People’s life expectancy is increasing throughout the world as a result of improved living standards and medical advances. The natural ageing process is accompanied by physiological changes which can have significant consequences for mobility. As a consequence, older people tend to make fewer journeys than other adults and may change their transport mode. Access to public transport can help older people to avail themselves of goods, services, employment and other activities. With the current generation of older people being more active than previous generations of equivalent age, public transport will play a crucial role in maintaining their active life style even when they are unable to drive. Hence, public transport is important to older people’s quality of life, their sense of freedom and independence. Within the European Commission funded GOAL (Growing Older and staying mobile) project, the requirements of older people using public transport were studied in terms of four main issues: Affordability, availability, accessibility and acceptability. These requirements were then analysed in terms of five different profiles of older people defined within the GOAL project – ‘Fit as a Fiddle’, ‘Hole in the Heart’, ‘Happily Connected’, An ‘Oldie but a Goodie’ and ‘Care-Full’. On the basis of the analysis the paper brings out some areas of knowledge gaps and research needed to make public transport much more attractive and used by older people in the 21st century.
The development of wayfinding and information tools for pedestrians faces several challenges. In contrast to common navigation tools used for vehicles, navigation services for pedestrians must fulfil more complex requirements in order to be accepted. For pedestrians, the shortest path does not always represent the optimal route for an individual's purposes, as studies have revealed that people often forgo to take the shortest path and prefer the 'most beautiful', 'most convenient' or 'safest' path. People exploring a new environment on foot would therefore especially benefit from systems providing information concerning route qualities, interesting facilities in the vicinity and other useful location-related suggestions. As part of the scientific project 'UCPNavi', we investigate group-specific spatio-temporal behaviour and related influence factors of shoppers in order to identify homogeneous behaviour types based on motion patterns and information requirements. We use an eclectic approach combining several complementary empirical methods of data collection and analysis to thoroughly comprehend pedestrian spatio-temporal behaviour. In this contribution, we present results of motion and interview data analysis based on data collected from more than 100 participants during two empirical phases on a shopping street in Vienna. We further introduce an initial pedestrian typology comprising five different homogeneous behaviour types based on qualitative-interpretative and quantitative-statistical data. Types are described according to characteristic attributes identified by route choice behaviour, walking patterns and interest foci. The relevant factors include velocities, stopping behaviour, categories of visited facilities and individual preferences. The resulting typology of lifestyle-based pedestrian mobility styles and the identified characteristic attributes can serve as a basis to create pedestrian interest profiles in ubiquitous environments and to customise navigational and environmental information for mobile applications in order to fulfil individual needs.
Mobility is an important prerequisite for equal participation in social life and satisfaction of basic human needs. Mobility impairments can restrict the participation in social life of those affected such that people lack fair opportunities for fulfilling their needs. In the past, mobility problems of people with a physical or sensory disability were the focus of attention, while other attributes causing mobility impairment, such as immigrant backgrounds, poverty, and so forth, were mainly ignored by research and planning, even though, according to estimates, more than one-third of the population are affected. Therefore, there is little qualitative or quantitative knowledge about these impairments and the individual consequences. The objective of this paper is to help fill this knowledge gap. The issue of fair opportunities regarding mobility and the term “mobility impairment” as used in this paper are defined. Fifteen types of mobility impairment are considered. The stratified sample for this survey included 541 mobility-impaired people in Austria with whom semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted. A key result of the survey is the estimate of the number of people affected and the degree of their impairment. About half of those interviewed were hampered by more than one type of mobility impairment. From the point of view of those affected, there are difficulties that go beyond the mere physical barriers, which have been the focus of traffic planning. Problems are also caused by insufficient welfare systems, gender relations, inappropriate behavior of other transport users, and inadequate information and its transfer within the transport sector. For the solution, new and disregarded strategies are required.
Abstract. This paper explores three persuasive strategies and their capacity to encourage biking as a low-energy mode of transportation. The strategies were designed based on: (I) triggering messages that harness social influence to facilitate more frequent biking, (II) a virtual bike tutorial to increase biker's self-efficacy for urban biking, and (III) an arranged bike ride to help less experienced bikers overcome initial barriers towards biking. The potential of these strategies was examined based on self-reported trip data from 44 participants over a period of four weeks, questionnaires, and qualitative interviews. Strategy I showed a significant increase of 13.5 percentage points in share of biking during the intervention, strategy II indicated an increase of perceived self-efficacy for non-routine bikers, and strategy III provided participants with a positive experience of urban biking. The explored strategies contribute to further research on the design and implementation of persuasive technologies in the field of mobility.
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