The induced travel: overview and perspectives

The animated debate on induced traffic is going on since long time, as the first studies on this matter go back to the first half of the XXth century. This report intends to give an overview of this argument, analysing the historical evolution of the approaches used in the studies on the induced travel and of the models carried out to take into account this phenomenon. The starting point will be the definition of the concept, necessary because either the lack of understanding or the misunderstanding between the different point of views can partly be generated by different meanings given to the concept; the other part of disagreement can lay on different interests involved in road construction. Then, the overview of the studies carried out in Europe and USA will allow for the understanding of the mechanism of causality between the supply and demand and will try to answer to the questions: “does the transport user’s behaviour generate the policy makers’ decisions” or “does the policy makers’ decisions generate the transport users’ behaviour” ?. Lastly, some considerations about the acceptance of the analysed concept and the answer of Administrations and relative eventual interventions are given. It emerges quite clear from this work that the behavioural responses are the real focus and that an adequate policy on the land use that drives the transport systems is the unique way to have a real sustainable development either of land use or of infrastructures. To manage the transport demand through land use could control the transport demand, deviating it towards sustainable solutions. In addition, neglecting the induced travel effects leads to underestimate the impacts due to transport systems. That generally leads to a non-sustainable policy, deteriorating rather than improving the quality of life in urban and extra-urban areas

I servizi di mobilità condivisa (shared mobility services) e l’evoluzione tecnologica

La cosiddetta mobilità condivisa, meglio nota con il termine anglosassone di “shared mobility” è oggi un tema molto dibattuto nell’ambito dei trasporti ed è una delle soluzioni suggerite dalla Commissione Europea per orientare la mobilità verso una maggiore sostenibilità. La shared mobility è una delle componenti della cosiddetta “sharing economy". Anche se oggi manca un consenso in merito alla sua definizione, essa può essere sintetizzata come: a) economia di accesso (access economy); b) in cui l’aspetto di condivisione diventa secondario; c) ed il mercato è mediato da un’impresa intermediaria (Eckhardt and Bardhi, 2015). L'articolo presenta alcuni dati sulla sharing economy e illustra il business model dei servizi di mobilità condivisa. Si forniscono infine alcune riflessioni in merito al valore aggiunto di tale mobilità nel quadro delle politiche di trasporto che intendono supportare una maggiore sostenibilità

CASE STUDY ON EFFECTS OF THE MANDATORY VALIDATION ON BUS COMMERCIAL SPEED

The paper aims to define the new operational requirements and procedures to allow the GTT (Torino public transport company) to implement mandatory validation without negative impacts on both the company and the users. To this end, a four-step methodology has been put forward: a) choice of the reference route and trip sampling; b) data acquisition; c) boarding time analysis and d) future scenario definition. Attained results show that the most unfavourable situation for the company is banning people from boarding the bus/tram through any door (the case today) because it requires, in order to maintain the same time interval at bus stops, an increase of trips in the morning peak hour. Thus, the present system limits the outcomes negatively for the users in terms of waiting time. However, a change could lead to such positive consequences as fuller passenger cooperation to validate tickets/passes and a more ordered boarding, thus reducing fraud and improving the image of the company

The role of human operators in safety perception of av deployment—insights from a large european survey

Autonomous vehicles are anticipated to play an important role on future mobility offering encouraging solutions to today’s transport problems. However, concerns of the public, which can affect the AVs’ uptake, are yet to be addressed. This study presents relevant findings of an online survey in eight European countries. First, 1639 responses were collected in Spring 2020 on people’s commute, preferred transport mode, willingness to use AVs and demographic details. Data was analyzed for the entire dataset and for vulnerable road users in particular. Results re-confirm the long-lasting discourse on the importance of safety on the acceptance of AVs. Spearman correlations show that age, gender, education level and number of household members have an impact on how people may be using or allowing their children to use the technology, e.g., with or without the presence of a human supervisor in the vehicle. Results on vulnerable road users show the same trend. The elderly would travel in AVs with the presence of a human supervisor. People with disabilities have the same proclivity, however their reactions were more conservative. Next to safety, reliability, affordability, cost, driving pleasure and household size may also impact the uptake of AVs and shall be considered when designing relevant policies

Urban Megatrends: Towards a European Research Agenda

The report presents the urban megatrends both worlwide and in Europe

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Modeling cross-national differences in automated vehicle acceptance

The technology that allows fully automated driving already exists and it may gradually enter the market over the forthcoming decades. Technology assimilation and automated vehicle acceptance in different countries is of high interest to many scholars, manufacturers, and policymakers worldwide. We model the mode choice between automated vehicles and conventional cars using a mixed multinomial logit heteroskedastic error component type model. Specifically, we capture preference heterogeneity assuming a continuous distribution across individuals. Different choice scenarios, based on respondents’ reported trip, were presented to respondents from six European countries: Cyprus, Hungary, Iceland, Montenegro, Slovenia, and the UK. We found that large reservations towards automated vehicles exist in all countries with 70% conventional private car choices, and 30% automated vehicles choices. We found that men, under the age of 60, with a high income who currently use private car, are more likely to be early adopters of automated vehicles. We found significant differences in automated vehicles acceptance in different countries. Individuals from Slovenia and Cyprus show higher automated vehicles acceptance while individuals from wealthier countries, UK, and Iceland, show more reservations towards them. Nontrading mode choice behaviors, value of travel time, and differences in model parameters among the different countries are discussed

Validation of a unidimensional and probabilistic measurement scale for proenvironmental behaviour by travellers

In the current debate, ecological themes have become a key element that can influence public policy, as recent events involving green activist groups have shown. Public policies targeted to education, along with focused advertising, can strongly influence people’s beliefs and their emotional reactions. Understanding individual behavioural responses is therefore of the utmost importance for policy makers wishing to encourage more sustainable mobility. They could be greatly assisted by an effective measure of ecological behaviour giving them a better understanding of the determinants of travel behaviour, enabling them to analyse the impact of adopted policies. Ideally, such a measure should be simple to use, and it should be usable across different cultural and geographical contexts so as to allow comparisons between different countries. This paper seeks to determine whether the General Ecological Behaviour (GEB) questionnaire – as a dichotomous multi-items Rasch scale for ecological behaviour measurement – is valid for use in a different cultural context. We refer to the relevant literature, and we describe our approach in detail so that it may easily be adopted by interested practitioners. The research was done in the metropolitan area of Torino (Italy), where a multimodal real-time smartphone application to assist travellers and encourage them towards more sustainable mobility was being developed and trialled. Within this framework, an investigation was done into the pro-environmental behaviour of the participants in the app trial. Our aim was to determine whether a general pro-environmental attitude can legitimately be assessed using Item Response Theory and, notably, the Rasch model. Results suggest that, using an Item Response Theory model, GEB is a questionnaire that is able to effectively measure pro-environmental behaviour by travellers. There are no discrepancies between pro-social behaviour (a trait that is known to correlate with environmentally friendly attitudes and that the GEB questionnaire seeks to measure) and actual environmentally friendly behaviour; one-dimensionality, item reliability, and the absence of simple differential item functioning are all good indicators of a model that functions well. GEB has shown its potential in providing an understanding of people’s attitudes towards environmental issues and of how this information might be used to better tailor public policies in a number of sectors, in particular transport

Sustainable transport: issues and possible solutions

The paper dealswith the concept od sustainable transport and mobility and presents possible solutions for a sustainable mobilit

Traffic noise survey during and after the traffic closing of the city centre in a middle size town

A traffic noise survey was conducted in a middle size north-west Italian town, Vercelli, regarding the impact on the noise deriving from the traffic closing of the city centre. The measurements were carried out during two days: the closing and normal traffic conditions ones. Four locations were chosen in the city centre and five locations on the five entries to the town. The closing of the city centre has abated dramatically the traffic (only permitted vehicles were circulating). In one of the sites, during all the day, the vehicles ranged from about 14,000 to 1,100 vehicles and the noise decreased by about 10 dBA. Also in the peripheral locations a decreasing of traffic was recorded, until 25% in a site, but a very slight abatement of noise (1.3 dBA) was measured