The interplay between land use, travel behaviour and attitudes: a quest for causality.

Governments increasingly embrace land-use policies to promote sustainable travel behaviour. However, the causality of this relationship, and in particular the role of travel-related attitudes, is not clear. This thesis takes a longitudinal approach and explores the directions of causality. It shows that the built environment influences travel behaviour and that travel-related attitudes play an important intervening role. Implications for land-use policies and alignment with accompanying measures are discussed.TRAIL Thesis Series no. T2021/18, the Netherlands Research School TRAILTransport and Plannin

Car Use: A Matter of Dependency or Choice? The Case of Commuting in Noord-Brabant

Car use in the sprawled urban region of Noord-Brabant is above the Dutch average. Does this reflect car dependency due to the lack of competitive alternative modes? Or are there other factors at play, such as differences in preferences? This article aims to determine the nature of car use in the region and explore to what extent this reflects car dependency. The data, comprising 3,244 respondents was derived from two online questionnaires among employees from the High-Tech Campus (2018) and the TU/e-campus (2019) in Eindhoven. Travel times to work by car, public transport, cycling, and walking were calculated based on the respondents’ residential location. Indicators for car dependency were developed using thresholds for maximum commuting times by bicycle and maximum travel time ratios between public transport and car. Based on these thresholds, approximately 40% of the respondents were categorised as car-dependent. Of the non-car-dependent respondents, 31% use the car for commuting. A binomial logit model revealed that higher residential densities and closer proximity to a railway station reduce the odds of car commuting. Travel time ratios also have a significant influence on the expected directions. Mode choice preferences (e.g., comfort, flexibility, etc.) also have a significant, and strong, impact. These results highlight the importance of combining hard (e.g., improvements in infrastructure or public transport provision) and soft (information and persuasion) measures to reduce car use and car dependency in commuting trips

Stability of Sasaki-extremal metrics under complex deformations

We consider the stability of Sasaki-extremal metrics under deformations of the complex structure on the Reeb foliation. Given such a deformation preserving the action of a compact subgroup of the automorphism group of a Sasaki-extremal structure, a sufficient condition is given involving the nondegeneracy of the relative Futaki invariant for the deformations to contain Sasaki-extremal structures. Deformations of Sasaki-Einstein metrics are also considered, where it suffices that the deformation preserve a maximal torus. As an application, new families of Sasaki-Einstein and Sasaki-extremal metrics are given on deformations of well known 3-Sasaki 7-manifolds.Comment: Added the obstruction to the existence of Sasaki structures under transversal complex deformations. 30 pages and 1 figur

Car use: a matter of dependency or choice? The case of commuting in Noord-Brabant.

Car use in the sprawled urban region of Noord-Brabant is above the Dutch average. Does this reflect car dependency due to the lack of competitive alternative modes? Or are there other factors at play, such as differences in preferences? This article aims to determine the nature of car use in the region and explore to what extent this reflects car dependency. The data, comprising 3,244 respondents was derived from two online questionnaires among employees from the High-Tech Campus (2018) and the TU/e-campus (2019) in Eindhoven. Travel times to work by car, public transport, cycling, and walking were calculated based on the respondents’ residential location. Indicators for car dependency were developed using thresholds for maximum commuting times by bicycle and maximum travel time ratios between public transport and car. Based on these thresholds, approximately 40% of the respondents were categorised as car-dependent. Of the non-car-dependent respondents, 31% use the car for commuting. A binomial logit model revealed that higher residential densities and closer proximity to a railway station reduce the odds of car commuting. Travel time ratios also have a significant influence on the expected directions. Mode choice preferences (e.g., comfort, flexibility, etc.) also have a significant, and strong, impact. These results highlight the importance of combining hard (e.g., improvements in infrastructure or public transport provision) and soft (information and persuasion) measures to reduce car use and car dependency in commuting trips

Estimating economic and social welfare impacts of pension reform

This paper examines the impact of two effects of the pension reform package that the UK Government put forward in the May White Paper Security in retirement: the likely increase in the number of older people working due to a higher State Pension age and the likely rise in saving due to more people putting away money for retirement. The overall effect of changes to State Pension age and the introduction of personal accounts on UK incomes is likely to be in the range of 0.9 – 3.1 per cent. Although these numbers are relatively small proportions of the total economy, they represent significant sums. In terms of today’s economy, they would be worth around £11 – 38 billion. This paper also applies an innovative economic analysis to examine the scale of the increase in people’s wellbeing as a result of improved consumption smoothing. It finds that if people save for retirement through personal accounts, then generally their wellbeing will be enhanced.pension reform; consumption smoothing; social welfare

Begrotingsbeleid in crisistijd

Dutch Public finances have taken a severe hit. As a result of the financial crisis, government debt has increased by 20 percentage points to almost 66 percent of GDP. Without a significant improvement of the EMU balance debt will continue to rise in the coming years. The current crisis raises questions about the required pace for improving government finances. Developments in economic theory and the experience of the 1970s, when supply problems were met by demand stimulus, have taught us the limitations of active budgetary policy. Nonetheless, these policies experienced a revival at the start of the current crisis when economies were faced with a sudden large drop in demand. The more structural nature of the low growth and the high debt are important arguments not to persevere with these policies in the coming years. It will not be possible to "outgrow debt" as was feasible in the past. The increasing importance of international financial markets are an additional reason to improve the Dutch budgetary position in the short term

Modelling household residential location choice and travel behaviour and its relationship with public transport accessibility

Cities are seeking to reduce the growth of car-based travel by developing public transport networks. Much research asserts that the correct arrangement of built environment will result in the enhancement of public transport utilization. There is, however, debate that this approach results only in ‘self-selection’, that is that only residents willing to travel by public transport will locate in these places with resultant minimal impact on car -user households. If policy solutions towards public transport are to be effective, it is necessary to understand the multi-dimensional relationship between location behavior and travel patterns of residents living in proximity to public transport. This research seeks to model the relationship between residential location and mode choice within a behavioral analysis framework. At this early stage of in the research this paper focuses on the methodological framework