Measures promoting active mobility – walking or cycling – are often seen as an effective strategy to meet multiple urban objectives. The advantages of such behavioural changes cover multiple ...dimensions at public and individual level, including positive impacts on health, safety, climate, economy, environment and air quality. However, there is still a considerable potential for increasing the uptake of active mobility in urban areas. This paper explores the determinants of active mobility choice and compares the demographic, socio-economic and cultural factors that influence it. The methodology combines extensive survey data, an EU-wide transport model and detailed indicators of external costs of transport with a Gradient Boosting Machine Learning approach. The model based scenarios quantify the benefit in terms of external costs savings from increasing active mobility shares. Such savings – at EU level, can reach the amount of 15 billion euro per year for a shift of 10% of trips to active mobility modes.
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•Active mobility can have positive impacts on the society and the environment.•We explore the determinants of active mobility.•We combine data, models and cost indicators with a machine learning approach.•We evaluate external costs savings from increased active mobility shares, in the EU27.•Such savings can reach 15 billion euro per year, for a 10% shift from car to active mobility.
•First study of lifecycle carbon emissions effects of changes in active travel in cities.•Changes in active travel have significant lifecycle carbon emissions benefits.•Active travel substitutes for ...motorized travel – not just additional travel.•Largest benefits from shifts from car to active travel for business, social, commuting.•Methodology, metrics and findings are applicable to many cities across the globe.
Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable and low carbon form of getting from A to B. Yet the net effects of changes in active travel on changes in mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected longitudinal data on daily travel behavior, journey purpose, as well as personal and geospatial characteristics in seven European cities and derived mobility-related lifecycle CO2 emissions over time and space. Statistical modelling of longitudinal panel (n = 1849) data was performed to assess how changes in active travel, the ‘main mode’ of daily travel, and cycling frequency influenced changes in mobility-related lifecycle CO2 emissions.
We found that changes in active travel have significant lifecycle carbon emissions benefits, even in European urban contexts with already high walking and cycling shares. An increase in cycling or walking consistently and independently decreased mobility-related lifecycle CO2 emissions, suggesting that active travel substituted for motorized travel – i.e. the increase was not just additional (induced) travel over and above motorized travel. To illustrate this, an average person cycling 1 trip/day more and driving 1 trip/day less for 200 days a year would decrease mobility-related lifecycle CO2 emissions by about 0.5 tonnes over a year, representing a substantial share of average per capita CO2 emissions from transport. The largest benefits from shifts from car to active travel were for business purposes, followed by social and recreational trips, and commuting to work or place of education. Changes to commuting emissions were more pronounced for those who were younger, lived closer to work and further to a public transport station.
Even if not all car trips could be substituted by active travel the potential for decreasing emissions is considerable and significant. The study gives policy and practice the empirical evidence needed to assess climate change mitigation impacts of urban transport measures and interventions aimed at mode shift to more sustainable modes of transport. Investing in and promoting active travel whilst ‘demoting’ private car ownership and use should be a cornerstone of strategies to meet ‘net zero’ carbon targets, particularly in urban areas, while also reducing inequalities and improving public health and quality of urban life in a post-COVID-19 world.
•How much CO2 can be saved by walking, cycling and e-biking in towns and cities?•Cyclists had 84% lower CO2 emissions from all daily travel than non-cyclists.•Life cycle CO2 emissions decreased by ...14% for each additional cycling trip.•The top 10% of participants were responsible for 59% of life cycle CO2 emissions.•Regular cycling was most strongly associated with reduced life cycle CO2 emissions for commuting and social trips.
Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable form of personal transport. Yet its net effects on mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected travel activity data in seven European cities and derived life cycle CO2 emissions across modes and purposes. Daily mobility-related life cycle CO2 emissions were 3.2 kgCO2 per person, with car travel contributing 70% and cycling 1%. Cyclists had 84% lower life cycle CO2 emissions than non-cyclists. Life cycle CO2 emissions decreased by −14% per additional cycling trip and decreased by −62% for each avoided car trip. An average person who ‘shifted travel modes’ from car to bike decreased life cycle CO2 emissions by 3.2 kgCO2/day. Promoting active travel should be a cornerstone of strategies to meet net zero carbon targets, particularly in urban areas, while also improving public health and quality of urban life.
Recently, a new shared micromobility service has become popular in cities. The service is supplied by a new vehicle, the e-scooter, which is equipped with a dockless security system and electric ...power assistance. The relatively unregulated proliferation of these systems driven by the private sector has resulted in numerous research questions about their repercussions. This paper reviews scientific publications as well as evaluation reports and other technical documents from around the world to provide insights about these issues. In particular, we focus on mobility, consumer perception and environment. Based on this review, we observe several knowledge needs in different directions: deeper comprehension of use patterns, their function in the whole transport system, and appropriate policies, designs and operations for competitive and sustainable shared e-scooter services.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is marked by the consolidation of sustainability as a key guiding principle and an emphasis on cities as a potential solution to global development ...problems. However, in the absence of an agreement on how to implement sustainable development in cities, a set of urban policy solutions and ‘best practices’ became the vehicles through which the sustainable development agenda is spreading worldwide. This article shows that the rapid circulation of Bogotá as a model of sustainable transport since the 2000s reflects an increasing focus of the international development apparatus on urban policy solutions as an arena to achieve global development impacts, what I call the ‘leveraging cities’ logic in this article. This logic emerges at a particular historical conjuncture characterised by: (1) the rising power of global philanthropy to set development agendas; (2) the generalisation of solutionism as a strategy of action among development and philanthropic organisations; and (3) the increasing attention on cities as solutions for global development problems, particularly around sustainability and climate change. By connecting urban policy mobilities debates with development studies this article seeks to unpack the emergence, and the limits, of ‘leveraging cities’ as a proliferating global development practice. These urban policy solutions are far from being a clear framework of action. Rather, their circulation becomes a ‘quick fix’ to frame the problem of sustainable development given the unwillingness of development and philanthropic organisations to intervene in the structural factors and multiple scales that produce environmental degradation and climate change.
“2030年可持续发展议程”的特点是将可持续性作为一项关键指导原则强化，并强调将城市作为解决全球发展问题的潜在办法。然而，由于没有就如何在城市实施可持续发展达成协议，一系列城市政策解决方案和“最佳实践”成为可持续发展议程在全球范围内传播的工具。本文表明，自2000年代以来波哥大作为可持续交通模式的迅速传播，反映了国际发展机制越来越注重城市政策解决方案，将其作为实现全球发展影响的舞台，在这篇文章中我称之为“利用城市”的逻辑。这种逻辑出现在一个特定的历史时期，其特点是：（1）在制定发展议程方面，全球慈善事业的力量崛起；（2）“解决方案主义”作为发展和慈善组织行动战略的普遍化；（3）越来越多地关注城市作为全球发展问题的解决方案，特别是围绕可持续性和气候变化问题。
通过将城市政策流动性辩论与发展研究联系起来，本文旨在揭示“利用城市”作为一种激增的全球发展实践的出现和局限。这些城市政策解决方案远非明确的行动框架。相反，鉴于发展和慈善组织不愿意干预产生环境退化和气候变化的结构因素和多种层面，它们的流行成为了框定可持续发展问题的“快速解决方案”。
Abstract This paper examines the development of urban transport political agendas in three Nordic capital cities, Helsinki, Oslo, and Stockholm, that strive towards urban sustainability. Utilising ...the Multiple Streams framework as a basis for analysis, an overview of local problems, policy solutions, and politics that have characterised transport systems and the related policy development processes over time is constructed. The attention is then drawn towards the points in time where the streams connect, and policy windows occur, to detect formative changes and their enablers towards sustainability. The data consists of 18 semi‐structured expert interviews, conducted amongst municipal policymakers and planners. The results reveal several policy windows that have transformed the local transport systems towards sustainability and an increasingly people‐oriented approach. The relevance of global climate change awareness, international planning trends for liveability and cycling, public pressure, individual political decisions, and establishment of modal hierarchy is evident across the case cities, while car traffic regulation is politically challenging and addressed through very different means at very different times. The findings of this paper outline diverse ways for advancing sustainability in local policy development but also detect methods for politically halting the process.
This paper explores the need for new planning authority practices and structures that can accommodate new policy demands, synergies and approaches to urban management in the UK. Initially it ...considers recent UK government ideas on the integration of transport and land use planning, exploring how the concept has been located carefully in relation to both established and emerging debates about, for example, sustainability, mobility and structures of governance. The paper then moves on to consider the relationship between these concepts in EU transport discourse taking an example from Sweden of what an integrated urban transport policy might look like on the ground. The final section develops a model of integration and applies this analytic construct to assess integration practices and outcomes of urban mobility management at the local authority level in England. The research uncovers implementation failures including duplication of procedures, failures in communication and the lack of clear and resourced responsibilities.
Road transport in cities is one of the main sources of air and noise pollution, lowering the attractiveness of areas of sensitivity, influencing the quality of life and the ability to meet the basic ...needs of users. The reconstruction of the existing road network and introduction of a new, alternative type of transport can radically change the acoustic conditions occurring in a city. As a result of this, an assessment of the noise nuisance of a fragment of the city of Bydgoszcz – a city located in the northern part of Poland – which had undergone changes connected with transportation, was carried out in the work. The influence of a newly-built tram route “Bydgoszcz-Fordon” on the acoustic conditions occurring in its surroundings was assessed. The studies were carried out in two periods of time (2012 and 2019), corresponding to various spatial states of the terrain. The results confirm that the introduction of an alternative transport solution contributed to a decrease in the level of road traffic noise. This occurs as a result of improved road conditions on modernized road segments, the integration of transportation networks and a decrease in the share of individual road vehicle transport. It was also confirmed that a well-designed tram route can influence changes in transportation habits of users and have a positive effect on the attractiveness of residential areas. This is in line with the concept of sustainable urban transport.
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