Quioto Protocol targets, the fuel cost increase, the need to reduce the national energy provision dependence, the reduction of passengers on collective transport and the need to define a driver training program that conducts to more interesting results on real driving situation, leads to the need of defining strategic measures on the transport sector. Therefore, regarding a road passenger transport fleet energy and environmental performance optimization, as well as improving the passengers safety and comfort on board and reducing the maintenance and operational costs, were developed two, drivers and vehicles, monitorization (global monitorization and training monitorization) schemes in order to intervene accurately having in account the defined targets. To define and calibrate the training monitorization scheme, it was necessary to characterize in detail representative lanesfor several periods of time. This characterization implied the monitorization second by second of real driving behavior on these lanes. The training monitorization is complemented with continues monitorization of all fleet, the global monitorization. This monitorization keeps track of the fuel consumption of all drivers and vehicles, on a day by day basis. With thesetwo monitorization schemes it is possible to identify intervention needs in what regards drivers, vehicles or operational issues. So it allows integrated action on three levels, network, fleet and drivers. Even though these three levels of action are quite important for attaining the project targets, the drivers training has been the main focus, since it seems to be the most complex field of intervention. The orientation towards a new driving attitude is quite complex, since it involves behavioral aspects and the control of several other parameters not easily defined. The driving behavior is also an important constraint in what regards energy and environment performance [1], as well as it influences the passengers and general public safety and comfort perception. Therefore, it was developed a drivers training scheme having in account the training and global monitorization data, in order to define intervention measures and perceive the impact of each on the global performance of the fleet. This scheme was applied to a case study, a Portuguese Fleet Operator Rodoviária de Lisboa, SA. This entity operates in Lisbon, has 370 vehicles fleet, 650 drivers and an annual fuel consumption of about 8.5 million liters. For the project the global fleet monitorization scheme and training monitorization had to be developed and implemented. At the moment, all the fleet is monitored on a global basis and nine vehicles are equipped for training monitorization. The drivers training scheme is already rolling since May 2005. The first results made possible the definition of several intervention actions on three levels, the fleet, the drivers and operational parameters. The global monitorization made possible the impact evaluation of each intervention and the redefinition of some monitorization parameters. Until now, the first results are quite enthusiastic, since the gains in what regards the passenger safety and comfort are quite interesting. The gains on energy and environment performance are not so notorious, nevertheless, the gains until now, are quitemore interesting then gains attained with classic drivers training programs. Since these results indicate that the theory gains expected [6] are attainable. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135582.
Abstract