scholarly journals Going carless in different urban fabrics: socio-demographics of household car ownership

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. E. Karjalainen ◽  
M. Tiitu ◽  
J. Lyytimäki ◽  
V. Helminen ◽  
P. Tapio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
National Level ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Car Ownership ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Residential Distance

AbstractDiverse physical features of urban areas alongside socio-demographic characteristics affect car ownership, and hence the daily mobility choices. As a case of sustainable mobility, we explore how various urban environments and socio-demographics associate with the spatial and social distribution of household car ownership and carlessness in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland. Three urban fabrics characterizing the study area are established based on the transportation mode (walking, public transportation, or automobile) the physical urban environment primarily supports. The national level Monitoring System of Spatial Structure and Urban Form database, and the National Travel Survey (2016) are utilized to further include spatial and socio-demographic variables into our analysis across these fabrics. Our results show that households with and without cars differ in terms of residential distance to the city center, neighborhood density, house type, and socio-demographic profiles. Single pensioners and students are most likely to be carless, whereas families represent the opposite. Within the carless households the differences are also evident between different groups. For the more affluent households residing in dense and well-connected areas, and mostly possessing driver’s licenses, carlessness is presumably a choice. Contrarily, many other carless households represent the less affluent often located in the more distant, low-density, and less accessible areas, while also possessing less driver’s licenses, making carlessness more of a constraint, as the local urban fabric does not support such lifestyle. Consequently, carless households should be increasingly recognized as a focus group in sustainable urban planning in terms of identifiable best practices and potential vulnerability.

scholarly journals Development of a biking index for measuring Mediterranean cities mobility

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
L. Ros-McDonnell ◽  
M.V. De-la-Fuente ◽  
D. Ros-McDonnell ◽  
M. Cardós
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Field Data ◽  
Survey Methodology ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Transport ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Mobility Index ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Motorized Vehicles

<p>The European Union, its member states and local authorities have been working for long time on the design of solutions for future sustainable mobility. The promotion of a sustainable and affordable urban transport contemplates the bicycle as a mean of transport. The reasons for analysing the cycling mobility in urban areas, has its origin in the confrontation with motorized vehicles, as a sustainable response to the environment. In this context of sustainable mobility, the research team has studied the use of bicycles in Mediterranean cities, specifically in coastal tourist areas.  The present work shows the development of a mobility index oriented to the bicycle, transport that competes with the private vehicle. By means of a survey methodology, the research group proceeded to collect field data and the subsequent analysis of them, for the development of a mobility index adapted to bicycle mobility, and with possibilities to adapt to urban environments.</p>

scholarly journals Enabling and Emerging Sensing Technologies for Crowd Avoidance in Public Transportation: A Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Darsena ◽  
Giacinto Gelli ◽  
Ivan Iudice ◽  
Francesco Verde
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Intelligent Transportation System ◽  
Route Planning ◽  
Transportation System ◽  
Normal Operation ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Detection Techniques ◽  
Bus Stops

Avoidance of crowding situations in public transportation (PT) systems is crucial to foster sustainable mobility, by increasing the user’s comfort and satisfaction during normal operation, as well as to manage emergency situations, such as pandemic crises as recently experienced with COVID-19 limitations. This paper presents a comprehensive review of several crowd detection techniques based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, which can be adopted to avoid crowding in various segments of the PT system (buses/trams/trains, railway/subway stations, and bus stops). To discuss such techniques in a clear systematic perspective, we introduce a reference framework called SALUTARY (Safe and Reliable Public Transportation System), which in our vision employs modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to: (i) monitor and predict crowding events; (ii) adapt in real-time PT system operations, i.e., by modifying service frequency, timetables, routes, and so on; (iii) inform the users of crowding events by electronic displays installed in correspondence of the bus stops/stations and/or by mobile transport applications. It is envisioned that the new anti-crowding functionalities can be incrementally implemented as an addon to the intelligent transportation system (ITS) platform, which is already in use by major PT companies operating in urban areas. Moreover, it is argued that in this new framework, additional services can be delivered, such as, e.g., online ticketing, vehicle access control and reservation in severely crowded situations, and evolved crowd-aware route planning.

scholarly journals Urban form and economic sustainability in housing projects

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Mahmoud Ahmed Abdel Ghaffar ◽  
Noha Ahmed Abd El Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Economic Sustainability ◽  
Land Use Pattern ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Urban Economic ◽  
The Impact

AbstractUrban areas in metropolitan cities like Cairo suffer from economic, social, and environmental predicaments. Urban economic sustainability is an approach that reforms the urban performance to gain direct benefits such as minimizing costs and maximizing profits and indirect benefits as better social, environmental, and cultural aspects. This research suggests applying such an approach to enhance Egyptian housing projects. The main research question is how to evaluate the economic sustainability of urban forms?. The study presents a “Sustainable Urban Economy model” (SUE model) linking urban fabric, land use pattern, transportation, and street network design with economic sustainability. Research methods and tools include interviews (Delphi method) with 25 urban planning/design and urban economic experts to refine the model. Results show the most effective components of the urban form on economic sustainability (accessibility and degree of permeability, population density, built, and the impact of sub-indicators on the main components. Moreover, results indicate that the seven most influential indicators are the built-up to total space ratio, mixed-use ratio, built-up ratio, population density, floor area ratio, degree of accessibility, and public transportation. Experts suggested values for the seven indicators to measure how the urban form can achieve high economic, environmental, and social performance in the Egyptian context.

scholarly journals Smart-Mobility Services for Climate Mitigation in Urban Areas: Case Studies of Baltic Countries and Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4127
Author(s):  
Gabriele Cepeliauskaite ◽  
Benno Keppner ◽  
Zivile Simkute ◽  
Zaneta Stasiskiene ◽  
Leon Leuser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
Smart Mobility ◽  
Negative Environmental Impact

The transport sector is one of the largest contributors of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases. In order to achieve the Paris goal of decreasing the global average temperature by 2 °C, urgent and transformative actions in urban mobility are required. As a sub-domain of the smart-city concept, smart-mobility-solutions integration at the municipal level is thought to have environmental, economic and social benefits, e.g., reducing air pollution in cities, providing new markets for alternative mobility and ensuring universal access to public transportation. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the relevance of smart mobility in creating a cleaner environment and provide strategic and practical examples of smart-mobility services in four European cities: Berlin (Germany), Kaunas (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia) and Tartu (Estonia). The paper presents a systematized literature review about the potential of smart-mobility services in reducing the negative environmental impact to urban environments in various cities. The authors highlight broad opportunities from the European Union and municipal documents for smart-mobility initiatives. The theoretical part is supplemented by socioeconomic and environmental descriptions, as well as experience, related to smart-mobility services in the four cities selected.

scholarly journals Sky View Factors from Synthetic Fisheye Photos for Thermal Comfort Routing—A Case Study in Phoenix, Arizona

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariane Middel ◽  
Jonas Lukasczyk ◽  
Ross Maciejewski
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Routing Algorithm ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Outdoor Thermal Comfort ◽  
View Factor

The Sky View Factor (SVF) is a dimension-reduced representation of urban form and one of the major variables in radiation models that estimate outdoor thermal comfort. Common ways of retrieving SVFs in urban environments include capturing fisheye photographs or creating a digital 3D city or elevation model of the environment. Such techniques have previously been limited due to a lack of imagery or lack of full scale detailed models of urban areas. We developed a web based tool that automatically generates synthetic hemispherical fisheye views from Google Earth at arbitrary spatial resolution and calculates the corresponding SVFs through equiangular projection. SVF results were validated using Google Maps Street View and compared to results from other SVF calculation tools. We generated 5-meter resolution SVF maps for two neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona to illustrate fine-scale variations of intra-urban horizon limitations due to urban form and vegetation. To demonstrate the utility of our synthetic fisheye approach for heat stress applications, we automated a radiation model to generate outdoor thermal comfort maps for Arizona State University’s Tempe campus for a hot summer day using synthetic fisheye photos and on-site meteorological data. Model output was tested against mobile transect measurements of the six-directional radiant flux density. Based on the thermal comfort maps, we implemented a pedestrian routing algorithm that is optimized for distance and thermal comfort preferences. Our synthetic fisheye approach can help planners assess urban design and tree planting strategies to maximize thermal comfort outcomes and can support heat hazard mitigation in urban areas.

scholarly journals The role of transport planning in the sustainable development of the Irkutsk agglomeration

2021 ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
Alexei Levashev ◽  
Maxim Sharov ◽  
Olga Lebedeva ◽  
Alla Lytkina ◽  
Alexandra Butuzova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Modeling Tools ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Transportation Services ◽  
Service Areas

The lack of integrated territorial and transportation planning in Irkutsk and Irkutsk agglomeration has led to the degradation of transport infrastructure. A number of measures are proposed to improve the efficiency of the transport system, including the elaboration of a development plan for sustainable mobility with a focus on public transportation services for urban areas. The use of modern transport modeling tools allows to take into account the negative consequences of reducing transport accessibility, but requires the integration of accumulated information about the characteristics of the service areas to increase the accuracy of transport forecasts.

scholarly journals Enabling and Emerging Sensing Technologies for Crowd Management in Public Transportation Systems: A Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Darsena ◽  
Giacinto Gelli ◽  
Ivan Iudice ◽  
Francesco Verde
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Normal Operation ◽  
Reference Architecture ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Crowd Management ◽  
Bus Stops

Management of crowd information in public transportation (PT) systems is crucial to foster sustainable mobility, by increasing the user’s comfort and satisfaction during normal operation, as well as to cope with emergency situations, such as pandemic crises, as recently experienced with COVID-19 limitations. This paper presents a taxonomy and review of sensing technologies based on Internet of Things (IoT) for real-time crowd analysis, which can be adopted in various segments of the PT system (buses/trams/trains, railway/subway stations, and bus stops). To discuss such technologies in a clear systematic perspective, we introduce a reference architecture for crowd management, which employs modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to: (i) monitor and predict crowding events; (ii) adapt in real-time PT system operations, by modifying service frequency, timetables, routes, and so on; (iii) inform in real-time the users of the crowding status of the PT system, by means of electronic displays installed inside vehicles or at bus stops/stations, and/or by mobile transport applications. It is envisioned that the innovative crowd management functionalities enabled by ICT/IoT sensing technologies can be incrementally implemented as an add-on to traditional intelligent transportation system (ITS) platforms, which are already in use by major PT companies operating in urban areas. Moreover, it is argued that, in this new framework, additional services can be delivered, such as, e.g., on-line ticketing, vehicle access control and reservation in severely crowded situations, and evolved crowd-aware route planning.

scholarly journals Urban Travel Behavior and Socio-Spatial Issues in the Mena Region: What Do We Know?

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-443
Author(s):  
Joanna Andraos ◽  
Razan Awad ◽  
Tony Geagea ◽  
Clara Habib ◽  
Lydia Koberssi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Urban Travel ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Holistic Review ◽  
The Status

Abstract Unlike literature and studies coming from high-income or Western countries, the existing conducted on the Middle East and North Africa fail to draw a nearly complete image of the characteristics of passenger travel behaviors in the urban areas of the region. This gap necessitates a holistic review of the previous studies and comparing their results of those of the international findings. This paper summarizes the status of urban travel behavior studies on the MENA region under eight categories of socioeconomics, land use, perceptions and attitudes, urban sprawl, neighborhood design, public transportation use, active mobility, and new technologies and concepts. Descriptive literature review and desk research depicts both lack of research results or data and differences between the behaviors in the MENA region and the Western countries. Moreover, based on the background review, this paper provides a list of recommendations for having more sustainable mobility in the MENA region.

scholarly journals A Large Scale, App-Based Behaviour Change Experiment Persuading Sustainable Mobility Patterns: Methods, Results and Lessons Learnt

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Cellina ◽  
Dominik Bucher ◽  
Francesca Mangili ◽  
José Veiga Simão ◽  
Roman Rudel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Lessons Learnt

The present urban transportation system, mostly tailored for cars, has long shown its limitations. In many urban areas, public transportation and soft mobility would be able to effectively satisfy many travel needs. However, they tend to be neglected, due to a deep-rooted car dependency. How can we encourage people to make sustainable mobility choices, reducing car use and the related CO 2 emissions and energy consumption? Taking advantage of the wide availability of smartphone devices, we designed GoEco!, a smartphone application exploiting automatic mobility tracking, eco-feedback, social comparison and gamification elements to persuade individual modal change. We tested the effectiveness of GoEco! in two regions of Switzerland (Cantons Ticino and Zurich), in a large-scale, one year long randomized controlled trial. Notwithstanding a large drop-out rate experienced throughout the experiment, GoEco! was observed to produce a statistically significant impact (a decrease in CO 2 emissions and energy consumption per kilometer) for systematic routes in highly car-dependent urban areas, such as the Canton Ticino. In Zurich, instead, where high quality public transport is already available, no statistically significant effects were found. In this paper we present the GoEco! experiment and discuss its results and the lessons learnt, highlighting practical difficulties in performing randomized controlled trials in the field of mobility and providing recommendations for future research.

Transport and Health

Urban Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 52-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Nieuwenhuijsen ◽  
Haneen Khreis
Keyword(s):  
Urban Health ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Vehicular Pollution ◽  
Traffic Jams ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Improve Health

Densely populated urban areas afford an enormous opportunity for their residents to have access to a range of salutary resources, thus avoiding some of the challenges that characterize less dense communities. However, transportation often bedevils urban areas, with limited opportunities offered for urban residents to get around cities. Traffic jams and vehicular pollution are associated with poor health of urban residents even as the data are clear that investments in public transportation are both cost beneficial and can improve health. Emerging solutions, including autonomous vehicles, stand to transform urban environments and health in these environments. This chapter discusses transportation as a determinant of health in cities, outlining challenges and opportunities for efficient and effective transportation with an eye toward emerging solutions that can improve urban health.

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