► Since 2000 cycling has increased and safety has improved in both the USA and Canada. ► There is much spatial variation and socioeconomic inequality in cycling rates. ► Cycling rates are more than ...twice as high in Canada as in the USA. ► Cities have greatly expanded their bike infrastructure and programs since 1990. ► Portland is a model of integrated, comprehensive cycling policies in North America.
This paper reviews trends in cycling levels, safety, and policies in Canada and the USA over the past two decades. We analyze aggregate data for the two countries as well as city-specific case study data for nine large cities (Chicago, Minneapolis, Montréal, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington). Cycling levels have increased in both the USA and Canada, while cyclist fatalities have fallen. There is much spatial variation and socioeconomic inequality in cycling rates. The bike share of work commuters is more than twice as high in Canada as in the USA, and is higher in the western parts of both countries. Cycling is concentrated in central cities, especially near universities and in gentrified neighborhoods near the city center. Almost all the growth in cycling in the USA has been among men between 25–64
years old, while cycling rates have remained steady among women and fallen sharply for children. Cycling rates have risen much faster in the nine case study cities than in their countries as a whole, at least doubling in all the cities since 1990. They have implemented a wide range of infrastructure and programs to promote cycling and increase cycling safety: expanded and improved bike lanes and paths, traffic calming, parking, bike-transit integration, bike sharing, training programs, and promotional events. We describe the specific accomplishments of the nine case study cities, focusing on each city’s innovations and lessons for other cities trying to increase cycling. Portland’s comprehensive package of cycling policies has succeeded in raising cycling levels 6-fold and provides an example that other North American cities can follow.
•We use qualitative research to explore transport access to bridge jobs.•Bridge jobs in later ages are informal and outside social protection policies.•Isolated housing, gender norms and transport ...infrastructures reduce access.•Shrinking labour geographies in cities can push older adults into poverty.
In developing countries, a substantial share of the older population is employed (WHO, 2007), which is anticipated to triple between 2020 and 2050, bolstered by the rise of bridge employment in later life. Bridge jobs are part-time, informal work arrangements that serve as a transitional phase between full-time employment and retirement. While transport access for older adults is a primary policy concern in the age-friendly cities framework, their experiences of encountering and negotiating labour geographies, particularly transport systems to access bridge employment, are understudied.
This paper used a qualitative and interpretative approach to analyse how older adults engage in nonlinear work patterns and commute to workspaces. We use a combination of visual mapping, observations, and in-depth interviews with older adults in Bengaluru, an urban metropolis in southern India.
Older workers engage in regular mobility routines to access informal bridge jobs. Our results suggest that the precarity of their bridge jobs permeates into their mobilities. Class, gender, and spatialities create additional layers of barriers to their already constrained transport resources. Economically disadvantaged older individuals encountered shrinking labour geographies due to unaffordable public transportation and first-and-last-mile journeys. For reasons of safety, older women were forced to depend on shared and public transport options, which were often unreliable. Lastly, older workers residing in geographically marginalised areas find more difficulty in organising transport to bridge jobs.
Bridge jobs in informal arrangements are important means of livelihood for older persons in countries like India. Apart from the already precarious working conditions, the weak systemic transport support induces strain on the working conditions of older workers. From the purview of labour geography, adding to the natural limits of ageing, induced limits such as ageism and precarity at workplaces and non-age-friendly transport infrastructure create situations of vulnerable employment among older adults in the cities of the Global South.
This paper discusses the dual role of the transport sector in the Covid-19 pandemic: spreading the virus around the world and being most negatively impacted by the pandemic. This paper describes and ...analyzes the following: (a) actions taken by the governments and international community in order to control the spreading and to alleviate negative economic impacts including massive fiscal and monetary stimulus funding; (b) detailed discussions on the impacts of the pandemic on air transport, rail and bus transport, and urban transit, and major countries’ responses to reduce the negative effects; (c) discussions on the positive effects of the pandemic on the environment and climate change by suggesting policy measures in order to make it sustainable over the long term. Finally, the paper addresses social acceptance issue of the behavioral changes necessary in the post-pandemic world, in particular reflecting historical experience of the Spanish flu case. We end the paper with some observations and discussion of the normative issues for a sustainable development of the transport sector.
•The impacts of three Covid-19 waves on the world economies have enforced many countries to start large stimulus packages.•The negative impacts on transportation activities are severe for aviation, rail and public transit.•Car travel is on the way of recovering while biking rides are increasing and parcel services are booming.•It will be difficult for mass transport modes to return to previous Covid growth paths because of reduced confidence of passengers.
The United States is currently in the midst of a micro-mobility revolution of sorts. Almost overnight, U.S. cities have been inundated with short-term rental scooters owned and operated by start-up ...companies promising a disruption to the urban transportation status-quo. These scooter-share services are presented as a dockless alternative to traditionally government-funded, docking station-based bike-sharing programs. Given the rapid rise of electric scooter companies, and how little is known about their operations, there is pressing public interest in understanding the impact of these transportation-sharing platforms. By exploring the nuanced spatial and temporal activity patterns of each of these platforms, this research identifies differences and similarities between dockless e-scooters and existing bike-sharing services. The findings from this research contribute to our understanding of urban transportation behavior and differences within mobility platforms.
•Little is understood about the impact of scooter-share on existing city services.•Spatiotemporal usage patterns of scooter-share are compared with existing bike-share.•Results indicate that the two services are used in substantially different ways.•Membership bike-share usage reflects commuter behavior with scooter-share less so.
This paper proposes a hierarchical Bayesian network model (BNM) to quantitatively evaluate the resilience of urban transportation systems. Based on systemic thinking and taking a sustainability ...perspective, we investigate the long-term resilience of the road transportation systems in four cities in China from 1998 to 2017, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing, respectively. The model takes into account various factors collected from multi-source data platforms involved in stages of design, construction, operation, management, and innovation in road transportation systems. We test the model with the forward inference, sensitivity analysis, and backward inference. The result shows that the overall resilience scores of all four cities’ transportation systems are within a moderate range with values between 49% to 59%. Although they all have an ever-increasing economic level, the levels of transportation resilience in Beijing and Tianjin decrease first and then gradually increase in a long run, which indicates a strong multi-dimensional, dynamic, and non-linear characteristic in resilience-economic coupling effect. Additionally, the results obtained from the sensitivity analysis and backward inference suggest that decision makers should pay more attention to the capabilities of quickly rebuilding and making changes to cope with future disturbances. As an exploratory study, this study clarifies the concepts of long-term multi-dimensional resilience and specific hazard-related resilience and provides an effective decision-support tool for stakeholders when building resilient infrastructure.
•A novel BNM is proposed to evaluate multi-faceted transportation resilience.•Forward inference, sensitivity tests, and backward inference are conducted.•Long-term transportation resilience is highly dynamic in the tested cities.•The coupling effects of resilience with economic level is not always linear.•Abilities to rebuild and adapt through reconfiguration are of importance.
Urban transport sector's transition to cleaner energy is needed to help stop global warming. To reduce the sector's dependence on fossil fuels, government are promoting green mode of transportation ...and it can help reduce air pollution in cities. Our study examines Chinese consumers' environmental awareness and attitude toward new energy vehicle (NEV) policy, and its impact on their attitude toward NEV. Using the theories of planned behavior and social exchange we examine the relative impact of Chinese consumers' attitude toward NEV, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on their purchase intention. Our findings show that consumers' favorable attitude toward government policy and environmental awareness improves the consumers' attitude toward NEV, and a positive attitude toward NEV and the impact of social pressures or evaluations of early adopters help the transition to cleaner energy use by increasing the adoption of NEV. And this study suggests that consumers' education level has a significant moderating effect on their NEV purchase intentions. The study findings provide direction for the government's NEV promotion and application policy for city residents.
•Consumers’ favorable attitude towards government policy and environmental awareness improves the consumers’ attitude towards NEVs.•Education level has a significant moderating effect on consumers' new energy vehicles purchase intentions.
Mobility growth poses considerable challenges to city planners around the world, as it entails problems of congestion, air pollution, and accidents. Many cities have thus sought to increase the share ...of sustainable transport, and specifically travel by bicycle. However, it appears that measures to foster cycling are often implemented on an ad hoc basis, lacking strategic focus and a more profound understanding of bicycle cultures. New insights can be gained from Copenhagen, Denmark, a selfdeclared City of Cyclists that has made considerable progress towards increasing the share of travel by bicycle, with the political goal to become the "world's best city for bicycling". In this article, the success, reproducibility and limitations of the Copenhagen bicycle strategy are discussed in an urban transport transitions framework, based on a content- and discourse analysis of the city's official documents to assess the respective role of market-based, command-and-control, and soft policy measures in encouraging bicycling. Results suggest that soft policies, integrated with command-and-control measures, and the consideration of bicyclist expectations and concerns with regard to perceptions of safety, speed and comfort have been key in achieving high bicycle trip shares. Integrating these in comprehensive planning frameworks appears to be an approach that is more likely to foster bicycle cultures that can result in urban transport transitions.
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