Congestion pricing's conditional promise: promotion of accessibility or mobility?

Purpose The accessibility of a certain place can evolve either as the direct result of transport changes or as a consequence of the spatial redistribution of economic activities. These two factors are often indistinguishable-especially at regional level-since improved infrastructure stimulates relocation of activities. Moreover, infrastructure investment choices tend to follow population and economic activity patterns, distorting the cause and effect relationship between infrastructure and accessibility even further. The methodology and results presented here decompose the impact of both factors in terms of accessibility using Spanish data between 1960 and 2010. During this period, Spain experienced profound changes in transport infrastructure and economic activity. Methods We use the potential accessibility indicator and resort to index number theory to disentangle the contribution of transport infrastructure from that of land-use changes. Detailed historical data on road infrastructure and population is used to represent the transport and land-use components of accessibility.Results Our results show that changes in transport infrastructure had a relevant impact on accessibility, as expected, but changes in the spatial distribution of population had an even greater effect. This outcome may be used as an argument for sustainable accessibility, a concept that advocates integration of transport and land use planning.

Section: Measuring Accessibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a growing trend in the literature on transport planning that advocates a change of paradigm from mobility to accessibility planning ( [1][2][3][4][5]). Mobility-based measures that have dominated many transport policies include delay per capita, monetary cost of congestion, and highway level of service.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of changes in Spanish accessibility for the 1960–2010 period

Condeço-Melhorado

Zofío

Christidis

2017

“…For example, we do not know when seniors had to give away their driving license or how large a share of their trips was conducted via passenger car during the time preceding the study. Finally, we do not have any information on seniors' experiences with delivery services such as shopping and carry on demand [32], despite the fact that there is a significant proportion of seniors who do not leave their homes during the day. Therefore, it would be beneficial to further study this topic to investigate these behavioural patterns fully.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Travel behaviour of seniors in Eastern Europe: a comparative study of Brno and Bratislava

Šimeček

Gabrhel

Tögel

et al. 2018

Purpose Although seniors represent a sizable group of a population with distinctive travelling needs, we lack knowledge about their travel behaviour related to usage of public transport in the context of Eastern Europe. This study aims to describe patterns of travel behaviour of senior citizens in two cities with similar size and key mobility characteristics -Brno (Czech Republic) and Bratislava (Slovakia). Methods The data was collected via travel behaviour survey. The final sample from Bratislava consisted of 1961 seniors of the age of 70 and older who accounted for 3343 trips. The final sample in Brno contained 63 seniors of the age of 70 years and older who conducted 151 trips. Results On average, inhabitants of Bratislava older than 70 years conducted 1.7 trips per day, whereas it was 1.5 trips per day in Brno. The seniors from Bratislava averagely spent 40 min on their trips per day and single trip usually took 24 min to them. In comparison, senior citizens from Brno mostly needed 28 min per single trip, albeit their daily travel took almost the same time (41 min). When it comes to mode choice, while seniors from Bratislava prefer walking the most (44%), their counterparts from Brno predominantly chose public transport (57%). Conclusion In summary, seniors from Brno aged 70 years and over use public transport significantly more than their counterparts from Bratislava. As a result, public transport allows them to travel further, which in turn gives them more opportunities to satisfy their needs.

“…Respecting the spatial distribution of the effects of congestion, each area shows a different result due to the morphology of its respective metropolitan region. In any case, it seems that systems based on strong concentration of opportunities make accessibility more resistant to congestion, as Levine and Garb suggest [40]. This is partly because zones with lower population, and therefore less self-potential, are more dependent on the potential of the other zones and the transport component.…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with the daily variation in infrastructure performance on territorial accessibility. The cases of Madrid and Barcelona

Moya-Gómez

Palomares

2015

Purpose Accessibility measurements are good tools for analysing the performance of possible policies on land use / transport / society systems. Until now, accessibility has been approached from a static perspective, even when variations in it depend on short term temporal changes in network function. Solutions based on static measurements, with journey costs taken as units based on free-flow travel time; do not reflect real network performance at different times of the day. Methods In order to broaden our understanding of accessibility and study real-world dynamism in depth, information from new sources has been incorporated into traditional accessibility measurements, with actual observed data on the daily variations in speed profiles. These variations have been used to assess the impact of congestion on accessibility, with dynamic scenarios calculated every 15 min. Results The variations in daily accessibility in the metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona (Spain) have been mapped with reasonable computational costs. Although both cities have a similar global behaviour pattern, each has a different daily spatial accessibility distribution. Madrid appears to be more resilient than Barcelona. Conclusions With new technologies it is possible to overcome previous technical barriers, such as the lack of reliable information or calculating capacity. An ordinary computer has been used to obtain complete and detailed temporal profiles of the two traditional accessibility measurements. Thanks to these new measurements, we have a better understanding of accessibility. However, in order to express a dynamic phenomenon in static format, appropriate mapping schemes would have to be devised.