Impact of Alternative Forms of Transport on Urban Freight Congestion

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

The paper focuses on four Polish cities and the general public’s attitudes towards alternative forms of transport for urban travel, including traditional public transport and newer modes such as e-bikes and scooters. The paper loosely links encouraging greater use of alternative modes of passenger transport to the ability to enhance urban freight.

The introduction provides some basic overview and context to urban transport and table 1 categorises different modes according to their advantages and disadvantages. However, it is not clear where the information included in Table 1 has come from? There are no cited references to academic literature to support the various advantages and disadvantages listed. For instance, ‘low operating cost’ is listed, but how has this been defined exactly? Under Tram and Trolley-bus, the advantage of being ‘collision-free’ is listed, but this is debatable since in some countries the tram network is not segregated and shares the same road space as other road users, buses, cyclists, cars etc. Also, a disadvantage of Tram’s is that they are considered ‘noiselessness’, but what does this actually mean? On a more minor note, regarding Table 1 – the first column heading would be better as ‘Means of urban transport’ as opposed to ‘communication’; and it would be useful to include a line space between each row so that readers can better distinguish between different transport modes advantages/disadvantages.

At the end of the introduction on p3 lines 77-78, the authors state the aim of the paper. However, this does not really reflect what has been described in the papers abstract or what is alluded to in the title. It feels like the focus of the paper is more about attitudes to passenger transport modes in Polish cities as opposed to anything to do with urban freight transport. Further, the following lines 78-82 provide a short summary of the paper contents, but again these don’t follow on or match the abstract or what was discussed in the introduction. The focus of the paper and its relevance to urban freight transport is largely unclear.

On p2 under section 2, lines 112-117, there are no references to support the points or identify sources of emission information.

In section 3, the scope of the study is stated in lines 134-136 and again there is no mention of urban freight transport, where does freight fit in?

The latter part of section 3 attempts to describe the demographic of the survey sample. The descriptions of the participant demographic is difficult to follow, unclear and confusing. In lines 145-148, the main focus of the description is on the proportion of men and women completing the survey – why is this relevant? Wouldn’t it be simpler to state the number of male and number of female respondents in total? In lines 150-156 – it is not clear from this what the age ranges participating in the sample actually are. It would be more useful o reconfigure table 3 to include full demographic details of the respondents – ages, gender, locations etc.

Section 4 – line 158, “chapter” should be ‘section’.

Section 4 – lines 162-172 – this again is difficult to follow, can a more comprehensive set of results be provided instead, perhaps using a table and or a histogram to show this information.

Figures 1-4 each contain 3 charts, however the top chart is not labelled very well – is this the overall combined results from all 4 towns?

There appear to be two sections labelled as section 5!

Regarding the first section 5 on p9, this section would benefit from the inclusion of greater links to existing academic literature to support the points being made. Similarly, there is little mention of the improvements suggested in relation to urban freight, which is surprising considering the apparent aims of the paper. Again, the focus seems to have very little to do with urban freight.

Finally, in line with my previous points regarding the limited mention of urban freight, the final part of the paper on p11 lines 370-384 summarising the four key conclusions have no mention of urban freight, not one of the conclusions relate to urban freight.

Author Response

Hello, thank you very much at the outset for your critical comments. We have addressed all of them hopefully as expected.

• Table 1 has been corrected for comments and the literature from which the information contained in it was drawn has been supplemented.
• The aim and scope of the work has been revised to relate to the title of the work and the content contained therein.
• References to emissions have been completed.
• In Section 3, the scope of the study has been revised in line with the topic of the thesis.
• In the second part of Section 3, the table has been modified to reflect the scope of the study sample and to present full demographic data.
• In section 4, the notation was corrected. Chapter was converted into sections.
• Again, a graph was used in Section 4 to make the data in the paper easier to read.
• The figures in section 4 were supplemented with captions for the sections containing the overall data for the 4 cities studied.
• The two sections 5 were correctly described as section 5 and section 6.
• In section 5, all information on the discussion therein has been supported by relevant literature. In addition, this section has been supplemented with freight transport issues.
• In the final section of the paper, conclusions on the impact of alternative modes of transport on freight transport have been added in the conclusion.

As confirmation, I am sending the file with the corrected comments attached. I hope that currently the work meets expectations and can be published.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The presented article deals with the impact of alternative forms of transport in large and medium-sized cities, specifically in cities in Poland. Through surveys, the authors collect relevant information about the needs of cargo and passenger transport, to provide solutions in favor of alternative transporters. This issue is of vital importance by virtue of seeking sustainable transport solutions instead of those based on fossil fuels. Here are some comments:

 

·        the writing of the text is understandable and raises clear ideas in the sentences, however, there are some spelling mistakes in the main text, it is recommended to review the text in Depth

·        Considering that the population of the 4 cities studied are not the same, how do the authors justify that the statistical sample taken is the same for each of the cities?

·        What is the statistical reason why the authors only took a sample of 1,362 people instead of a larger sample?

·        In the discussion section, the authors address different reasons why citizens still do not adopt alternative means of transport, some reasons such as security, economy, lack of will are pointed out. However, it would be interesting if the authors also abort what factors influence not adopting sustainable transport for the cargo area

·        It is recommended that the authors clearly state what is the difference between the results obtained by them in relation to other sources.

Author Response

Good afternoon, thank you very much for your valuable comments. All have been incorporated into the work as suggested. The changes are as follows:

• The work was once again checked by a native speaker.
• In order to prove and justify the sampling, Table 4 is inserted, showing a list of the cities analysed with an indication of the maximum permissible error of the survey performed.
• For the discipline of management and quality sciences, the study adopts a confidence level of a=95% and defines the size of the fraction as 0.5 in the case of not knowing the size of certain research characteristics. The proposed sample allocation achieves a minimum survey error of 5% for each city, which is reasonable for the study.
• The discussion section was supplemented by a thread on factors influencing the lack of adoption of sustainable transport within freight.
• Literature comparing the results with studies by other researchers has also been completed in this section.

I hope that the revised work meets expectations and can be published in the journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper, authors investigated the phenomenon of popularization of alternative forms of urban transport and to determine the influence of this kind of travel on freight transport and sustainable urban development. This paper investigates an interesting problem, and the structure is relative good. However, revisions are needed before the acceptance.

 

1. In the proposed framework, the main novel contribution on theory and application is not clear..

2. How different transport means impact the congestion, authors can add the discussion on this point.

3. For the evaluation, the dataset/algorithm choosing reasons, the detailed platform configurations and the discussion on other untested datasets should be introduced in the revised paper.

4. Some references lack the necessary information (e.g., [2]), please provide all information according to the right template.

5. Align the subfigures correctly (e.g., Figure 4), and the captions of subfigures are missing.

6. The conclusion should be shortened.

7. Make the References more comprehensive, besides Urban Freight Congestion, some other promising scenarios (e.g., Big data, other IoT systems) can be covered in this work. If the above related work can be discussed, it can strongly improve the research significance. For the improvement, the following papers can be considered to make the references more comprehensive.

Bin Pu, Kenli Li, Shengli Li, Ningbo Zhu: Automatic Fetal Ultrasound Standard Plane Recognition Based on Deep Learning and IIoT. IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics 17(11): 7771-7780 (2021)    

Q. Tang, M.-Z. Xie, K. Yang, Y. Luo, D. Zhou, Y. Song: A Decision Function Based Smart Charging and Discharging Strategy for Electric Vehicle in Smart Grid. Mob. Networks Appl. 24(5): 1722-1731 (2019)  

  J. Wang, Y. Yang, T. Wang, R. Sherratt, J. Zhang. Big Data Service Architecture: A Survey. Journal of Internet Technology, 2020, 21(2): 393-405    

J. Zhang, S. Zhong, T. Wang, H.-C. Chao, J. Wang. Blockchain-Based Systems and Applications: A Survey. Journal of Internet Technology, 2020, 21(1): 1-14  

  He Li, Mianxiong Dong, Kaoru Ota, Minyi Guo: Pricing and Repurchasing for Big Data Processing in Multi-Clouds. IEEE Trans. Emerg. Top. Comput. 4(2): 266-277 (2016)

 

Author Response

Good morning, first of all I would like to thank you for your review and the critical comments indicated in it. All suggestions have been corrected and are as follows:

• The background to the literature analysis was completed and a deeper study of the literature on the subject was indicated.
• In order to determine the impact of transport modes on congestion in the city, Table 2 was created based on the literature analysis.
• The references have been corrected and completed with all necessary data.
• The subfigures in the figures included in the paper have been correctly signed where each figure appears.
• The conclusion has been shortened accordingly. It contains only the most relevant conclusions of the study.
• The references have been supplemented with an indication of exemplary work, making the article more comprehensive in presenting the approaches of other innovative solutions within the city.

Many thanks for all the comments. I hope that the revised paper meets expectations and can be published in the journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

It is not clear whether the authors are focusing on freight/goods transportation or passenger transportation in the paper. The paper title indicates "freight" congestion but the questionnaire survey is more about passenger travelling/commuting.  I would suggest the authors to reframe the study and revise the paper to make the main theme clearer.

A clear conceptual framework is lacking for the paper. The authors should provide a conceptual framework which links the extant literature with what is going to be investigated in the current study.

Overall speaking, the literature review was not properly conducted. The literature review should have covered wide range of literature related to the topic.

Why were the four Polish cities selected?  What were the selection criteria?  Were these cities representable? More discussion on whether the results can be generalized to other parts of Poland (or even Europe) is needed.

What sampling strategy/method was adopted for the survey?

The data analysis is quite descriptive. I would suggest the authors to carry out appropriate statistical tests to spot the relationships between factors and/or differences across groups. 

What are the limitations of the research?  How do these limitations affect the interpretation of the research findings? 

Author Response

Good morning. Thank you wholeheartedly for your reviews and for providing such fruitful comments. All of which I hope we have been able to duly address and are as follows:

• Of course, the work in the earlier version did not clearly indicate freight congestion in the city. Hopefully, with the corrections, the paper fully fits the theme.
• The literature supplement in the introduction and in the discussion section compiles a conceptual framework linking the research to the current state of knowledge. In addition, the references have been greatly expanded, deepening the literature analysis in favour of research related to the topic.
• The selection of cities was based on the juxtaposition and comparison of two types of urban areas. On the one hand, cities have been selected as large centres in which the level of development represents a certain expectation for residents and transport companies. On the other hand, cities in the process of development, representing smaller centres, were presented. The study and juxtaposition of these two areas aimed to compare the mentality and urban specifications in relation to the choice of alternative means of transport. Which consequently affects freight vehicle travel within the city.
• The analysis of the data has been extended to include tables and graphs, as well as a correlation analysis of the research results comparing the different factors with each other.
• The main limitation of the study may be the selection of the sample. The 4 Polish cities proposed represent a representative value, but relating the collected results to other potentially similar cities may be difficult. The issue here is the mentality of the inhabitants from different cities and countries and the degree of development of these centres. A second risk in analysing the results may be the current global situation. The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and other recent threats may distort the results of the collected data. In addition, the nature of the data collection using an online survey may raise some concerns in some cases, but the authors were meticulous in their analysis and excluded survey responses that would deviate significantly from the norm.

The revised work is provided as an attachment. I hope it meets expectations and can be published.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

 

The revised and amended version shows a clear improvement on the first version that was originally submitted.

The introduction has been sufficiently updated. However, whilst Table 1 now refers to a number of source references [9-14] – it is unclear how ref 13 is relevant to the information provided in the table or for that matter relevant to the scope of the paper? Also, the DOI link to ref 13 is not found.

On p3 lines 63-81 the two paragraphs are improved, but there are no supporting references cited for this discussion.

The concluding paragraph of the introduction p3 line 109 – p4 line 116 doesn’t fit with the flow of the paper and is a strange way to conclude the introduction. These lines add no value to the paper and are confusing for the reader – I suggest they are removed.

The methods section has been much improved, and the analysis section has greatly improved too.

The conclusion now reads more cohesively and links back to the overall aim and objectives of the paper stated in the introduction. However, under key conclusion 6, what is meant by “sa-car”? I assume this is a typographical error.

There are several times throughout the paper where the authors refer to “this thesis” – this is a paper focused on a particular study, and therefore it needs referring to as a paper/study accordingly.

Overall the authors have made significant effort to update and revise the paper and respond to the recommendations of the reviewers.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you once again for reviewing the work and pointing out your comments. There have indeed been some oversights in the revised version for which I apologise most sincerely. 

With reference to the comments posted:

• ref 13 was mistakenly inserted in the work. The item has already been corrected. When entering the bibliographic data I incorrectly copied the indicated ref.
• the two added paragraphs were supplemented with references used in the paper.
• the concluding paragraph of the introduction was added by suggestion of another reviewer. On the other hand, I have now modified the indicated information that refers to other alternatives to improve traffic in the city. I hope this can remain in its present form.
• obviously there was a typo in proposal 6. This has been corrected.
  the wording of the thesis used in the paper has been changed in accordance with the reviewer's comment.

I have, of course, tried meticulously to improve every point and hope that, as it stands, the work now meets final expectations. I send the final version of the paper attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Revised paper is much better and can be accepted now.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am glad that the revised work fully meets expectations. 

Thank you again for your comments, which have raised the quality of the work.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have addressed the reviewers' comments to my satisfaction.  I don't have any further comments on the paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am glad that the revised work fully meets expectations. 

Thank you again for your comments, which have raised the quality of the work.