Shared, Automated, Electric: the Fiscal Effects of the “Holy Trinity”

Initially discussed primarily from a technological perspective, the topic of connected and automated vehicles begins to take root in interdisciplinary discourses held in spatial planning and urban research. Numerous discussions appeal to the „holy trinity“ – shared, automated and electric vehicles – that should lead the way to a more sustainable urban mobility. Connectivity, as a precondition for shared mobility services is also considered. Research foci go beyond the transport technology and include primary or secondary effects that could be borne by in the mobility and urban system. Among the secondary effects, financial implications for public budgets are subject of this text. Fiscal effects could be triggered by both automation and connectivity, possible changes in vehicle ownership, sharing, and the need for (new) infrastructures. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the fiscal effects of automation, connectivity, electrification and sharing for individual road transport. For this purpose, the primary effects are analysed on the basis of current international studies, and the resulting secondary effects are derived for the subnational level of Austria. Finally, the significance or value of the affected revenue and expenditure categories in the budgets of the federal provinces and municipalities in Austria is illustrated. Losses of sources of revenue like the duty on vehicles based on fuel consumption, the engine-related insurance tax or the parking management which affect the budgets of Austrian provinces and municipalities directly or via the fiscal equalisation system as well as perspectives on the resulting investment requirements and subsequent costs for urban infrastructure are shown. Overall, it becomes clear that new sources of revenue would have to be developed if these effects occur cumulatively

AVENUE21. Connected and Automated Driving: Prospects for Urban Europe

This open access publication examines the impact of connected and automated vehicles on the European city and the conditions that can enable this technology to make a positive contribution to urban development. The authors argue for two theses that have thus far received little attention in scientific discourse: as connected and automated vehicles will not be ready for use in all parts of the city for a long time, previously assumed effects – from traffic safety to traffic performance as well as spatial effects – will need to be re-evaluated. To ensure this technology has a positive impact on the mobility of the future, transport and settlement policy regulations must be adapted and further developed. Established territorial, institutional and organizational boundaries must be investigated and challenged quickly. Despite – or, indeed, because of – the many uncertainties, we find ourselves at the beginning of a new design phase, not only in terms of technology development, but also regarding politics, urban planning, administration and civil society

Measuring Political Commitment in Statistical Models for Evidence-based Agenda Setting in Nonmotorized Traffic

When investigating national and international transport policies of the last decade, an ever increasing emphasis on promoting non-motorized transport modes such as walking or cycling can be identified, aiming at reaching multiple political targets (eg. reducing pollution, increasing health or lowering land consumption). However, despite substantial financial efforts being put into infrastructural or awarenessraising activities, achieving the desired modal shift towards active mobility remains a challenge. This is frequently due to unclear cause and effect patterns between active mode shares and their determinants, which in turn leads to uncoordinated or highly fragmented initiatives that impede target-oriented planning. An internationally adopted approach to overcome this problem is applying aggregated statistical models that explain modal choice involving multiple regression techniques and hypothetical covariates. Still, general critique against these models points out that important intangible soft factors such as attitudinal characteristics of the local population or mind-sets and political commitment of decision makers are not duly reflected. Also, for Austria there is currently no systematic holistic approach to explain spatial variance in active travel shares on the scale of municipalities. Hence the main objective of our research is to design a comprehensive macroscopic model-based approach for the quantitative explanation of modal split shares in active travel modes in Austria. In our approach we attach great importance to the inclusion of soft factors in order to contribute novel findings on the dynamics behind active travel. The research outcomes will aid decision makers and planners in their question where and more specifically, how to effectively invest into active mobility by revealing key soft factors and intangible determinants of active travel mode shares alongside a broad range of more known, traditional factors. Based on this evidence-based decision support approach it is possible to simulate impacts of actions when aiming at locally promoting active travel modes

A systematic cost-benefit analysis of 29 road safety measures

Economic evaluations of road safety measures are only rarely published in the scholarly literature. We collected and (re-)analyzed evidence in order to conduct cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) for 29 road safety measures. The information on crash costs was based on data from a survey in European countries. We applied a systematic procedure including corrections for inflation and Purchasing Power Parity in order to express all the monetary information in the same units (EUR, 2015). Cost-benefit analyses were done for measures with favorable estimated effects on road safety and for which relevant information on costs could be found. Results were assessed in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios and net present value. In order to account for some uncertainties, we carried out sensitivity analyses based on varying assumptions for costs of measures and measure effectiveness. Moreover we defined some combinations used as best case and worst case scenarios. In the best estimate scenario, 25 measures turn out to be cost-effective. 4 measures (road lighting, automatic barriers installation, area wide traffic calming and mandatory eyesight tests) are not cost-effective according to this scenario. In total, 14 measures remain cost-effective throughout all scenarios, whereas 10 other measures switch from cost-effective in the best case scenario to not cost-effective in the worst case scenario. For three measures insufficient information is available to calculate all scenarios. Two measures (automatic barriers installation and area wide traffic calming) even in the best case do not become cost-effective. Inherent uncertainties tend to be present in the underlying data on costs of measures, effects and target groups. Results of CBAs are not necessarily generally valid or directly transferable to other settings.acceptedVersio

The compact City under changing Conditions: a GIS-based Analysis exemplified for the urban Region of Linz

Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des VerfassersZsfassung in engl. SpracheDie kompakte Stadt ist ein wichtiges Leitbild der gegenwärtigen Stadtplanung und Stadtentwicklung und scheint weiterhin ein Erfolgsmodell zu sein. Gerade die Vorteile kompakter Siedlungsstrukturen in Bezug auf Mobilität, Energiebedarf und Infrastrukturkosten werden dabei immer wieder hervorgehoben. In den letzten Jahrzehnten zeigten sich in der Raum- und Siedlungsentwicklung jedoch unterschiedliche Entwicklungen und Prozesse, wobei sich dabei, meist im direkten Umland größerer Städte, starke Wachstumsregionen und Prozesse der Verstädterung und Suburbanisierung erkennen lassen, wohingegen es in anderen Regionen auch zu Stagnations- und teilweise Schrumpfungsprozessen gekommen ist. Die kompakte Stadt wird jedoch gegenwärtig als Leitbild gleichfalls unter beiden Rahmenbedingungen diskutiert. Im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Arbeit steht deshalb die Frage, was die kompakte Stadt bzw. der Begriff kompakt unter den jeweiligen Rahmenbedingungen bedeutet, welche Indikatoren Kompaktheit und Dichte abbilden können sowie ob und welche Unterschiede diesbezüglich in der Siedlungsentwicklung zwischen Gemeinden unter den verschiedenen Rahmenbedingungen bestehen. Um Erkenntnisse in Bezug auf diese Fragestellungen zu erhalten, werden am Beispiel der Stadtregion Linz, Gemeinden unter verschiedenen Rahmenbedingungen mit Hilfe von Dichte- und Kompaktheitsindikatoren GIS-gestützt untersucht und Entwicklungen in Bezug auf Dichte und Kompaktheit aufgezeigt. Dadurch sollen ebenso Einschätzungen darüber vorgenommen werden, inwieweit und auf welche Weise auch eine Weiterentwicklung der Indikatoren vorgenommen werden sollte, so dass diese als Planungsinstrumente zur Unterstützung der Gemeinden in Bezug auf die Erreichung einer kompakten und dichten Siedlungsstruktur gerade auch mit Berücksichtigung der jeweiligen Rahmenbedingungen noch effektiver eingesetzt werden können.The compact city is an important approach for spatial planning and development and seems to remain an ongoing successful model. Especially the advantages of compact settlement structures in regard to mobility, energy demands and costs of infrastructure are being emphasized over and over again. In the last few decades however, different trends and processes in spatial and settlement development have emerged, particularly often in the direct surroundings of large cities, regions of heavy growth and processes of urbanization and suburbanization can be seen, whereas other regions were faced with stagnation and partial shrinking processes. The compact city is though currently being discussed as an approach under both frame conditions. Therefore the main question of this paper is, what the compact city respectively the term compact mean under the proper frame conditions, which indicators are able to represent compactness and density, as well as if and which differences in this regard exist in settlement development between municipalities under the various frame conditions. To provide an insight in regard to these questions, municipalities under different frame conditions will be examined GIS-based with the help of indicators for density and compactness using the example of the urban area of Linz and highlighting the developments in regard to density and compactness. Thus also estimations to which extent and by which means a further advancement of the indicators should take place, so that they can be used more effectively as an instrument of planning to support the municipalities in regard to the accomplishment of a compact and concentrated settlement structure, also regarding the respective frame conditions.17

Compatibility of Automated Vehicles in Street Spaces: Considerations for a Sustainable Implementation

Automated Vehicles (AVs) will bring a fundamental change in the mobility sector in the coming years. Whereas many studies emphasize opportunities with AVs, studies on the impacts of AVs on travel behavior particularly show an overall increase in traffic volume. This increase could impair the needs of other uses and users within street spaces and decrease the permeability of the street space for pedestrians and cyclists. However, only a few studies, so far, have looked at the changes of traffic volume due to AVs at the street level, and to what extent these impair the needs of other uses and users within different street spaces was not in the focus at all. This paper investigates the compatibility of AVs in street spaces, building on different modeling results of scenarios with AVs based on the Multi-Agent Traffic Simulation (MATSim) framework. Using the so-called compensatory approach and the whole street network of Vienna, Austria, as a case study, we examine how compatible AVs and their related changes in traffic volume are with the needs of other uses and users, i.e., pedestrians and cyclists, within different street spaces, by specifically considering the various characteristics of the latter. Results show that the effects of AVs on the compatibility of street spaces would be unevenly distributed across the city. For Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs), a deterioration in compatibility is observable, especially in inner-city dense areas, because of an increase in traffic volume and an already high amount of competing uses. In contrast, especially (on main roads) in the outskirts, improvements in compatibility are possible. This particularly applies to SAVs with a stop-based service. However, private AVs interlinked with an overall capacity increase would lead to a deterioration in compatibility, especially in parts of the higher-level street network that already have incompatible traffic volumes, further increasing the separating or barrier effect of such streets. The results can provide insights for policymakers and stakeholders about where and how to facilitate AVs, to reach an implementation that is compatible with the different uses and needs of users within street spaces: While SAVs should be implemented particularly in the outskirts, as a complement for public transport, an implementation of AVs in the lower-level street network in inner parts of the city should not be facilitated, or it should at least be linked to measures that make street spaces more compatible with the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, e.g., implementation of walking and cycling infrastructure

Do the Impacts Justify Point-to-Point Speed Enforcement on Rural Roads?

Point-to-point speed enforcement is applied in Austria since 2003; and commonly called “Section Control”. Speed is determined by taking two pictures at different locations along a road, automatically recognising the number plates and calculating speed from the distance between the two cameras and the time elapsed between the two photo shots. Currently, there are about two dozen of Section Control devices in operation in Austria, half of them are stationary units. The mobile units are used at roadwork sections on highways. In 2012, a Section Control device was installed on a rural road for the first time. In order to determine criteria for further application, this device and four stationary units were included in a before-and-after-study about impacts of Section Control on road safety and its applicability on rural road. In addition, crash records of tunnels with and without speed enforcement by Section Control were compared as well as speed behaviour at roadwork sections on highways. The analysis used four parameters: Crash density, crash rate, rate of injuries and rate of crash costs. These numbers were calculated for the road sections concerned as well as for 5 kilometres ahead and after respectively, in order to capture potential displacement effects. Nearly all of these numbers were lower for the after than for the before period. The same applies for roadwork areas: Both, crash rate and injury rate were much lower with Section Control. A comparison of driving speeds at four different locations of roadwork areas showed lower values for average speed, 85-percentile speed as well as the share of offenders. It was found that none of the crash parameters allows for a sole assessment. Decisions about whether to install a Section Control or not have to consider all crash parameters in order to fulfil the legal requirement of a “particular local risk”. Such a holistic assessment also requires investigation of crash records, daily traffic and speed behaviour on the respective road section. Particular road sections like tunnels, bridges or roadwork areas justify use of Section Control even if the benefit-cost ratio is poor. The results of the study suggest that these recommendations apply to highways and rural roads equally