Urban Networks: summary literature
Contents
Lecture 1 & 2: Handy (2002). Accessibility vs. mobility..........................................................................2
Lecture 1 & 2: Geurs and van Wee (2004). Accessibility evaluation of land use and transport
strategies...............................................................................................................................................9
Lecture 1 & 2: Handy (2005). Planning for accessibility.......................................................................15
Lecture 1 & 2: Banister and Berechman (2001). Transport investment and the promotion of
economic growth.................................................................................................................................19
Lecture 3: Jeekel, Martens (2017). Equity in transport........................................................................24
Lecture 4: Meyer (1999). Demand management as an element of transportation policy...................28
Lecture 5: Maak plaats.........................................................................................................................32
Lecture 5: Bertolini (1999). Spatial Development Patterns and Public Transport................................34
Lecture 6: Knoflacher (2003). Sustainability of transport: the roles of modal split and pricing...........38
Lecture 6: Mingardo et al. (2015). Urban parking policy in Europe.....................................................43
Lecture 7: Cervero (2011). Green TODs: marrying transit-oriented development and green urbanism
.............................................................................................................................................................49
Lecture 7: Hale (2014). TOD versus TAD..............................................................................................53
Lecture 8: Banister (2008). ‘The sustainable mobility paradigm’.........................................................59
Lecture 8: Bertolini (2005). Sustainable accessibility: a conceptual framework to integrate transport
and land use plan-making....................................................................................................................65
Lecture 8: Curtis (2008). ‘Planning for sustainable accessibility: the implementation challenge’........71
Lecture 9: Kenyon et al. (2003). ‘Social exclusion and transport in the UK: a role for virtual
accessibility in the alleviation of mobility-related social exclusion?’...................................................76
Lecture 9: Harbers (2016). Smart transportation, PBL.........................................................................83
Lecture 10: Jordan & Huitema (2014). Innovation in climate policy: the politics of invention, diffusion
and evaluation.....................................................................................................................................85
Lecture 10: Mölenberg et al. (2019). A systematic review of the effect of infrastructural interventions
to promote cycling...............................................................................................................................89
Lecture 11: Onstein et al. (2016). Trends in distribution centres and their locations: sprawl and
polarization..........................................................................................................................................91
Lecture 11: Hesse & Rodrigue (2004). The transport geography of logistics and freight distribution. 95
Lecture 12 & 13: van Geet et al. (2019). Policy design dynamics: fitting goals and instruments in
transport infrastructure planning in the Netherlands.......................................................................105
Lecture 12 & 13: Moriarty (2008). ‘Low-mobility: The future of transport’.......................................112
Lecture 12 & 13: Fagnant (2015). ‘Preparing a nation for autonomous vehicles: opportunities barriers
and policy recommendations’...........................................................................................................117
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,Lecture 1 & 2: Handy (2002). Accessibility vs. mobility
Aim of the literature
The growth in total vehicle kilometres travelled in the US has continued unabated for decades, far
exceeding the growth in population. Automobile dependence is growing throughout the world.
At the same time, the environmental consequences of this steady growth in automobile use are well
known.
That leads to something of a dilemma for policy makers. Should policies focus on accommodating
growing levels of vehicle travel because driving more is apparently what the public wants to do? Or
should policies focus on limiting driving so as to reduce environmental and other costs?
One obvious approach is to push for further improvements in vehicle and fuel technologies that will
reduce the environmental impacts of driving without in anyway limiting driving. But that leaves the
problem that driving is growing faster than capacity possibly can. It also leaves the problem that a
significant share of the population cannot drive or does not have access to a car, for reasons of
income, age, or ability. An alternative approach that is gaining wide support in the U.S. is to reduce
the need for driving by bringing activities closer to home, by improving the quality of transit,
bicycling, and walking – by enhancing accessibility. Such an approach represents a fundamental shift
from a traditional focus on enhancing mobility through road building.
Conclusion
The appropriateness of adopting mobility-enhancing, accessibility-enhancing, or mobility limiting
strategies depends on the goal to be achieved. Mobility-enhancing strategies aim to increase the
potential for movement by increasing the capacity of the system and the speed of travel.
Accessibility-enhancing strategies aim to increase access to needed and desired activities, by
bringing activities closer to home, enhancing the alternatives for reaching those activities, and
expanding the choices among activities. Mobility-limiting strategies aim to decrease the potential for
movement by increasing the monetary or time cost of travel.
The concept of “new mobility” focuses on strategies that use technologies to provide mobility
options that generate fewer environmental impacts than privately-owned, gasoline-powered cars
and that may be more tailored to the specific mobility needs of each household. Transit service more
generally can be an accessibility-oriented mobility strategy, especially when bus routes and rail lines
are designed to the serve specific needs of specific segments of the population.
There is no question that Americans have come to expect and demand good mobility. Congestion is
seen as a threat to personal freedom, and freeway building is justified on the grounds of preserving
that freedom.
Accessibility enhancing strategies can also be justified on the grounds of personal freedom. The
importance of expanding choices through such strategies is gaining more recognition.
Key terms
- Accessibility
- Mobility
- Automobile dependence is growing
- ITS applications Intelligent transportation system. The primary goal of these applications
is to improve the efficiency and the safety of the transportation system.
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,Summary
Accessibility vs mobility.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mobility” as the “ability to move or to be moved… facility of
movement” (OED 2002). In the context of transportation planning, mobility has been defined as the
potential for movement, the ability to get from one place to another. Higher volumes-to-capacity
ratios mean slower travel times, less ease of movement and thus lower mobility.
Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition defines “accessibility” as “easily approached or entered” (Picket
et al. 2000). The Oxford English Dictionary defines “accessibility” as “the quality of being accessible,
or of admitting approach” (OED 2002). Accessibility was perhaps more clearly defined for the
planning context by Hansen (1959) as “the potential for interaction.” In most cases, measures of
accessibility include both an impedance factor, reflecting the time or cost of reaching a destination,
and an attractiveness factor, reflecting the qualities of the potential destinations.
Choice is an important element of accessibility: more choices in both destinations and modes of
travel mean greater accessibility by most definitions.
Mobility, the potential for movement, is related to the impedance component of accessibility, in
other words, how difficult it is to reach a destination.
But it is possible to have good accessibility with poor mobility. For example, a community with
severe congestion but where residents live within a short distance of all needed and desired
destinations has poor mobility but good accessibility. In this case, accessibility is not dependent on
good mobility. It is also possible to have good mobility but poor accessibility. For example, a
community with ample roads and low levels of congestion but with relatively few destinations for
shopping or other activities or with undesirable or inadequate destinations has good mobility but
poor accessibility. Good mobility is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for good
accessibility.
The result is a decline in accessibility, at least for those who need or would like to travel by modes
other than the automobile and those whose needs and desires are not met by the kinds of shopping,
services and other activities found in the suburbs. Accessibility in suburban areas depends on
driving, but this dependence leads to increasing in driving, and as driving increases, traffic increases,
and accessibility ultimately declines.
Planning for accessibility rather than mobility can create benefits by expanding choices and reducing
the need to drive. Bringing shops within walking distance or a circulator busroute or access to its
services via the internet, residents can then choose to participate in needed and desired activities
without driving. Everyone wins.
But there is no guarantee that planning for accessibility will actually reduce driving even if it
succeeds in reducing the need for driving.
These trends suggest that the demand for driving is relatively inelastic with respect to time, although
this apparent inelasticity may have more to do with the lack of alternatives to driving than to a
preference for driving.
What could more directly help to reduce the total amount of vehicle travel are strategies designed
to limit mobility. Strategies to limit mobility may lead to changes in behaviour by reducing the utility
of driving. Mobility-limiting strategies include physical barriers to driving, such as auto-restricted
zones, and pricing strategies, including gas taxes, parking fees and congestion pricing. Mobility-
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, limiting strategies on their own, however, offer little promise for reducing driving: there must be
alternatives of the sort that accessibility-enhancing strategies can provide, or residents will simply
pay more and spend longer getting to where they need to go.
Mobility enhancing strategies
Mobility-enhancing strategies generally focus on improving the flow of traffic and improving the
performance of the system. Although ITS (intelligent transportation system) comprises lots of very
different applications, the general aim of these applications is to improve the efficiency of the
transportation system and make better use of existing capacity.
Road building:
The problem is that new road capacity may itself generate new travel in two ways, first, by
increasing the potential for development in the corridor and, second, by reducing the cost of driving.
The economic theory of supply and demand provides an explanation of the induced travel effect.
New capacity reduces the price of travel by reducing travel times and, in economic terms, shifts the
supply curve. As the price of travel goes down, the consumption of travel goes up; the supply curve
intersects a new point on the demand curve. This effect should occur even without an increase in
population, as existing residents choose to make more trips, longer trips, and more trips by car as a
result of the decline in price. But it is important to note that only capacity increases that reduce
travel times will have this effect.
The elasticities for travel time ranged from –0.3 to –1.0: a 10 percent decrease in travel time could
lead to a 3 percent to 10 percent increase in VMT (vehicle miles travelled).
Average daily traffic (ADT, a count of the number of vehicles passing a particular point) and design-
hour-traffic-to-capacity ratio (DTC, a measureof congestion).
What is beyond doubt is that vehicle travel has grown faster than highway capacity, population, the
economy, or just about any other possible causal factor. If those trends continue, road building will
fall far short of vehicle growth, even if the induced travel effect is minimal, and the potential for
movement will eventually decline.
ITS Applications:
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) offer an alternative approach for enhancing mobility. ITS
applications fall into many different categories, including traveler information, intelligent vehicles,
commercial vehicles, transit, and traffic management, and involve a variety of technologies,
including information processing, communications, and control technologies, among others. The
primary goal of these applications is to improve the efficiency and the safety of the transportation
system. Joining these technologies to our transportation system will save lives, time and money.
Under the goal of “efficiency/economy,” the plan aims to save “at least $20 billion per year by
enhancing throughput and capacity with better information, better system management, and the
containment of congestion…” Under the goal of “mobility/access,” the plan aims to provide
“universally available information that supports seamless, end-to-end travel choices for all users of
the system.” Under the goal of “energy/environment,” the plan aims to save “a minimum of one
billion gallons of gasoline each year and to reduce emissions at least in proportion to this fuel
saving.” Whether all these goals can be met simultaneously is far from certain. The plan does not
explain how ITS will reduce fuel consumption and emissions, but others have outlined the
possibilities.
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