Car Parking Matters to Small Retailers: An Historical Case Study of Three Town Centres in Marrickville

Increasing the costs of car parking and in some cases removing it has become recommended practice for discouraging car use. To understand the perspective of the high street retail cluster who will be confronted with such changes, the paper reviews a time when another change in mobility and access led to car parking construction. A case study of local newspaper coverage between 1968-87 about car parks in the Marrickville Council area is analysed for themes, using a sociological framework of mobility. The paper concludes that while policies of the past may have prioritised economic needs the paradigm shift of sustainable decision making means that future policy implementation will be more complex. In town centres this requires more attention to be paid to the needs of those not engaged in the policy debate, but who are dependent upon the existing infrastructure of car parking. Small retail businesses are one such group.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Sustainability of voluntary travel behaviour change initiatives: A 5-year study

During the early part of the first decade of the 2000s, a number of localities in Australia introduced Voluntary Travel Behaviour Change (VTBC) initiatives, otherwise known as TravelSmart. These initiatives were all monitored in the short-term and suggested that there were reductions in person kilometres of travel (PKT) on the order of 6 to 18 percent. Beginning in 2007, the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) was asked to undertake a 5-year study to determine if the effects of TravelSmart were sustained in the longer term. This paper describes the study methodology, which was a rotating panel drawn from the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia, and Victoria, with panel members asked to carry a GPS device with them wherever they went for a period of 15 days in September-November each year from 2007 to 2012: six waves of panel data. All members of sampled households over the age of 14 were provided with a GPS device to carry with them. The paper reports on panel attrition and the make up for attrition. The panel covered 120 households per year, with approximately 40 households that had not participated in TravelSmart (the control group) and 80 households that had participated, with make up for attrition maintaining this split. Details of the sampling procedures are provided in the paper. The sample provided data on about 3,600 person days of travel in each wave or a total of about 20,000 person days of travel over the six waves. The paper reports on the year-by-year averages of PKT for each of the two groups and for each state and overall. It was found that, while there was some variation from year to year, in general, the treatment group continued to show lower PKT than the control group, suggesting that the changes were sustained over the study period. This is the first time that a longer-term monitoring of the effects of a VTBC has been undertaken, and is also the first one to use GPS measurements of travel to do this

Not too late to learn from the Sydney Olympics experience: Opportunities offered by multimodality in current transport policy

Sydney is the Australian city that attracts the most global attention with its beautiful harbour, its iconic attractions of the harbour bridge and opera house. Tourists may leave Sydney with a complimentary view of Sydney’s public transport but the Sydneysider’s assessments of Sydney’s public transport system is often much harsher, especially if the journey requires travel beyond the immediate centre of the city. In Sydney, the reference point of what constitutes a functioning transport system is informed by the success of the transport system in meeting the needs of the participants and observers at the Olympics in 2000. Changes to the transport system to provide more multimodal travel were supported by Sydneysiders and visitors and this paper analyses why this success has not been translated into everyday public transport. The analysis of the paper allows the opportunities which still exist for Sydney to benefit from the success of the Olympics to be highlighted. These opportunities involve strengthening the opportunities for, and acceptance of, multimodal trips by the travelling public

Sustainable transport access in town centres: A goal-orientated decision-making perspective on the adaptive power of small business

Town centres are connected places. Business owners in town centres value the transport accessibility and tap into it as a resource of their business. When policymakers want to change the conditions in which people access a town centre, this represents a disruption to how businesses capture value from access. There is value in understanding the (relatively under-researched) question of how small business owners react when sustainable transport policies are implemented in an urban town centre environment – especially if it involves the removal of car parking. Similar to how changes to town centre parking are intended to disrupt the goal needs of the travelling public, changes to town centre parking are a disruption to the goal needs of businesses to protect or advance their business viability. This research contributes to knowledge by investigating how changes to transport access are incorporated into the business strategies of business owners; the willing ness of business owners to adopt strategies that utilise new modes of transport access; and the potential power of town centre business actors to impact sustainable transport policy goals. A goal-orientated model of decision-making is used as a framework to examine if/how psychological theory about individual goal motivations and strategies links with sociological thinking about the capture of value from accessibility features in the environment. Historical research, focus groups and an innovative mobile web-assisted personal interviewing (WAPI) survey of 156 business owners are used to investigate how shop-based businesses in a selection of inner city town centres of Sydney, Australia respond to hypothetical changes in accessibility. This study found local government’s role as instigator of disruptions, was a barrier for them understanding the underlying business concerns and appreciating small businesses’ willingness to adapt. Businesses surveye d were optimistic about the customer and competitive benefit! s of imp roved sustainable transport options and indicated willingness to incorporate the new resource into their strategies. The prospect of losing car parking spaces tempered this enthusiasm, shifting businesses to be more cautious and reducing the number of strategies they took. The Regulatory Focus model of goal motivations although helpful in categorizing business goal motivations and goal strategies had reduced predictive power as businesses exhibited a reluctance to restrict their strategic behaviour around one goal. Outcomes of the research are anticipated to help policymakers improve their sensitivity to the ways businesses develop competencies in using the value of new transport access and stimulate more interest in how small businesses matter to policy goal success

Not too late to learn from the Sydney Olympics experience: Opportunities offered by multimodality in current transport policy

Sydney is the Australian city that attracts the most global attention with its beautiful harbour, its iconic attractions of the harbour bridge and opera house. Tourists may leave Sydney with a complimentary view of Sydney’s public transport but the Sydneysider’s assessments of Sydney’s public transport system is often much harsher, especially if the journey requires travel beyond the immediate centre of the city. In Sydney, the reference point of what constitutes a functioning transport system is informed by the success of the transport system in meeting the needs of the participants and observers at the Summer Olympics of 2000. Changes to the transport system to provide more multimodal travel were supported by Sydneysiders and visitors and this paper analyses why this success has not been translated into everyday public transport. The paper identifies opportunities which still exist for Sydney to benefit from the success of these Olympics. These opportunities involve strengthening the opportunities for, and acceptance of, multimodal trips by the travelling public

The governance of dockless bike-sharing schemes: A systemic review of peer-reviewed academic journal papers between 2016 and 2019

Since dockless bicycle-sharing systems (DBSS) first arose in China in 2016, studies have examined their governance. However, there has been no comprehensive review of the literature on DBSS. This paper presents the first systematic review of the burgeoning literature on the governance of DBSS. It maps key research themes, identifies research trends and provides a deeper understanding of the governance literature on DBSS. We searched the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases to identify 95 papers written in English or Chinese between 2016 and 2019 that address the governance of DBSS. A thematic coding of these papers was supported by bibliometric analysis and knowledge mapping using the VOSviewer. More papers are written in Chinese rather than English, focusing on Chinese cities. Although the time range of our literature search was between 2016 and 2019, the first paper was published in 2017. Four key themes in the governance of DBSSs were identified within the papers, and over time the papers shifted their focus from problem-finding and problem-defining to problem-solving. Discussion of the inherent characteristics of the sharing economy and the externalities underpinning the governance of DBSS (Theme 1) and rebalancing problems for DBSS (Theme 2) first arose in early 2017, whilst discussions of the government regulation of DBSS (Themes 3) and the cross-boundary governance models underpinning DBSS (Themes 4) first arose in mid-2017. This paper concludes with a discussion of the identified themes and trends in the context of the broader literature on bicycle sharing and identifies opportunities for further research

The Challenges and Opportunities of In-depth Analysis of Multi-day and Multi-year Data

The paper uses a unique multi-day multi-wave panel dataset of households and their travel to conduct new in-depth analysis on the influence of life change events and travel behaviour, specifically in relation to the travel time stability of individuals that participated in five or more waves. The popularity of mobile devices offer greater low-cost opportunities for collecting detailed travel data records may increase opportunities to analyse how life change events and travel behaviour. This paper discusses issues for designing pragmatic research designs that are robust to be expanded to become longitudinal, or combined with other datasets.This report was commisioned by University of Sydne