policies, such as congestion management, transit-oriented development, active mobility promotion, carbon pricing, and environmental regulations.
• Travel behavior and mode shift mechanisms, with emphasis on behavioral drivers, built environment influences, and demand-side interventions.
• Infrastructure planning and carbon accounting, including full-process emissions measurement, lifecycle analysis of infrastructure, and innovative measurement tools.
• Environmental and social impacts of transport systems on human well-being, including air quality, noise exposure, accessibility, public health, equity, and resilience in sustainable urban mobility.
• Evaluation of sustainability tools and indicators, including frameworks to measure, monitor, and quantify mobility sustainability at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• New and emerging transportation technologies and their impacts on carbon emissions, environmental quality, health outcomes, and urban systems, such as high-speed rail and intercity transport innovations, low-altitude air mobility (e.g., drones, eVTOL), autonomous and connected vehicles, unmanned delivery systems, and intelligent transportation systems.
• Electrification of mobility, including pure electric vehicles (EVs), charging infrastructure deployment and optimization, charging behavior and demand dynamics, grid integration, renewable energy coupling, and lifecycle emissions of EV systems.

c. Purpose

• To bridge disciplinary divides and offer a framework for understanding how transport, energy systems, and environmental impacts jointly shape sustainable mobility outcomes.
• To promote methodological innovation, particularly in quantifying sustainability and carbon emissions using integrated tools.
• To support evidence-based decision-making by identifying strategies, policies, and technological innovations that can accelerate the transition toward sustainable, low-carbon, and resilient mobility systems worldwide.

Prof. Dr. Tiezhu Li
Dr. Qian Yu
Dr. Yang Yang
Dr. Sirui Nan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.