Autonomous and Connected Transport as Part of an Inclusive Transport System: WG2: Social Challenges

This report has been written within the framework of COST Action CA16222: Wider Impact and Scenario Evaluation of Autonomous and Connected Transport (WISE-ACT), which has been co-funded by the European Commission H2020 program. The ‘action’ encompassed five working groups, each addressing different issues and themes related to autonomous and connected transport. This thematic report describes the main concepts and recommendations of Working Group (WG) #2, which was tasked with examining the potential social challenges of autonomous and connected transport (ACT). WG#2 addressed a number of key social challenges, namely accessibility, equity, personal security and privacy

Evaluating social justice in transport : lessons to be learned from the capability approach

Recent theoretical and empirical studies show that there is a growing interest in considering wider social and economic impacts of transport. Since transport has an important role in distributing socio-economic benefits or losses created by different means or by transport itself, it has a crucial role in the discussion of social justice. This importance occurs from transport’s different effects depending on the levels or the types of equity in the distribution: transport can help develop socially just societies or cause disparities between different or within same geographies. Therefore, for the system to be efficient, the distribution needs to be socially just. This paper provides a synthesis of social justice and transport literature in terms of equal rights and shares, freedom, capabilities, opportunities and choices by making use of contemporary approaches in the social justice theory and considering the varieties in different geographies, individuals and markets. Using the Capability Approach (CA), this paper first highlights the areas which need to be discussed in transport studies in terms of social justice and second suggests a methodology which considers social justice norms in transport research by engaging the CA with existing methods

Are wider economic impacts of transport infrastructures always beneficial? Impacts of the Istanbul Metro on the generation of spatio-economic inequalities

Assessment of the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport infrastructures has become crucial for justifying transport infrastructure investments, especially large-scale projects, not only for transport researchers but also for policy makers. Although the WEIs have been widely discussed in transport research and policy for more than a decade, these discussions lacked an important dimension: the likelihood of transport infrastructure investments to produce spatio-economic inequalities. This paper discusses the necessity of incorporating an understanding of spatio-economic inequalities in the analysis of WEIs. In order to do that, an ex-post analysis of the Istanbul Metro is carried out. In this sense, this paper also adds to the growing number of ex-post analysis of transport infrastructures. Through its findings based on the ex-post analysis of the impacts of the Istanbul Metro, this paper concludes that contemplating spatio-economic inequalities in ex-ante analysis of transport infrastructure investments will improve the calculation of WEIs of transport infrastructures. Such an approach is expected to help policy makers investing in projects that are less likely to produce spatio-economic inequalities

Mobility cultures

The start of the twenty-first century is marked by high levels of mobility: people, capital, finance, technology, commodities, ideas and information as well as risks and disasters are increasingly recognized as being ‘on the move’. As noted in Chapter 1, more people are travelling further to reach places of employment, education, health, leisure and other activities and there is a general consensus on the need for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, especially from transport. Strategies are being developed by governments and especially by companies in the energy and automobile sector in order to overcome the consequences of this situation. However, the main criticism towards this approach is that such measures solely cannot reduce the negative impacts of transport on climate, and more drastic changes are required. Banister (2008) proposes the sustainable mobility paradigm as a way forward to solving the problems that we are facing, arguing that there is a crucial need for a change especially in the way in which people travel and how much they travel. In the above context, the purpose of this chapter is to understand the role of the culture of performing mobilities in influencing the way in which people travel and how much they travel, and to find out whether there is a need to reformulate our ‘mobility cultures’ in order to build a low carbon society. First, the new mobilities paradigm is briefly reviewed

Establishing a metropolitan transport authority in Istanbul: A new institutional economics framework for institutional change in urban transport

Rapid urban growth and resulting urban transport problems in developing cities trigger major transformative reform attempts. However, these attempts might fail due to ignoring the role of the institutional environment. Changing the governance structure from a fragmented governance structure to a centralized transport authority is such an institutional change that should take into account the surrounding institutional arrangements. In this paper, drawing from new institutional economics (NIE) literature, a new framework for institutional change in urban transport is proposed to guide those institutional initiatives. To materialize the theoretical considerations regarding this institutional change framework, attempts to establish a metropolitan transport authority (MTA) in Istanbul constitute the case study of this paper. Having a population of nearly 15 million people with radically increasing urban transport problems, city of Istanbul has considerable amount of the urban transport governance problems due to its fragmented and weak institutional setting. Based on the developed framework and lessons drawn from the Istanbul case, our results highlight the importance of examining the institutional environment of urban transport systems by identifying the institutional levels in institutional transformation initiatives

Transport and socio-spatial inequalities: the case of the Istanbul Metro

In this thesis, socio-spatial processes regarding the distribution of transport infrastructures are investigated and the ways in which inequalities occur as a result of these processes are discussed. The transport system of Istanbul and particularly, the Istanbul Metro, the first modern subway of the city, has been the focus of this research. In order to understand inequalities in transport, social and spatial justice theories have been employed. Discussions have been extended in order to include different approaches to the issues of transport inequality from various disciplines such as geography, sociology and urban planning. In this sense, this study is multi-disciplinary. Debates on land rent theory, space and power, gendered mobilities, social exclusion and the right to the city are among the many concerns that formed the main arguments of this research. In this thesis, transport is taken as a fixed, an immobile commodity that produces mobile and dynamic commodities such as mobilities and flows. Through such interaction socio-spatial processes are produced which may or may not consist of inequalities. Issues related to inequalities are deconstructed in the literature review in order to help reconstruct a theory of uneven socio-spatial development as a result of the distribution of transport infrastructure investments. Discussions on theory are further examined through four empirical chapters each of which investigates different issues related to transport inequalities. A mixed-method approach has been used in order to fully explore the complexity of the subject and integrate different epistemological positions. Through four empirical chapters, socio-spatial inequalities are discussed with regard to daily mobility levels of different socio-economic groups in Istanbul and the Istanbul Metro as well as in-direct economic impacts of the Metro and the socio-political processes it generates. The findings support some of the previous research on social inequalities based on transport, especially on how gender, education and employment become important determinants of travel time, trip frequency, trip purposes and the use of different transport modes. Yet, the thesis presents unexpected results on the impacts of the Istanbul Metro. On the one hand, the Istanbul Metro can be regarded as a just infrastructure as it accommodates users from every socio-economic background. On the other hand, it can be inequitable as it is likely to facilitate the accumulation of capital in certain areas, and circulation of producers and consumers of this capital within the same spatial unit, the Metro itself. This thesis proposes that horizontal and vertical socio-spatial inequalities exist both individually and together in various contexts in Istanbul. These inequalities are based on the spatial distribution of transport infrastructure investments, power relationships between different socio-economic groups, the dominance of politically powerful groups and the historical development of the urban space. Together this thesis is in an attempt to establish a comprehensive narrative of the discourses of inequalities in transport planning and policy and makes suggestions on the ways to reduce such inequalities. Moreover, this thesis is an original contribution to the literature as it links hitherto unconnected strands of theory in transport geography and social and spatial justice literatures.This thesis is not currently available in ORA

The use of state-of-the-art transport models by policymakers – beauty in simplicity?

Abstract: Transport demand models have a long history of being a major tool in transport policy making. However, whether they are truly used in decision-making processes, and if so, whether the knowledge they provide is actually understood, is questionable. The potential contribution they can make and the importance of such models is not disputed; however, evidence shows that many issues arise with their actual use that severely limits their potential contribution. Based on case study methodology and analysis of the use of models in the transport policy processes in two countries, the UK and Israel, this paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the issues contributing to limiting the potential contribution of models and to make recommendations for better utilisation of the knowledge they can produce. The main conclusion reached is that transport models must be made simpler if they are to contribute more than they currently do to decision-making in transport policy and planning

Understanding transit ridership in an equity context through a comparison of statistical and machine learning algorithms

Building an accurate model of travel behaviour based on individuals’ characteristics and built environment attributes is of importance for policy-making and transportation planning. Recent experiments with big data and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms toward a better travel behaviour analysis have mainly overlooked socially disadvantaged groups. Accordingly, in this study, we explore the travel behaviour responses of low-income individuals to transit investments in Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Canada, using statistical and ML models. We first investigate how the model choice affects the prediction of transit use by the low-income group. This step includes comparing the predictive performance of traditional and ML algorithms and then evaluating a transit investment policy by contrasting the predicted activities and the spatial distribution of transit trips generated by vulnerable households after improving accessibility. We also empirically investigate the proposed transit investment by each algorithm and compare it with the city of Brampton’s future transportation plan. While, unsurprisingly, the ML algorithms outperform classical models, there are still doubts about using them due to interpretability concerns. Hence, we adopt recent local and global model-agnostic interpretation tools to interpret how the model arrives at its predictions. Our findings reveal the great potential of ML algorithms for enhanced travel behaviour predictions for low-income strata without considerably sacrificing interpretability

Improving women's accessibility to public transport through participatory street experiments: The case of Maltepe, Istanbul

Building on the literature concerning gender-responsive mobility, this paper aims to explore how street experiments can be used to promote gendered mobilities and create streetscapes in order to prioritise the needs of women in the improvement of access to public transport that grants them access to the many facets of urban life. It argues that by creating more inclusive and accessible streets through participatory planning and design processes, women will have greater opportunities to participate in and benefit from public transport. To that end, a street experiment project, TOPUK, was used as a case study focusing on improving women's access to public transport in Maltepe, Istanbul. The methodology consists of the critical assessment of various participation methods and a detailed narrative of the project process. Accessibility, mobility, and safety were found to be the most important women-centric public transportation issues addressed through participatory pop-up design solutions at the street level, most of which were implemented despite bureaucratic obstacles. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned from the TOPUK project and how these lessons can be applied to future street experiments to create more gender-responsive and inclusive living environments