Over the past decades, transport researchers and policymakers have devoted increasing attention to questions about justice and equity. Nonetheless, there is still little engagement with theories in political philosophy to frame what justice means in the context of transport policies. This paper reviews key theories of justice (utilitarianism, libertarianism, intuitionism, Rawls' egalitarianism, and Capability Approaches), and critically evaluates the insights they generate when applied to transport. Based on a dialogue between Rawlsian and Capability Approaches, we propose that distributive justice concerns over transport disadvantage and social exclusion should focus primarily on accessibility as a human capability. This means that, in policy evaluation, a detailed analysis of distributional effects of transport policies should consider minimum standards of accessibility to key destinations and the extent of which these policies respect individuals' rights and prioritize disadvantaged groups, reduce inequalities of opportunities and mitigate transport externalities. A full account of justice in transportation requires a more complete understanding of accessibility than traditional approaches have been able to deliver to date.
The academic literature on the impact of urban form on travel behavior has increasingly recognized that residential location choice and travel choices may be interconnected. We contribute to the understanding of this interrelation by studying to what extent commute mode choice differs by residential neighborhood and by neighborhood type dissonance-the mismatch between a commuterÕs current neighborhood type and her preferences regarding physical attributes of the residential neighborhood. Using data from the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that neighborhood type dissonance is statistically significantly associated with commute mode choice: dissonant urban residents are more likely to commute by private vehicle than consonant urbanites but not quite as likely as true suburbanites. However, differences between neighborhoods tend to be larger than between consonant and dissonant residents within a neighborhood. Physical neighborhood structure thus appears to have an autonomous impact on commute mode choice. The analysis also shows that the impact of neighborhood type dissonance interacts with that of commutersÕ beliefs about automobile use, suggesting that these are to be reckoned with when studying the joint choices of residential location and commute mode.
Subjectively experienced wellbeing has recently attracted increased attention in transport and mobility studies. However, these studies are still in their infancy and many of the multifarious links between travel behaviour and wellbeing are still under-examined; most studies only focus on one aspect of this link (i.e., travel satisfaction). In this paper we give an overview of studies concerning travel and wellbeing, focusing on results, methods and gaps in present research. We suggest that travel behaviour affects wellbeing through experiences during (destination-oriented) travel, activity participation enabled by travel, activities during (destination-oriented) travel, trips where travel is the activity, and through potential travel (or motility). The majority of empirical studies to date have been based on hedonic views of wellbeing, where pleasure and satisfaction are seen as the ultimate goal in life. They have paid little attention to eudaimonic views of wellbeing, which emphasise the realization of one's true potential, although this form of wellbeing can also be influenced by travel behaviour. We also argue that longer-term decisions, such as residential location choices, can affect wellbeing through travel. Travel options differ between different kinds of neighbourhoods, which can result in different levels of (feelings of) freedom and consequently different levels of subjective wellbeing. Since studies at present only show a subset of the travel behaviour-wellbeing interactions, we conclude the paper with an agenda for future research.
SummaryEffective mitigation of climate change will require far-reaching transformations of electricity, heat, agricultural, transport and other systems. The energy studies and modelling research that so often dominates academic and policy debates provide valuable insights into these transitions, but remain constrained by their focus on rational decision-making and their neglect of non-linear dynamics and broader social processes. This review paper describes insights from a complementary socio-technical approach that addresses the interdependent social, political, cultural, and technical processes of transitions. Focusing on the 'Multi-Level Perspective' (MLP), transitions are conceptualized as arising from the alignment of processes within and between three analytical levels: niche-innovations, socio-technical regimes and the socio-technical landscape. This analytical framework is illustrated with a case study of the German electricity transition and used to appraise lowcarbon transitions in several other sectors. We end by articulating four lessons for managing lowcarbon transitions.
This paper contributes to the limited number of investigations into the influence of the spatial configuration of land use and transport systems on mode choice for medium-and longer-distance travel (defined here as home-based trips of 50 km and over) in the Netherlands. We have employed data from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey to address the question as to how socioeconomic factors, land use attributes, and travel time affect mode choice for medium-and longer-distance travel, and how their role varies across trip purposes: commuting, business, and leisure. The empirical analysis indicates that land use attributes and travel time considerations are important in explaining the variation in mode choice for medium-and longer-distance travel when controlling for the socioeconomic characteristics of travellers.
Over the past decades research on travel mode choice has evolved from work that is informed by utility theory, examining the effects of objective determinants, to studies incorporating more subjective variables such as habits and attitudes. Recently, the way people perceive their travel has been analyzed with transportation-oriented scales of subjective well-being, namely the Satisfaction with Travel Scale. However, studies analyzing the link between travel mode choice (i.e., decision utility) and travel satisfaction (i.e., experienced utility) are limited. In this paper we will focus on the relation between mode choice and travel satisfaction for leisure trips (with travel-related attitudes and the built environment as explanatory variables) of respondents in urban and suburban neighborhoods in the city of Ghent, Belgium. The built environment and travel-related attitudes (important explanatory variables of travel mode choice) and mode choice itself affect travel satisfaction. Public transit users perceive their travel most negatively, while active travel results in the highest levels of travel satisfaction. Surprisingly, suburban dwellers perceive their travel more positively than urban dwellers, for all travel modes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.