The rate of provision of bus-based park and ride facilities on the fringes of UK urban areas has grown in recent years. However, there has been a debate about whether the schemes reduce traffic. ...Research published in 1998 for the UK Government considered eight case studies and was interpreted by some as providing reassurance that park and ride can have traffic-reduction benefits. The present paper offers a new approach to the appraisal of the same eight park and ride schemes, separating the analysis into urban and extra-urban components. The urban-area analysis considers the net result of intercepting cars on the edge of urban areas and running additional dedicated bus services from the car parks. The finding is that traffic was avoided in seven out of eight cases. The analysis of the extra-urban effects of park and ride considers three sources of traffic increase: motorists that are intercepted detouring to reach sites, users switching from public transport services and motorists making additional trips. All are found to be important phenomena, with the total additional traffic generated outside the urban area being greater than that avoided within the urban area in every case study. It is concluded that the main effect of the schemes is traffic redistribution, and that their role within traffic restraint policies is unlikely to be directly one of traffic reduction.
•Novel contribution analysing user trust and comfort in a shared autonomous vehicle.•Statistically significant relation between trust and speed and direction of face.•Strong correlation between ...comfort and trust.•Car drivers in particular showed increased favourability after the experience.
Autonomous Vehicles (AV) may become widely diffused as a road transport technology around the world. However, two conditions of successful adoption of AVs are that they must be synchronously shared, to avoid negative transport network and environmental consequences, and that high levels of public acceptance of the technology must exist. The implications of these two conditions are that travellers must accept sharing rides with unfamiliar others in Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAV). Two factors that have been identified as being positive influencers of acceptance are comfort and trust. The present paper undertakes a novel examination as to how comfort and trust ratings are affected by specific attributes of the ride experience of travelling in a fully-automated real-world, shared vehicle. To this end, 55 participants experienced riding in an SAV shuttle under experimental conditions at a test facility. Each experimental run involved two unrelated participants, accompanied by a safety operative and a researcher, undertaking four trips in the SAV, during which two conditions were presented for each of the independent variables of ‘direction of face’ (forwards/backwards) and ‘maximum vehicle speed’ (8/16 km/h). Order of presentation was varied between pairs of participants. After each run, participants rated the dependent variables ‘trust’ and ‘comfort’ (the latter variable comprised by six comfort factors). Expected and evaluative ratings were also obtained during pre-experimental orientation and debriefing sessions. Statistically significant relationships (p < .001) were found between trust and each of the independent variables, but for neither variable in the case of perceived comfort. A strong correlation was found between comfort and trust, interpreted as indicating trust in the SAV as an important predictor of perceived comfort. The before and after-experiment ratings for both variables showed statistically significant increases, and particularly for daily car drivers.
This paper examines an experiment conducted to explore a voluntary incentive mechanism, the agglomeration bonus, designed to protect endangered species and biodiversity by reuniting fragmented ...habitat across private land. The goal is to maximize habitat protection and minimize landowner resentment. The agglomeration bonus mechanism pays an extra bonus for every acre a landowner retires that borders on any other retired acre. The mechanism provides incentive for non-cooperative landowners to voluntarily create a contiguous reserve across their common border. A government agency's role is to target the critical habitat, to integrate the agglomeration bonus into the compensation package, and to provide landowners the unconditional freedom to choose which acres to retire. The downside with the bonus, however, is that multiple Nash equilibria exist, which can be ranked by the level of habitat fragmentation. Our lab results show that a no-bonus mechanism always created fragmented habitat, whereas with the bonus, players found the first-best habitat reserve. Once pre-play communication and random pairings were introduced, players found the first-best outcome in nearly 92% of play.
According to psychological theories of environmental affect, the physical environment moderates the walking experience and its psychological wellbeing benefits. The present paper further demonstrates ...that affective experiences also influence intentions to walk. A study to explore the influence of affective experiences of walking on walking intentions is reported. A sample of adults working or studying in Bristol, UK (n = 384) participated in an experiment involving virtual exposure to one of five environments, with evaluations of their affective experience and of intentions to walk in the setting. A subsample (n = 14) then took part in photo-elicited semi-structured interviews. Multiple regression analyses showed that affective experiences of walking influenced walking intentions. Interview analyses highlighted the role of traffic, city busyness, and poor aesthetics. This is the first empirical study that examines the walking experience and related walking intentions from the pedestrian perspective employing theories of environmental affect. The findings indicate that safety, comfort, and moderate sensory stimulation are crucial elements for the walking experience. Following this, a strategy to promote active mobility in the built environment can be constructed around safety, comfort, and moderate sensory stimulation by targeting the micro elements that prevent them.
The transport policy discourse posits Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) as a more sustainable solution for the implementation of road automation technology. A successful implementation of SAV ...services strongly depends on being able to meet user's needs, as well as responding to their expectations. For this reason, the public has a central role in the definition of appropriate and realistic policies for the design, regulation and adoption of new automated mobility services. However, whilst there has been considerable attention to individuals' attitudes towards road transport automation, few have applied participatory or co-design methods to help define new SAV services. Moreover, most of the existing studies have also been hypothetical rather than examining vehicles in real service settings. This paper addresses these imbalances through reporting a two-stage research initiative. Initially a local shared automated vehicle service (LSAVS) concept was examined in a co-design workshop (Stage 1), leading to the development of a conceptual framework for social acceptance. This was then applied (Stage 2) in qualitative empirical research into the experiences of participants who rode in two different live prototype LSAVS. It was found that social considerations such as equity in access to mobility services, social inclusion, environmental protection, and concerns about control over interpersonal interactions emerged as strong acceptance factors within participants' construction of the conceptual services and responses to exposure to actual services. However, broad socio-political aspirations beyond transport policy were also important. It is concluded that achieving high levels of social acceptance where these utopian expectations meet commercial realities and public-sector constraints will be a major policy challenge facing any attempt to introduce an LSAVS with strong sustainable mobility credentials.
This paper discusses a series of economic experiments designed to explore whether a set of conservation subsidies—called the
agglomeration bonus—can induce a socially optimal spatial pattern of ...conservation given landowner land retirement decisions are voluntary. The novelty of our approach is the use of the agglomeration bonus idea which depends on explicit topological relationships between a unit of conserved land and its neighboring conserved land; specifically, subsidies paid when one conserved land unit borders other conserved units. The agglomeration bonus approach is refined by providing a menu of subsidies and penalties that can used to encourage particular patterns of land preservation voluntarily. Our results suggest the agglomeration bonus—once our subjects gain experience with coordination—can achieve the specific contiguous land preservation pattern that was targeted.
•A psychologically-informed discussion of the transition to low-carbon mobility.•Infrastructural ‘lock-in’ is experienced differentially by individuals.•Users fulfil vital social as well as economic ...functions in innovation processes.•Social and psychological factors constrain and foster innovation.
Mobility affords a range of benefits, but there are environmental, social and economic problems associated with current transport systems. Innovations to address these issues include novel technologies (e.g., electric and autonomous vehicles; EVs, AVs), and new business models and social practices (e.g., shared mobility). Yet, far more attention by policy-makers and researchers has been paid to the technical aspects of a low-carbon mobility transition than to social or psychological aspects, or the role of the user. In this paper, we integrate insights from the multi-level perspective on transitions and socio-psychological literature and draw on transport expert interview (N = 11) data, to examine (a) what influences current attitudes and behaviours in respect of EVs and AVs, and shared mobility, and (b) how this may change in the years to come. We argue that technological change may be most compatible with the transport regime (dominated by personal car-based mobility) but potentially affords a narrower range of sustainability benefits, while mobility substitution (e.g., reducing the need to travel through tele-working or -shopping) may be most challenging for both policy-makers and publics, while potentially addressing a wider range of sustainability problems associated with the transport regime. Shared mobility options sit somewhere in between and challenge certain aspects of the regime (e.g., status associated with car ownership) while offering certain environmental, social and economic benefits. For all three areas of innovation, policy interventions need to address the needs, preferences, experiences and identities of users if they are to be effective and sustainable.
The advent of road transport automation is suggested to be one of four key technological transitions that could amount to a major transformation in mobility practices. Specifically, fully Automated ...Vehicles (AVs) might replace the current private car owner user model with fleets of on-demand synchronously-shared automated taxis. However, significant barriers to this vision becoming the norm remain. This paper examines two critical user-acceptance aspects of the transition: willingness to adopt AVs, and willingness to share an AV with others, particularly strangers. Our novel survey (n = 899) included a choice experiment featuring four future full automation transport services (private, synchronously/asynchronously shared, and public). Cluster analysis examined respondents' preferences and their demographic and psycho-social characteristics. We uncover significant uncertainty about willingness to adopt automation and sharing, and important differences between clusters within our sample. For example, under 50% of participants report willingness to use an AV over their normal mode, or would prefer an automated option to a current human-driven option. Our findings raise critical questions for policymakers and transport authorities. Not least, how can AV technologies help realise the environmental and social benefits of widespread vehicle sharing in a context of a travelling public that still prefers its privacy on-the-move?
The potential health benefits of walking in attractive, predominantly built-up urban settings have not received much attention from scholars, despite the global need to increase walking levels in ...cities. The current experimental study assessed the affective outcomes associated with several urban walking settings, with a focus on the presence of motor-traffic and architectural styles from different historic periods. We employed a mixed within-between subjects design (n = 269) with employees and students from Bristol (UK) and measured relaxation and hedonic tone experiences, perceived restorativeness, and environmental perceptions following exposures to one of five urban settings. Results identified three categories of affective outcomes, rather than the classic dichotomy ‘urban vs natural’: the simulated walks in areas with greenery rated significantly better than the others; however, the pedestrianised settings were associated with neutral or positive affective outcomes and perceptions, with statistically significant differences with an area with traffic. These results suggest that walking in high-quality urban settings can have positive outcomes, and highlight the negative role of traffic and the potential benefits of historic elements in the affective walking experience. From a policy perspective, the findings strengthen the case for traffic removal, and indicate that exposure to high quality urban design that includes some natural elements can offer the same affective benefits offered by large green spaces.
•Experiment comparing wellbeing potential of exposure to different urban walking settings•Three pedestrianised areas associated with affective benefits•Area with traffic associated with negative affective outcomes•Historic elements might contribute to affect and restoration•Traffic removal and historic elements can improve affective walking experiences
The Colorado River below Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water for approximately 20,000,000 people, is contaminated by ammonium perchlorate. We identified populations who were exposed and ...unexposed to perchlorate-contaminated dunking water and compared median newborn thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels after adjusting for age in days at measurement and for race/ethnicity. Median newborn TSH levels in a city whose dunking water supply was 100% perchlorate-contaminated water from the Colorado River below Lake Mead were significantly higher than those in a city totally supplied with non–perchlorate-contaminated dunking water, even after adjusting for factors known or suspected to elevate newborn TSH levels. This ecological study demonstrates a statistically significant association between perchlorate exposure and newborn TSH levels. It suggests that even low-level perchlorate contamination of drinking water may be associated with adverse health effects in neonates and highlights the need for both further study and control of human low-level perchlorate exposure.
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