This study investigates how urban form is related to accessibility. In particular, it explores the relationship between Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and rail-based accessibility in a metropolitan area. The following overarching questions are addressed: Does a TOD-informed urban spatial structure correlate with high rail based accessibility? Which features of TOD are correlated to rail-based accessibility? These questions are answered through a comparative analysis of six metropolitan areas in Europe. The ''TOD degree'', operationalized as the extent to which urban development is concentrated along rail corridors and stations, is correlated with a cumulative opportunity measure of rail-based accessibility to jobs and inhabitants.The comparison demonstrates that rail-based accessibility is higher in urban areas where inhabitants and jobs are more concentrated around the railway network and in lesser measure in urban areas with higher values of network connectivity. No correlation is found between rail-based accessibility and average densities of inhabitants and jobs.

Abstract:The emergence of fully Automated Vehicles (AVs) is expected to occur in the next 10 to 30 years. The uncertainties related to AVs pose a series of questions about what the societal consequences of such technology are. Mainly, what are the consequences of AVs regarding accessibility? This paper uses Geurs and Van Wee's definition of accessibility to give an exploratory answer to this question. Using a scenario-based approach which allows identifying critical decisions that will emerge shortly (or are already emerging) concerning automated travelling, this paper proposes that AVs have great potential to both seriously aggravate and considerably alleviate accessibility problems. A great deal will depend on how these critical decisions will be approached and the choices that will be made. This debate is most needed because existing research on AVs tends to focus on how to make them a commercially viable and safe technological enterprise, and on what their benefits and drawbacks are regarding variables such as carbon emissions, energy consumption, and total miles travelled. Narratives of this nature can be problematic, as they are unlikely to promote sufficient awareness about the real disruptive potential of AVs. It is crucial that stakeholders realise the extent to which-if the governance of AVs implementation processes is not taken very seriously, and the identified critical decisions are not carefully approached-these machines can materialise a dystopian mobility future.

Abstract:Although a large body of literature has been produced on the theoretical definitions and measurements of accessibility, the extent to which such indicators are used in planning practice is less clear. This research explores the gap between theory and application by seeking to understand what the new wave of accessibility instruments (AIs) prepared for spatial and transport planning practice purports to offer the users of AIs. Starting from the question of how urban and transport planners are designing AIs, the article analyzes and describes the AIs developed over the last decade (mainly in Europe), offering a structured overview and a clear categorization of how accessibility measures can be applied. The paper identifies AI characteristics, and considers their usability, based on AI developer perceptions. IntroductionAccessibility instruments (AIs) are a type of planning support system (PSS) designed to support integrated land-use transport analysis and planning through providing explicit knowledge on the accessibility of land uses by different modes of transport at various geographical scales. They measure, interpret and/or model accessibility and are developed to support the many research tasks involved in planning practice (analysis, design support, evaluation, monitoring, etc.). Although there exists an extensive literature on the analysis and the classification of accessibility measures and indicators incorporated in these AIs (Geurs and van Eck 2001;Geurs and van Wee 2004), less attention has been paid to the planning issues that they seek to support or to their usability and employability for the various planning goals in actual practice. This research aims to fill this gap and provide insights on the two following research questions: How has the new wave of accessibility instruments (AIs) prepared for spatial and transport-planning practice been designed? What is the usability of these planning instruments as perceived by their developers? To provide an answer to these questions, the paper draws on the outcomes of , accessibility analysis and instruments offer a highly suitable framework to support the development of combined land-use and transport strategies, so as to achieve the coordination and synergy required to attain city sustainability goals (Holden 2012;Stead, Geerlings, and Meijers 2004). Indeed, a focus on accessibility makes the overall goal of the land-use and transport system explicit and offers a direct link between the characteristics of flows (i.e., speeds and travel time) and the characteristic of places (i.e., the number of relevant activities in a given area). Because of these features, it represents a potentially powerful approach that planning practitioners can employ to develop and test effective strategies for sustainable cities (Straatemeier 2008), and that could act as good accelerators for a better coordination between urban and transport planning.The second reason for focusing on AIs, and in particular on their usability in planning practice, is that although both the...

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Many planning support tools have recently been developed aimed at measuring and modelling accessibility (Accessibility Instrument or AI). The main difficulty for tool developers is designing an AI that is at the same time technically rigorous and usable in practice. Measuring accessibility is indeed a complex task, and AI outputs are difficult to communicate to target end-users, in particular, because these users are professionals from several disciplines with different languages and areas of expertise, such as urban geographers, spatial planners, transport planners, and budgeting professionals. In addition to this, AI developers seem to have little awareness of the needs of AI end-users, which in turn tend to have limited ability for using these tools. Against this complex background, our research focuses on the viewpoint of AI developers, with two aims: (1) to provide insights into how AI developers perceive their tools and (2) to understand how their perceptions might change after testing their AI with end-users. With this in mind, an analysis of 15 case studies was performed: groups of end-users tested different AI in structured workshops. Before and after the workshops, two questionnaires explored the AI developers’ perceptions on the tools and their usability. The paper demonstrates that the workshops with end-users were critical for developers to appreciate the importance of specific characteristics the tool should have, namely practical relevance, flexibility, and ease of use. The study provides evidence that AI developers were prone to change their perceptions about AI after interacting directly with end-users

This article argues that a more critical approach to innovation policy within planning is needed and offers recommendations for achieving this. These recommendations entail rethinking the values, focus, speed, and legitimacy of innovations. It takes a critical perspective on how contemporary societies treat rapid innovation as having necessarily positive results in the achievement of objectives such as sustainability and justice. This critical perspective is needed because innovation can both contribute to and drive a form of maladaptive planning: a collective approach to reality that imposes constant and rapid changes to societal configurations due to an obsession with the new and with too little rapport with the problems in place or that it creates. A maladaptive direction for transport planning is used as a sectorial illustration of the broader conceptual ideas presented: for both sustainability and social justice reasons, it would be desirable to see peak car occurring. However, the car industry is presenting driving automation as an innovation with the potential to restore the vitality of the private vehicles market while creating effective means to dismiss alternatives to car dominance.

This paper analyses the current structure of taxi service use in Rome, processing taxi Floating Car Data (FCD). The methodology used to pass from the original data to data useful for the demand analyses is described. Further, the patterns of within-day and day-today service demand are reported, considering the origin, the destination and other characteristics of the trips (e.g. travel time). The analyses reported in the paper can help the definition of space-temporal characteristics of future Shared Autonomous Electrical Vehicles (SAEVs) demand in mobility scenarios.