Congestion, Pollution, Road Safety and the Effectiveness of Sustainable Public Policies

Dear Colleagues, 

Traffic-related problems, such as congestion, pollution, and road accidents, are considered essential challenges for sustainable mobility in cities. Congestion not only produces a reduction in traffic speeds, resulting in longer journey times, but also affects fuel consumption, operating costs, pollution, noise, and the functioning of other markets (retail, housing, labour, etc.). Pollution has an obvious negative effect on public health and climate change, in addition to the effects on material degradation. Finally, road accidents, also a likely result of congestion, produces the loss of human lives and injuries, increasing the health penalty of private mobility, but also direct and indirect economic costs such as material damages, health-care spending and a loss of production due to injuries and fatalities. These consequences of intense traffic in large cities interact with each other, erode quality of life, and justify an informed and evidence-based intervention based on solid grounds of knowledge provided by science. Thus, this Special Issue includes academic works providing evidence on the effectiveness and/or efficiency of implemented public policies that may help in mitigating traffic-related externalities, as well as their direct and indirect consequences. This issue welcomes applied work from different fields that examine, evaluate, and critically engage with a rigorous discussion on the means cities have available to address these mobility challenges. Thus, a variety of topics and policy measures are welcome: investments, regulations, planning, provision of new mass transportation services, enforcement, Maas innovations and Shared economy initiatives, etc. The issue expects to speak to local policy makers delivering a solid ground for their consideration of alternative policies and approaches. 

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• Pollution
• Road Safety
• Accidents
• Congestion
• Traffic