The impact of urban road congestion on territorial accessibility in the largest Spanish urban zones

Road congestion is one of the most common daily problems in large urban zones. Their effects are considered an inefficiency of the transports – land use – people system. Previous attempts to fix this problem tend to fail since they are usually transport-based, because of the results of the interrelationships facets of system studies are blurry and their data could not be enough to get into issue. Nowadays, we can set over those limits now that the new ITs allows us to catch big data from reality (traffic, individual behavior, economic flows…). In this paper, we are interested in knowing how congestion can change the territorial accessibility values for the largest urban zones in Spain during whole regular weekdays, by using TomTom® historical Speed Profile data and GIS software (ESRI® ArcGIS). Our results seem to show that the interaction between land use and transport network is a fundamental piece to understand congestion. Despite the identical main morning peak in both areas and space-time distribution of congestion, the evolution of affected population per times shows that Madrid more congestion resilient than Barcelona

Residents’ perceptions of tourism and their implications for policy development: evidence from rural Poland

Academics and policy-makers have long been interested in understanding the interplay of factors that influence resident perceptions of local tourism development. This article reports the results of a study that is both methodologically and contextually novel. It uses the chi-square automatic interaction detection method (CHAID), which is usually associated with other fields, most notably consumer marketing, to examine residents’ perceptions of tourism development in rural Poland. It contributes to the literature by revealing the need to segment residents appropriately and highlights which constituencies in rural communities are most likely to be positively (and negatively) disposed toward tourism. This creates opportunities for more nuanced policy interventions

Impacto y consecuencias de la congestión de las infraestructuras de transporte en el sistema usos del suelo-transporte-sociedad

La congestión en la red viaria es un fenómeno que se produce por la existencia de una demanda próxima o superior a la que se puede ofrecer los diferentes elementos que forman esa red en ese instante. El tráfico experimenta velocidades inferiores a las de situaciones de flujo libre y, por lo tanto, aumenta el tiempo de viaje para recorrer los arcos congestionados.La congestión suele presentar unos patrones característicos dependiendo del tipo de vía quesea, tanto en intensidad como en horas en las que se produce. Además, la congestión produce efectos Spillover que deforman la ciudad de manera desigual y afectan a cómo se puede interactuar con las oportunidades disponibles.El objetivo de la tesis doctoral es evaluar y cartografiar cómo la congestión recurrente de las carreteras, la congestión que se produce en circunstancias normales, altera los valores de potencial de interacción, también conocida como accesibilidad, con coche a lo largo del día para las diferentes áreas altamente densas de la Unión Europea elegidas como áreas de estudio: las áreas metropolitanas de Barcelona (ES), Berlín (DE), Hamburgo (DE), Londres(GB), Madrid (ES), Milán (IT), París (FR) y Roma (IT), y el conjunto de los Países Bajos (NL).De la misma manera, se ha estudiado para el caso de Madrid como el cambio continuo de oportunidades puede mitigar o exacerbar los efectos de la congestión.Para llevar a cabo esta investigación se han realizado una serie de modificaciones del indicador de accesibilidad potencial, que permiten incorporar explícitamente la componente temporal..

GIS-based indicators for the social impacts of mega urban transport projects

This research explores the short to long-term impacts that Mega Urban Transport Projects (MUTPs) have on the communities they serve. In particular, intentional and unintentional social impacts that occur in the communities for the non-user of the MUTP. By their very nature of being ‘mega’, these MUTPs act as catalysts for change at the physical, economical and socio-demographic level. Current appraisal methods for planning and implementing MUTPs are relatively short on a standardised framework for assessing and monitoring the social impacts that communities under-go. This PhD research proposes that GIS can provide a fast and powerful overview of social patterns that can assist planners and decision-makers at local, regional and national levels to consider the ‘knock-on’ effects of the MUTP. This contributes towards understanding how to shape change in those communities to improve the socio-economic status for the whole population, beyond the users of the MUTP. The research also proposes the use of the Cynefin decision-making model with which to assess, act and respond to these impacts and to manage the outcomes so as to amplify the positive effects and dampen the negative. The case-studies are the two non-London hubs of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link; Ebbsfleet and Ashford, Kent. Building from the 1991 census to the most recent digital datasets the toolkit creates ‘planning-to-implementation’ stage profiles of the communities. Variables that are mapped include demographic diversity, socio-economic deprivation, accessibility, journey to work modes, and a pilot study to explore the impact of the MUTP upon changes in social exclusion and community cohesion. The findings of this study conclude that whilst useful lessons can be learnt and future guidelines created for planners and decision-makers for other MUTPs, this hypothetical toolkit has weaknesses related to the lack of spatial and temporal resolution in the datasets utilised