Journal of Urban Mobility最新文献

Feeling safe is a major issue for cyclists, and some potential cyclists are still deterred from using the bicycle because they feel too unsafe. Assessing the subjective safety of existing cycling infrastructures and locations can be done by questionnaires that show pictures of infrastructures and ask participants for their safety ratings. However, future cycling infrastructures should also be evaluated as safe even before they are implemented. Therefore, it is desirable to have a method that is able to predict safety from infrastructural information. This study aims to propose two different ways for such a method and to test both ways in a use case. We first developed two scores, namely the Repertory Grid (RG) Score and the FixMyBerlin (FMB) Score, which predict subjective safety from objective environmental information but use different data bases and different methodologies. In a second step, we validated these scores by comparing them to questionnaire ratings that evaluated cyclists’ subjective safety at 20 locations in the city of Braunschweig, Germany. Finally, we compared the two scores as well as the questionnaire ratings with objective safety measures, namely crash statistics, at the respective locations. The results show that the RG Score has a moderate agreement and the FMB Score has a fair agreement with the questionnaire ratings. All methods agree on the overall safety evaluation of various cycling facilities. However, the RG Score showed less variance in the safety ratings, whereas the FMB Score rated most locations more unsafe than the participants in the questionnaire. Interestingly, neither the scores nor the questionnaire ratings could sufficiently deduce the occurrence of a crash at one of the locations. The findings strengthen the importance of subjective safety as a construct independent of objective safety. Furthermore, they provide insights into aspects of subjective safety that can easily be measured by objective scores, and into aspects that are important for cyclists but were not yet covered by the scores. This study, therefore, provides a basis for future considerations and future evaluation methods to assess the subjective safety of cyclists.

Building on the literature concerning gender-responsive mobility, this paper aims to explore how street experiments can be used to promote gendered mobilities and create streetscapes in order to prioritise the needs of women in the improvement of access to public transport that grants them access to the many facets of urban life. It argues that by creating more inclusive and accessible streets through participatory planning and design processes, women will have greater opportunities to participate in and benefit from public transport. To that end, a street experiment project, TOPUK, was used as a case study focusing on improving women's access to public transport in Maltepe, Istanbul. The methodology consists of the critical assessment of various participation methods and a detailed narrative of the project process. Accessibility, mobility, and safety were found to be the most important women-centric public transportation issues addressed through participatory pop-up design solutions at the street level, most of which were implemented despite bureaucratic obstacles. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned from the TOPUK project and how these lessons can be applied to future street experiments to create more gender-responsive and inclusive living environments.

This paper argues that the right to access public spaces and streets is impacted not only because of automobility but also by socio-spatial factors of the urban environment. This paper presents insights towards a holistic understanding for street experiments (with a focus on stationary and slow travel modes) by highlighting the factors that impact the conditions of mobility and access through the lens of gender. By adopting a combination of new technologies, such as GPS, along with mobile methods, like ethnography, this research centres around the everyday travel experiences of urban marginalized women (UMW) from peri‑urban areas of New Delhi who contest their right to access public spaces on a day-to-day basis. This study examines the socio-spatial environment comprising the daily mobilities of UMW to reveal the conditions of mobility and access to public spaces. The findings highlight that the issues faced by these women while travelling, mainly guided by aspects of gender, act as barriers to their mobility and access to public spaces (streets) in urban informal conditions. The study also reveals elements of urban informality (socio-spatial elements) enhance as well as negatively on the daily mobilities of UMW. These socio-spatial factors were found to be interconnected to one another and thus cannot be implemented as individual or isolated factors. The results of the study support the proposal of a more inclusive and accessible public space.

Over the course of history there have been several and significant changes in the methods and technologies used to move people and things. Innovations typically follow the distributive and social needs of their time but in some cases they drive or at least contribute to the social and economic evolution of human communities. The paper is based on the hypothesis that transport system innovations occur with different speeds and have impacts of different magnitude in different historical moments. Changes can thus be classified as revolutions or as evolutions depending on weather they (contribute to) change societal, economic and/or territorial systems in a relatively short time period or not. In this paper, analysing the history of humanity, six transport revolutions and several evolutions following over time have been identified, extending and re-defining the ideas of Gilbert and Pearl (2010). We suggest that transportation systems are undergoing a seventh revolutionary phase due to the combined effects of three main drivers. These are innovations in energy sources and their transmission, developments of connected and autonomous vehicles for all transportation modes, and new smart mobility services. As for past revolutions it's impossible anticipate the extent of change it will bring about, both in the transportation market and in society at large. According to the “law of unintended consequences” of previous revolutions, the combined effects of the three drivers will likely further amplify the scope of possible changes. These changes can have positive, neutral or negative effects on short to medium term for environmental, social and economic sustainability of freights and passengers transportation. The paper starts with a synthetic description of previous transport revolutions, as proposed by the Authors. The main elements of the seventh transport revolution are then discussed together with some possible interactions among them. Finally the paper analyses some opportunities and risks connected to the ongoing innovation with respect to environmental, social ed economic sustainability. The perception of the current time as a revolutionary phase should change the approach of researchers and practitioners in the wide field of transportation system analysis with respect to the last evolutionary decades. Future research, in addition to sector specific evolutions, should focus on the actual holistic deployment of the seventh revolution trying to continuously update its combined effects and anticipate as much as possible its trajectory in order to reduce undesirable ones while boasting desirable ones. Future transport policies, especially in urban areas, will have to take into account the opportunities and risks deriving from the ongoing transport revolution as well as the resulting level of uncertainty.

Recognised as an important dimension of quality of life, accessibility has gained increasing attention from research and planning practice in the last decades. Rising concern with global warming and the dehumanization of cities has spotlighted the proximity-centred dimension of accessibility, which for decades has been mostly undervalued. In both research and practice, we witness a rise in references to proximity-centred accessibility, however, using a variety of different terms, with somewhat nuanced meanings or underlying concerns. Proximity-centred accessibility concepts are still in flux, inhibiting the establishment of a comprehensive understanding for the development of a cohesive research field and of effective public policies.

This paper provides a first contribution to the development of a conceptual framework for proximity-centred accessibility, through a co-development process involving both research and practice. For this we used a mixed methods approach incorporating bibliographic research, surveys, and a focus group, involving both experts in the research field and a sample of planning practitioners from Portugal and Germany.

Our research revealed over a dozen different proximity-centred accessibility terms currently in use in the scientific research field, of which, local accessibility and neighbourhood accessibility are the most commonly used. A difference in favoured terminology was identified between research and practice as well as different national contexts, requiring further explorations. While Proximity thresholds have been defined using a variety of physical distances or travel times, our survey revealed a nearly unanimous consensus around a threshold of 1600 m (roughly 20 min walking). Mixed evidence was found with regard to activities relevant at proximity. Regardless, playgrounds, green spaces, food shopping and elementary education showed particular relevance.

Building on the empirical evidence collected, we strike out a first conceptual framework for proximity-centred accessibility. Building on the general definition for accessibility, we include a maximum distance threshold of 1600 m to consider accessibility as proximity-centred. The proposed framework encourages multiple distances (up to 1600 m), transport modes, and activities (although the relevance of activities seems to be clearly dependent of distance and local context). The importance of clearly specifying the exact distances, transport mode(s) and activities for each application of the framework is stressed.

Children's mobility and the opportunity to get around the city on their own has decreased and is today limited to a large extent by unsafe traffic situations. Due to their limited independent mobility, children are excluded from the urban space and its facilities. Independent mobility can be related to several dimensions of children's social, physical, mental and cognitive wellbeing. The purpose of this study is to investigate if and in what way autonomous buses can contribute to children's independent mobility and, using children's experiences, provide insights into this before the introduction of autonomous buses in cities and public transport systems. To do so, the two research questions "How can autonomous buses in the transport system contribute to children's independent mobility?" and "What prerequisites are necessary for autonomous buses to contribute to children's independent mobility?" are answered. The survey is based on a case of introduction of autonomous buses in urban environments. Three focus groups with students in a primary school were conducted with the aim of gaining the participants' experiences. The results indicate that the introduction of autonomous buses in an urban area can contribute to children's independent mobility in several ways and that the buses have certain characteristics that enable them to be adapted to children's conditions. The low speed of the shuttles, which is often seen as an obstacle when it comes to time efficiency, has a positive effect on perceived safety in this case. The mobility solution is also child-friendly in that it is accessible in terms of trip planning and payment. However, it is important to consider the risk that the bus might replace active transportation modes, like cycling. To avoid this, autonomous shuttles should be integrated in a way that complement, not compete with, active travel.

In recent years, the concept of proximity has gathered significant attention and the best-known model dealing with this concept is Carlos Moreno's 15-minute city, where citizens can easily reach any essential service through a 15 minutes’ walk (or bike ride). This city model presents numerous advantages, including reductions in car traffic and carbon footprint, improvement in citizens' health and safety, enhancement of the economy in the whole city, improvement of accessibility and so on. However, transitioning to a 15-minute city is not a straightforward undertaking and we argue that for this process to succeed it is best to rely on data-driven assessments of its developments. Therefore, in this paper we present the NExt proXimity Index (NEXI), based on open data and capable of measuring the level of local proximity to services by walking, according to the principles of the 15-minute city. The goal of NEXI is to identify which of the different areas of a given territory already follow the 15-minute paradigm and its implementation is made available as an interactive map where the index is computed on a hexagonal grid and thematized according to its value. The NEXI is designed to be glocal: it is based on OpenStreetMap data so it can be replicated everywhere (global), but it is also granular enough to be able to evaluate the proximity at a small scale (local). Moreover, the index is designed to have a scalable computation and is in fact already available for the entirety of Italy. Finally, the NEXI can be combined with additional local data (e.g. population level) to gather additional insights, as was experimented in two use cases carried out in the cities of Ferrara and Bologna, Italy.

‘Street experiments’ (SE) are increasingly used to reallocate street space from traffic to space for people through temporary interventions. Existing research suggests that SE can mobilise the public in favour of post-car transitions and focuses on evaluating SE from an upscaling, public acceptability, or practitioner perspective, while there are few studies that explore what citizens value about SE in the context of everyday street life in an open-ended way. To fill this gap, this paper analyses how N = 458 citizens value five SE parklets and plazas in three neighbourhoods of London, Munich, and Bologna. We develop a primarily inductive and qualitative survey method for understanding what mobility and public life dimensions of SE that citizens value, considering both use value and the broader social meanings of street transformations. Based on empirical analysis, we develop a framework for analysing the value of SE with 10 categories spanning functional, social, safety, environmental and economic dimensions. The findings show that across all three European cities, the majority of citizens value the public life dimensions of SE more highly than SE benefits for active mobility: including the added value of SE for the attractiveness of the streetscape, making public space available for stationary activities, and creating opportunities for social and civic interaction within neighbourhoods. Our analytical approach can be used to understand citizens’ qualitative evaluations of SE, while our practitioner recommendations can help inform the design of more effective and inclusive SE interventions.

Individuals choose transport modes to travel based on their preferences and journey characteristics. The availability of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the market will affect the traditional mode choice models. In this regard, this research studies three transport modes: conventional car, privately-owned autonomous vehicle (PAV), and shared autonomous vehicle (SAV). The potential changes in transport mode choice are evaluated, where the impact of changes of some sociodemographic and travel variables on choices are estimated. A discrete choice modeling approach is applied in this study to develop a transport choice model. A stated preference (SP) approach is used, where 306 answers are collected in Hungary. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) is designed to collect the choices of people. Multinomial Logit (MNL) model is applied to the data to develop a transport mode choice model, where differentiations between some parameters across transport modes are presented. People are varied in their willingness to use a transport mode across groups, such as the income, the family size, and the current transport mode. The results demonstrate that people are more likely to use a conventional car than PAV, while they are more likely to use PAV than SAV. The output of this study can be used to support policy implications in the AV era.

A plethora of shared fleet services have been introduced in cities worldwide. Despite their increased presence in urban areas, it is insofar unknown what are the main determinants of travellers’ choices between the usage of shared-mopeds and cars and thereby the extent to which shared moped can substitute car travel. To this end, we design and conduct an SP choice model experiment. The estimated Panel Mixed Logit model is applied to explore the potential market share for shared moped, car and bike under several scenarios which are devised based on the expert interviews. Our findings demonstrate that the return availability of shared moped is the most influential travel time attribute. Walk time from home to the shared moped is an influential factor for people without moped experience. Moreover, model estimation results show that people who have used a shared moped before value the attributes differently than people without previous moped experience. We specifically focus on choice determinants and policy measures targeting car users to facilitate desirable behavioural changes. We present results from model application to demonstrate the effect of different policy packages on the market share of each mode, showing that certain policy interventions can attract car users to switch to shared moped while avoiding a strong reduction in bike use.