Achieving ‘Active’ 30 Minute Cities: How Feasible Is It to Reach Work within 30 Minutes Using Active Transport Modes?

Confronted with rapid urbanization, population growth, traffic congestion, and climate change, there is growing interest in creating cities that support active transport modes including walking, cycling, or public transport. The ‘30 minute city’, where employment is accessible within 30 min by active transport, is being pursued in some cities to reduce congestion and foster local living. This paper examines the spatial relationship between employment, the skills of residents, and transport opportunities, to answer three questions about Australia’s 21 largest cities: (1) What percentage of workers currently commute to their workplace within 30 min? (2) If workers were to shift to an active transport mode, what percent could reach their current workplace within 30 min? and (3) If it were possible to relocate workers closer to their employment or relocate employment closer to their home, what percentage could reach work within 30 min by each mode? Active transport usage in Australia is low, with public transport, walking, and cycling making up 16.8%, 2.8%, and 1.1% respectively of workers’ commutes. Cycling was found to have the most potential for achieving the 30 min city, with an estimated 29.5% of workers able to reach their current workplace were they to shift to cycling. This increased to 69.1% if workers were also willing and able to find a similar job closer to home, potentially reducing commuting by private motor vehicle from 79.3% to 30.9%.

Analysis of Sustainable Transport Systems in Service of Selected SEA-EU Consortium Countries’ Airports—A Pilot Case Study of Passenger Choices for Gdańsk Airport

The article presents the results of a pilot study, namely a passenger survey on travel choices regarding commuting to the airport in one chosen location (Gdańsk, Poland). The study aimed at establishing which factors which influenced their travel time, assessment of travel time, choosing more or less sustainable transport mode, and also single-mode or multimodal travel. Research results show that choice of the means of transport influences travel time, that the highest travel times are generated by bus and car travel and that assessing the travel time as acceptable or not depends on travel time. However, the longer the travel time, the more likely was the passenger to accept it. What is more, it appeared that a few factors influence choosing a more sustainable transport mode: the purpose of the trip, the start of the trip to the airport, place of living, and job situation.

Use of Traffic Simulation to Analyze the Changes in City Mobility During the COVID-19 Pandemic

It seems that the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in December 2019, will have longer and more profound consequences on our lives than initially foreseen. Among the most obvious are everyday decisions about the mode of transport. From related research, it can be seen that the most affected transport mode is public transport, which had the greatest decline. The reason for lesser use of public transport is in complete closure of public transport in some parts of the world. However, where this measure has not been applied, the reason for the reduction is people's fear of infection when using public transport or any shared modes of transportation. The fear stems from the fact that the COVID-19 virus is spreading extremely fast in densely populated rooms. All these changes are affecting the changes in city mobility. Related research shows a decrease of mobility in general and an increase in the use of individual modes of transportation. Distinct changes can be observed in different environments as compared to previous travel behaviour.

Virtual reality as a new tool for transport data collection

Transport studies that adopt complex analyses present methodological challenges that lead to the use of innovative techniques to address the limitations of traditional methods. In the Latin American context, people consider security as a relevant variable in their daily lives. Thus, when people travel around the city and choose a mode of transport, secu-rity becomes an important factor and should therefore be included in transport studies. However, the definition of security in terms of transport in the Colombian context remains unclear. Therefore, we examined the security percep-tion effect on transport mode choice by addressing security as a latent variable consisting of three elements: environ-ment, subject and transport mode. We proposed the use of virtual reality (VR) to recreate travel routes and offer partic-ipants a scenario of choice closer to the natural conditions of a trip. The participants were provided routes in the form of immersive 3D videos recreating natural trip conditions to identify their choices and travel behaviour. Recordings were made of daily scenarios and existing urban environments portraying real and active modes of transport, giving respondents an almost-natural experience. The use of 360-degree immersive videos offers a multisensory experience allowing both the capture of socioeconomic and travel information and the collection of journey perception. The experiment evaluated two environments in Medellín, Colombia (secure (E1) and insecure (E2)) and studied the effects of lighting conditions (day (D) and night (N)). A total of four videos (E1D, E1N, E2D and E2N) depicting six transport modes in tandem were assessed by 92 participants from Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia. We found that environment-associated security perception varies depending on the time of the journey (day/night) and one’s familiarity with the environment. The research results position VR as a tool that offers high potential to support transport studies. We found that people’s movements, gestures and expressions while participating in the VR experiments resembled what was expected from journeys in reality. VR constitutes a relevant tool for transport studies, as it allows for an assessment of active transport mode perceptions. It prevents participants from being exposed to the risk associated with travel to specific places and carries out several routes in different transport modes even when participants cannot or have never undertaken journeys in the modes under assessment.

SPATIAL MODELLING OF THE TRANSPORT MODE CHOICE: APPLICATION ON THE VIENNA TRANSPORT NETWORK

A new approach for spatial modelling of transport mode choice is presented in the paper. The approach tackles the problem by considering the trade-off between subjective and objective factors. To obtain mode Preference Rates (PRs) based on subjective factors, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is applied. The objective factors are expressed with the journey time from any point in the map to destination according to the available transport mode choice on the specific connection. The results are presented as PRs of individual transport modes. The model is validated on the conducted the survey, with students of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) as a target audience. Members of different target groups (age, national, employment) decide differently regarding the transport choice, so it is better to analyse them separately. The presented model can be used for the city transport planning in any urban area. It can help promote the sustainable modes of transport in the areas that are less adjusted in sustainable manner.