Can Space–Time Shifting of Activities and Travels Mitigate Hyper-Congestion in an Emerging Megacity, Bangkok? Effects on Quality of Life and CO2 Emission

Abstract

Many megacities in the world, especially Bangkok, are facing severe congestion in road traffic and public transport, particularly during peak hours. This situation (a) worsens the quality of life, (b) releases emissions causing air pollution and climate change, and (c) subsequently creates requests for massive investment in transport infrastructure, which easily exceed the budget’s limit. Instead of solving the problem by supply-side strategies, applying ICT-based solutions to reform people’s daily activities, particularly commuting and working behaviors, on the demand-side is an alternative solution. As a promising solution, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) introduces ICT to persuade people to use public modes of transport. However, modal shift is a partial solution to mitigate traffic congestion. With technological advancements in communication, people become more flexible in their activities in terms of place and time aspects. MaaS should not only induce a transport mode shift but also a workplace shift and working time shift by extending the planning service in daily activity-travel level, exploiting people’s flexibilities for an activity’s place and time to manage travel demand. This paper proposes the QOL-MaaS as the extended MaaS to support space–time shift of activity-travel and reveals its potential impacts on traffic congestion, quality of life, and CO2 emission.

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“…Otherwise, car traffic would rapidly resume, and congestion would be even more severe. Such new normal lifestyle as flexible worktime or flexible workplace would help reducing congestion on road and on public transport and simultaneously increase the quality of human well-being or quality of life (QoL), as much discussed in [40][41][42].…”

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“…Urban policies also require evaluation from a more micro perspective, such as considering access transportation modes to stations. Consideration for the departure time shift to avoid congestion at peak hour [55] would also be valuable. It would also be useful to analyze the combination of these policies with other transportation policies, such as road pricing [56], park-and-ride [57], promotion of active travel modes [58], and travel demand management through education [59].…”

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“…In addition, it was shown that a shift in workplace and travel departure time could effectively alleviate traffic congestion during peak hours [4]. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) could also be an efficient instrument to move a city towards polycentric, as it was expected to change people's mobility patterns, i.e., from private car to public transport or sharingmobility service [67].…”

“…However, as public transport was insufficient and of poor quality, car ownership and dependency continuously increased, resulting in a large amount of private vehicle traffic entering and departing the city center, which combined with cross-city travel severely congests the road network. Traffic congestion has caused huge economic loss, large energy consumption, deteriorated air quality, and badly affects the inhabitant's quality of life [4]. Over past decades, the government implemented a transit master plan and developed several rail transit lines to alleviate and solve the urban problems caused by traffic congestion.…”