ITS Monday: Edition 24, 2025

Closing in on 2050 – the transport climate debate is just getting started

First-up ths week is this LinkedIn piece by Samuel Marks. “Time is the recurring theme of this article. In Australia, we have just over 24 years to achieve net zero targets. For transport, and in particular for heavy road transport, we are not on track. We are out of time to get cracking on accelerating the pace of change. Within 6 years, transport is likely to get much more political attention.”

Related iMOVE articles:

• FACTS: A Framework for an Australian Clean Transport Strategy
  
• Sustainable Transportation: Info, Projects & Resources

Related iMOVE projects:

• Zero emissions heavy vehicles: Analysis, planning and policy
• Investigating the viability of hydrogen fuel for heavy vehicle use

‘Game changer’: Your electric vehicle can now power your home and the grid

“The rest of Australia will soon be able to do what farming couple Francis and Vivica Clarke have been doing for more than a year – selling the energy stored in their electric vehicle back to the grid.”

Related iMOVE article:

• Being a V2G trailblazer: Lessons for mass market adoption

Human-centric explanations for users in automated vehicles: A systematic review

A new academic paper, co-authored by Zishuo Zhu, Xiaomeng Li, Patricia Delhomme, Ronald Schroeter, Sebastien Glaser, and Andry Rakotonirainy. The abstract:

The decision-making processes of automated vehicles (AVs) can confuse users and reduce trust, highlighting the need for clear and human-centric explanations. Such explanations can help users understand AV actions, facilitate smooth control transitions and enhance transparency, acceptance, and trust.

Critically, such explanations could improve situational awareness and support timely, appropriate human responses, thereby reducing the risk of misuse, unexpected automated decisions, and delayed reactions in safety–critical scenarios. However, current literature offers limited insight into how different types of explanations impact drivers in diverse scenarios and the methods for evaluating their quality.

This paper systematically reviews what, when and how to provide human-centric explanations in AV contexts.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Autonomous Driving Info, Projects & Resources
• Autonomous Driving Technology: Info, Projects & Resources

Related iMOVE projects:

• CAVs and Australians: Attitudes, perceptions, preferences
• Environmental impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles
• Safely deploying automated vehicles on Australian roads

Catalyst for change or community menace? What’s next for Australia’s e-bike revolution

“Shared e-bikes had been used for more than 8.9m trips as of last week, covering more than 17.6m kilometres in total. Where are they going? And how did we get here?”

Related iMOVE article:

• Micromobility: Info, Projects & Resources

Measuring the integration of micromobility and public transport – the development of a new network analysis tool

A new academic paper, co-authored by Giulia Oeschger, Brian Caulfield, and Páraic Carroll. The abstract:

The integration of micromobility and public transport is an increasingly relevant and desirable strategy to promote more sustainable alternatives to private car travel. For it to be successful, however, adequate infrastructure to facilitate intermodal trips needs to be provided, at stops and in the catchment areas surrounding them. In this study, a methodology is proposed to holistically assess the quality and availability of such infrastructure using Open Data.

he proposed methodology combines a network analysis of the catchment areas with an assessment of the public transport stops. The assessment results in an index that objectively quantifies the quality and availability of infrastructure that is necessary for a successful integration of micromobility and public transport. The methodology has been applied to the case study of the light rail network in Dublin, Ireland, showing that the index is a straightforward combination of datasets which allows to compare public transport stops in terms of their suitability for the integrated use of micromobility and public transport.

Overall, the methodology is a valuable assessment tool to objectively determine the integration of micromobility and public transport, applicable in any geographical context – for which the required open datasets are available – and to inform decision-making processes relating to improving the accessibility of public transport services.

What’s happened to Australia’s green hydrogen dream? Here are 5 reasons the industry has floundered

A piece from The Conversation, by Alison Reeve, Program Director, Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute. “Green hydrogen is shaping as the best option to strip carbon emissions from some industrial processes, such as iron-making and ammonia production. But making the dream a reality in Australia is proving difficult.”

The road lobby and unhealthy transport policy discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand: A framing analysis

An finally this week, a new academic paper, co-authored by Alice Miller, Emma Osborne, Richard Edwards, Alex Macmillan, and Caroline Shaw – all from University of Otago Wellington. The abstract:

Transport is an important determinant of population health. Decarbonisation of the transport system is also a critical part of climate policy with additional health co-benefits to be gained by reducing car dependence. Despite this knowledge, there has been inadequate progress in transport policy to protect the health of people and the planet.