Intermodal mobility in cities and its contribution to accessibility and sustainability

Abstract

Cities offer a wide range of different mobility options, including a dense public transport network and good conditions for walking and cycling. They provide good circumstances for people for using and combining different modes of transport in their everyday mobility in a flexible, individual and situational way. Particularly in larger cities, intermodal mobility plays an increasing role and is being discussed as crucial to minimize traffic congestion, emissions and demand for parking space. In our contribution we compare unimodal and intermodal travel modes and discuss the effects on accessibility and sustainability in cities, using the example of Berlin. Which infrastructure and spatial aspects are relevant in the context of intermodality? How does the use of different modes or mode combinations affect accessibility? To what extent does intermodality indeed enable a higher accessibility in cities in comparison to unimodal modes? How does intermodality perform with respect to indicators related to sustainability such as the emitted amount of CO2, personal energy consumption, and price? Based on empirical survey data from Berlin and calculations with spatial accessibility indicators we present unimodal and intermodal travel modes’ performance by means of accessible locations and distance over time and set them against the frequency of using various unimodal and intermodal travel modes. In addition, other performance indicators for the different modes are given, including the emitted amount of CO2, personal energy consumption, and price. The combination of empirical and modelling data gives new insights in how accessibility measures based on structural data fit together with user’s perspective and can complement each other. Based on this, we would like to discuss further aspects of accessibility relevant for intermodality in the workshop