Urban main road capacity reduction: Adaptations, effects and consequences

To support sustainable urban mobility strategies, reallocating road space from private vehicles to other uses may be a relevant intervention. Novel empirical knowledge could reduce barriers for implementing such interventions. A planned, 14-month capacity reduction of a main road tunnel in Oslo, Norway, carrying 70,000 vehicles a day, offered an excellent opportunity to document how commuters adapted, and what effects and consequences they experienced. Analyses of traffic data were combined with surveys and interviews with commuters. Congestion increased in the tunnel and on adjacent road-links, although road users adapted in ways resulting in significant traffic reduction through the tunnel. Some employees in an area near the tunnel experienced increased time-usage on their commute, and some adapted by changing transport mode, route, or trip-timing. However, results showed that they did not experience major negative consequences. Few commuters reported a need to shift routines in the household, and commuter satisfaction remained high.publishedVersio

Capacity reduction on urban main roads: How truck drivers adapted, and what effects and consequences they experienced

Elise Caspersen, Tale Ørving, Aud Tennøy, Capacity reduction on urban main roads: How truck drivers adapted, and what effects and consequences they experienced, Transport Policy, Volume 130, 2023, Pages 68-83, ISSN 0967-070X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.10.016. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X22003018)Urban freight transport is an important issue in sustainable mobility discussions. It constitutes a significant proportion of urban traffic, and expected negative impacts for urban freight transport can be arguments against implementing restrictive measures targeting passenger traffic. The scarcity of empirical studies might lead to over- or underestimation of consequences for urban freight transport. This might slow shifts towards more sustainable mobility or cause unintended negative consequences. A long-planned 14-month capacity reduction in a main road tunnel in Oslo, Norway, causing significantly increased congestion, offered an excellent opportunity to study urban freight transport adaptations, effects and consequences. With truck drivers and logistics professionals as key informants, the study amplifies voices not often heard in research. Truck drivers adapted by avoiding the tunnel during rush hours only to a limited degree, and less than general traffic did. They reported limited flexibility, as routes and trip timing are strongly defined by customer contracts. The wider consequences for drivers were more stress and less predictable workdays. The findings might improve understandings of how truck drivers can and do adapt, and what consequences they experience. This will help authorities and freight companies plan for changes in urban transport systems aimed at sustainable mobility.publishedVersio

To-faktor prisingsmodell : kan Fama-French faktorene, SMB og HML, erstattes av bare én enkel faktor?

Masteroppgave i økonomi og administrasjon - Universitetet i Agder 2012Stattman (1980) og Rosenberg, Reid og Lanstein (1985) dokumenterte at det fantes en verdipremie knyttet til selskaper med høy bokført verdi relativt til markedsverdi. Banz (1981) og Reinganum (1981) dokumenterte at det fantes en størrelsespremie knyttet til små selskaper. Disse anomaliene, eller avvikene fra kapitalverdimodellen, la grunnlaget for at Fama og French (1993) utvidet kapitalverdimodellen med de to nye faktorene, SMB og HML. Det viste seg at Fama-French tre-faktor modellen klarte å forklare avkastningen til selskaper sortert etter størrelse og verdi bedre enn hva kapitalverdimodellen klarte. I litteraturen er det likevel lite enighet i hvorvidt størrelse og verdi er mål på hverken skjulte risikofaktorer eller anomalier. Det spekuleres også i om både SMB og HML egentlig skyldes samme årsak. I denne oppgaven konstruerer jeg en ny risikofaktor som jeg kaller X-faktor. Denne risikofaktoren vil sammen med meravkastningen til markedet utgjøre en to-faktor modell. Ved hjelp av tidsserietester finner jeg at to-faktor modellen ser ut til å gjøre en bedre jobb enn både kapitalverdimodellen og Fama-French tre-faktor modellen i å forklare avkastningen til en rekke forskjellige porteføljer for perioden juli 1951 til desember 2010

Målkonflikter, uenighet om virkemidler og forskjellige virkelighetsoppfatninger blant aktørene som forklaring på hvorfor det vedtas planer som gir vekst i biltrafikken.

Målsettingen om å redusere biltrafikken i byene finnes igjen i de fleste overordnede plandokumenter, og man er tilsynelatende enige om hvilke virkemidler som må til for å redusere biltrafikken. Likevel fortsetter fagfolkene å lage planer som gir vekst i biltrafikken, politikerne fortsetter å vedta dem, og biltrafikken vokser videre. Hvorfor er det slik forskjell mellom idealene og virkeligheten? I paperet diskuteres dette spørsmålset, med spesiell fokus på målkonflikter, uenighet om virkemidler og forskjellige oppfatninger av årsak-virkningsforhold blant aktørene, på bakgrunn av spørreundersøkelser blant politikere og fagfolk

Three Performativities of Innovation in Public Transport Planning

The article scrutinizes planners’ stories of innovation in contemporary public transport planning in three Scandinavian contexts (Denmark, Sweden and Norway). This analysis is accomplished by adapting Judith Butler’s post-structural feminist critical theory on performativity to the planning context. This theoretical framework is used to illuminate how planning is dynamically renewed, revised and consolidated over time by the individual routine actions of planners. From this perspective, the research identifies a set of repetitive acts–as recognizing specific windows of opportunity, anticipate and respond to political signals and create arguments and means of communication and persuasion–that constitute the contemporary transformation of professional practice in relation to planning politics. This analytics of performativity reveals how professional planning practices engage with transformative capacities of reshaping, re-enacting and re-experiencing guidance for the future within a set of meanings and forms of legitimation. These findings are intended to contribute to present and future planning practice and education in Scandinavian countries and elsewhere

How planners' use and non-use of expert knowledge affect the goal achievement potential of plans : Experiences from strategic land-use and transport planning processes in three Scandinavian cities

This article addresses the question of how planners’ use and non-use of expert knowledge affect the content and goal achievement potential of plans, and discusses how changes in planners’ and researchers’ practices can contribute to improving goal achievement potential. These are questions that have been given surprisingly little attention in planning research. Although interesting discussions have emerged over recent years, few empirical studies have been presented. This article presents theory-based empirical research on these issues based on analyses of strategic land-use and transport planning processes in three Scandinavian cities where an aim is to limit or reduce traffic volumes and greenhouse gas emissions of transport. This is a highly relevant issue when analysing the effects of planners’ use and non-use of expert knowledge. Goal achievement potential refers to whether plans (if implemented) contribute to achieving defined objectives, which in this paper mainly regards curbing or reducing urban traffic volumes. The expert knowledge in question concerns how land-use and transport systems development influence traffic volumes in urban regions. The article concludes that whether planners use the expert knowledge in question or not, and how they use it, do affect the goal achievement potential of the plans they produce. This knowledge is the main basis for many planners’ knowing and acting. Planners use it to understand, explain and argue for how and why coordination is necessary, and for selecting traffic-reducing measures. All examined plans also include strategies and measures that reduce their goal achievement potential, and non-use of the expert knowledge is an important part of the explanation as to how and why this is the case. When competing objectives seem to call for traffic-increasing measures, planners tend not to take account of expert knowledge in explaining that these measures reduce the goal achievement potential of plans, and they do not turn to it for finding innovative ways of solving their planning problems. Instead, they rely on their embedded professional knowledge, which is sometimes outdated or misleading. In other cases, planners disregard the knowledge because it challenges planning agendas or compelling ideas, or they exercise self-censorship when finding that it conflicts with political agendas. Considerable effort is required in ensuring higher goal achievement potential in future plans. Planners need to be more critical of their own tacit knowledge, and turn more actively to research-based knowledge. Researchers need to produce the knowledge planners need in ways that are useful and usable for them.acceptedVersio

Hvordan og hvorfor planleggere lager planer som, hvis de gjennomføres, gir vekst i biltrafikken : forklaringer knyttet til ekspertkunnskapen, planleggerne og planlagingsprosessene

Traffic volumes need to be reduced in order to reduce GHG emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. This is also a means to reduce local health and environment problems, congestion and land take, save energy, make cities more liveable, and more. Despite long standing objectives, knowledge of how to achieve this, and public control of the most important means, land use and transport-systems are continuously planned and developed in ways which cause growth in traffic volumes. In order to be able to change this situation, we need to understand what is causing that traffic-increasing plans are made. The intention of this work has therefore been to contribute to answer the following research question: How and why are planners making plans which, if implemented, cause growth in traffic volumes? Within an understanding of planning processes as complex and involving numerous actors, I have chosen to focus on planners working for public and private actors, how they interact with each other when making zoning plans, and how they apply relevant expert knowledge. Planners are important actors in planning processes, since they possess procedural and substantial knowledge, and since they normally do most of the concrete plan-making. To my knowledge, this angle is not well covered by current planning literature and theory. Inspired by among others Jacobs, ‘how the city works’ as well as the plan-making processes have been conceptualised as systems of organised complexity. The research has been strongly influenced by the strand of philosophy of science termed Critical realism, as well as by Flyvbjerg’s ‘phronetic planning research’. Classical planning theory has been the most influential planning theory. The planners, my understanding of the state-of-the-art expert knowledge and the plan-making processes have been explored in abstract analyses, disclosing potential causal powers, mechanisms and conditions that can contribute to explaining how and why planners make traffic increasing plans. The findings have been examined in empirical studies; a survey and two interview studies among planners, as well as a case study of four plan-making processes. More general or transfactual explanations have been developed in the final analysis. It was found that when a public or private developer initiates a planning process in order to be allowed to implement a project, a number of mechanisms may be activated through which causal powers can act and produce traffic-increasing plans: The objective ‘reducing traffic volumes’ may not be introduced in or ousted from the plan-making process, the expert knowledge in question may not be introduced in or ousted from the process, or applied wrongly. Whether these mechanisms are activated, and whether traffic-increasing plans are made, depend on a number of contingent conditions. This regards among others that even if the expert knowledge is good enough to guide planners who aim at making traffic-reducing plans, it has shortcomings. This regards lack of accessible descriptions of the general knowledge and of the methods that are applicable in planning practise, as well as shortcomings of the empirical knowledge. This makes it less usable, and easier to oust. The planners know the expert knowledge in question, but few know it well enough to apply it in complex analyses or in tough debates. Regarding the plan-making processes, the objectives, knowledge and powers of the planners involved matter. It strongly affects which objectives are prioritised in the process and which knowledge is applied, and hence which plan that is made. Recommendations regarding what could be done to change the situation have been suggested.Biltrafikken må reduseres dersom vi skal redusere klimagassutslippene og den globale oppvarmingen. Dette vil også bidra til å redusere lokale helse- og miljøproblemer, arealforbruk, kø og forsinkelser, spare energi, gjøre byene triveligere og mer. Til tross for langvarige målsettinger, kunnskap om hva som skal til, og offentlig styring av de mest sentrale virkemidlene, utvikles arealstrukturen og transportsystemene stadig i retninger som gir vekst i biltrafikken. Hvis vi skal bli i stand til å endre denne situasjonen, må vi forstå hva som forårsaker den. Intensjonene med dette arbeidet er derfor å bidra til å svare på følgende spørsmål: Hvordan og hvorfor lager planleggerne planer som, hvis de blir gjennomført, gir vekst i biltrafikken? Under en forståelse av at planprosesser er komplekse og involverer en rekke forskjellige aktører, har jeg valgt å fokusere på planleggerne, hvordan de samhandler med hverandre når de lager reguleringsplaner, og hvordan de bruker relevant ekspertkunnskap. Planleggerne er viktige aktører i planprosessene. De har prosess- og substanskunnskap, de leder planprosessene, og de gjør mesteparten av den konkrete planlagingen. Denne vinkelen er ikke godt dekket i planleggingsteorien og -litteraturen slik jeg kjenner den. Inspirert av blant annet Jacobs har jeg definerte hvordan byen ’virker’, så vel som planlagingsprosessene, som systemer av typen ’dobbelt organisert komplekse’. Arbeidet er sterkt påvirket av en gren av vitenskapsteorien som kalles kritisk realisme og av Flyvbjergs ’phronetisk planforskning’. Klassisk planteori har også vært innflytelsesrik i arbeidet. Planleggerne, min forståelse av state-of-the-art ekspertkunnskapen og planlagingsprosessene ble utforsket gjennom abstrakte analyser for å finne frem til hvilke kausale krefter, mekanismer og forutsetninger som kan bidra til å forklare hvorfor og hvordan planleggerne lager trafikkskapende planer. Funnene ble undersøkt i empiriske studier; en spørreundersøkelse og to intervjuundersøkelser blant planleggere, samt en case-studie som omfattet fire planlagingsprosesser. Mer generelle forklaringer for hvordan og hvorfor planleggere lager planer som gir vekst i biltrafikken ble så utviklet i den overordnede analysen. Jeg fant at når en offentlig eller privat utbygger initierer en planprosess for å få tillatelse til å gjennomføre et prosjekt, kan en rekke mekanismer aktiveres slik at det lages en trafikkskapende plan: Målsettinger om å redusere biltrafikken kan ikke bli introdusert eller bli skjøvet ut av andre målsettinger, og ekspertkunnskapen kan enten ikke bli introdusert, bli skjøvet ut av annen slags kunnskap eller brukes feil. Hvorvidt disse mekanismene blir aktivert og bidrar til at det lages en plan som gir vekst i biltrafikken kommer an på en rekke betingede forutsetninger. Dette gjelder blant annet at selv om ekspertkunnskapen er god nok til å lede planleggere som vil lage trafikkreduserende planer, så har den svakheter. Dette gjelder mangel på tilgjengelige beskrivelser av den generelle kunnskapen og av metoder for å bruke den som er brukbare i praktisk planlegging, samt mangler ved den empiriske kunnskapen. Dette gjør kunnskapen mindre brukbar og lettere å skyve ut. Planleggerne kjenner generelt til deler av denne ekspertkunnskapen, men få kjenner den godt nok til å bruke den i komplekse plananalyser eller harde diskusjoner. Når det gjelder planlagingsprosessene, spiller målsettingene, kunnskapen og makten til de involverte planleggernes en viktig rolle. Dette påvirker hvilke målsettinger som prioriteres i prosessen og hvilken ekspertkunnskap som brukes, og dermed planene som lages. Det er utviklet forslag til hva som kan gjøres for å endre på situasjonen

Exploring how politicians reflect on counteracting measures: the case of the Trondheim package

Transitioning towards a low-emission society is a goal of numerous international and national political and administrative levels. This includes reducing impacts of road transport. While aiming for a transition towards more sustainable mobility, it is particularly striking that road capacity expansion is presently under planning or implementation in most main cities in Norway. Against this backdrop, we decided to study Trondheim’s Environmental Transport Package because this has a strong environmental profile with main objectives of reducing CO2 emissions and limiting car traffic, while at the same time increasing road capacity. Our exploration of how political decision-makers reflect on including road capacity expansion in a plan aimed at reducing traffic volume is only a first step towards finding out how an apparent disconnect between stated objectives and policy measures is reconciled. This might provide opportunities for better understanding and influencing politicians’ framing and actions early on, before measures are included that counteract the transition towards more sustainable mobility. We believe our explorative study reveals how motivated political decision-makers reason when faced with conflicting goals and contradictions, and, may contribute to a better understanding of what hinders transition in similar processes in other cities in Norway and abroad.acceptedVersio

The Impact of Changed Structural Conditions on Regional Sustainable Mobility Planning in Norway

A primary impediment in achieving sustainable mobility objectives is the multi-level and cross-sectoral nature of land-use and transport planning. This paper investigates whether changes in structural conditions have affected the ability of Norwegian regional authorities to succeed in sustainable mobility planning. The effects of the changes were minor, as the national government acted in ways that undermined the power of regional authorities. By analysing the fine-grained inter-agency dynamics, this study contributes richer and more nuanced theoretical understandings of the challenges involved in sustainable transport planning. The new insights could assist discussions in many countries on how land-use and transport planning can be organized to facilitate more sustainable mobility patterns.acceptedVersio