The geography of freight-related accidents in the era of E-commerce: Evidence from the Los Angeles metropolitan area

Due to the burgeoning demand for freight movement in the era of e-commerce, freight related road safety threats have been growing in both urban and suburban areas, despite the improved general traffic safety over the past decades. The empirical evidence on how freight trucks related crashes are distributed across neighborhoods and correlated to spatially varying factors is, however, highly limited. This article uses data from the Los Angeles region in 2018 to analyze the spatial patterns of freight trucks related traffic crashes and examines the major factors that contribute to those patterns using spatial econometric models. Maps show that freight trucks related crashes are highly associated with major freight generators but less clustered than the overall traffic crashes. Results from the spatial Durbin model indicate that access to freight generators, economic attributes, land uses, road infrastructure, and road network variables all contribute to the spatial distribution of freight trucks related crashes. The findings could help transport planners understand the dynamics of freight trucks related traffic safety and develop operational measures for mitigating the impacts of growing goods movement on local communities.     

Towards a holistic framework for road safety in Australia

Current road safety programs and thinking in Australia are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. Such programs therefore, favour symptomatic solutions and technical and/or physical solutions as a way forward. Fundamental redesign of cultural arrangements is necessary in order to challenge the “culture of speed”. Our research is developing a holistic, social ecological model for reconnecting road safety with communities that value quality of life and slower ways of being. Improving road safety through reduction in the volume and speed of motorised traffic is integrally related to enhancing health and fitness, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving neighbourhood planning and community cohesion. In this regard, community-based travel behaviour change initiatives are deserving of much greater attention in the road safety area. As well as these changes at the personal and community scale, policy changes to urban and transport planning that address the broader issues of sustainability in an era of climate change and peak oil can also be linked to improvements in road safety.     

Towards a theory of decoupling: degrees of decoupling in the EU and the case of road traffic in Finland between 1970 and 2001

Traditionally, the transport literature reflects the view that traffic volumes, road traffic volumes in particular, are coupled with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Recently published literature also argues that the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from transport, passenger cars in particular, have not shown any decoupling from transport volumes for some years. This article presents a theoretical framework for decoupling, defining the difference between decoupling, coupling and negative decoupling. These are further broken down to weak, strong and expansive/recessive degrees of decoupling, laying emphasis on the absolute increase or decrease of the variables. The result section presents data of the development of the relationships between GDP, traffic volumes and CO₂ emissions from transport in the EU15 countries between 1970 and 2001, including the special case of Finnish road traffic. The aggregate EU15 data show a change from expansive negative decoupling to expansive coupling regarding passenger transport, and from weak decoupling to expansive negative decoupling regarding freight transport. Weak decoupling of transport CO₂ emissions from GDP could also be observed. Weak decoupling of all the three aspects (freight, passenger and CO₂) could be seen in the UK, Sweden and Finland in the 1990s. In Finland, the statistics show weak decoupling of GDP from road traffic volume and strong decoupling of road traffic volume and CO₂ emissions from road traffic between 1990 and 2001. Four hypothetical explanations of the Finnish phenomenon are put forward in this article: policy towards sustainable mobility, green urban lifestyle, increasing income differences, and statistical misinterpretation. Each explanation is backed up with some quantitative evidence in observable trends in Finland during the 1990s.     

A zonal level safety investigation of pedestrian crashes in Riyadh,Saudi Arabia

In the recent decade, walking has been encouraged as an active mode of transportation, which could reduce congestion and air pollution and also improve community health. However, pedestrians are more vulnerable to traffic crashes compared with other road users, especially in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia. This paper examines the association among traffic volume, land-use, socio-demographic and roadway characteristics factors, and the frequency of pedestrian crashes based on macro-level safety analysis using data from Riyadh, the Capital of Saudi Arabia. Two Bayesian spatial Poisson-lognormal models for total and severe pedestrian crashes are developed in this study. The results show that the factors that affect total pedestrian crash occurrence are different from those affecting severe pedestrian crash. Several implications for pedestrian safety policies in Riyadh are suggested based on the results.     

Making urban road pricing acceptable and effective: searching for quality and equity in urban mobility

Urban Road Pricing has been proposed many times as a powerful instrument to fight congestion in urban traffic, but has systematically faced a hostile political envirionment, due to lack of confidence on its promised (traffic) results and fear of its political consequences. Lack of action in this front is contributing to stable or even growing congestion problems in most large cities.This paper tries to address the problem with a fresh look at the objectives of road pricing and at the reasons for that political hostility. For managing and developing the urban mobility system, efficiency and equity are normally taken as the basic economic objectives. Sustainability objectives may be integrated in the efficiency objective if we are able to represent adequately the costs of the resources consumed in the process. Political hostility is normally based on having to pay for what was freely available, and on the risk of exclusion for those with little revenue available for the extra cost of driving into the city.Pursuit of efficency leads to suggestion of marginal social cost pricing but this is hard to explain to the public and application of this principle is fraught with pitfalls since some components of that cost get smaller as traffic grows (noise related costs for example). Pricing is still a good option but the objective has to be something easier to understand and to serve as a target for mobility managers. That “new” objective is quality of the mobility system, with a meaning similar to that of “level of service” in traffic engineering, and prices should be managed to across space, time and transport modes in such a way that provision of service is made with good quality in all components.Pursuit of equity leads to some form of rationing, which has often been associated with high transaction costs and abuse by the administrators. But the use of electronic road pricing should allow easy ways to address the rationing process without such high costs. The basic proposition is that all local taxpayers receive as a direct restitution of their tax contribution a certain amount of “mobility rights”, which can be used both for private car driving in the tolled areas and for riding public transport.These principles are easily applicable with a variety of technical solutions for road pricing, from the simplest cordon pricing to the more sophisticated “pay-as-you-go” schemes. The paper addresses this question of implementation and argues for increasingly sophisticated schemes, as people get accustomed to the principles and finer targeting of demand segments may be needed.     

Hot or not? The role of cycling in ASEAN megacities: Case studies of Bangkok and Manila

The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recognizes the role of nonmotorized transport for sustainable urban development in its policy framework. National and local policymakers in Thailand and The Philippines, two tropical countries without a tradition of urban cycling, are increasingly paying attention to cycling as well. This article aims to assess the current situation and progress in cycling, using Bangkok and Metropolitan Manila as case study cities, and to describe the necessary conditions for advancing the significance of cycling in tropical megacities. This is done by operationalizing the so-called Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) framework, which has been used in transition studies since 2008, however, never for cycling. As such this article also “tests” this framework for its application in sustainable transportation. The two case studies are characterized with regards to the current role of cycling in the mobility system, its infrastructure, governance system, and existing research on the potential and barriers. We find that TIS can readily be applied to our cases, with the analysis showing that elements such as knowledge development, actor networks, e-bike adoption, infrastructure, resource mobilization and legitimation are not well developed; on the other hand, flat terrain, attention for cycling for health and environment, heavy congestion, expansion of public transport, growing bike industry, active university communities, and the emergence of advocacy coalitions, could open up opportunities for increasing its modal share.     

Accelerating sustainable mobility and land-use transitions in rapidly growing cities: Identifying common patterns and enabling factors

Urban growth has been increasing rapidly across the globe, in particular in low and middle-income developing countries. As city populations and GDP per capita rise exponentially, cities tend to experience similar challenges related to urban development and transport/mobility.One of the most problematic issues emerges when urban growth drives car-oriented urban development. This is characterised by a range of unsustainable patterns such as low-density development, urban sprawl, lack of plans and infrastructure to accommodate collective transport and active travel, and significant efforts and investments to meet the demand for private motorised vehicle use. For emergent cities, the risk is that these developments lead to highly inefficient, unhealthy and unsustainable urban systems that are difficult to remedy.This paper aims to identify recurrent governance and policy factors across sectors, as well as macro factors, that tend to contribute to car-dependent urban mobility systems in rapidly growing cities. It draws on qualitative and quantitative research findings from five under-researched Eastern European and Middle Eastern cities: Tallinn, Bucharest, Skopje, Adana and Amman. Data examining the evolution of urban mobility in these cities were collected as part of the Horizon2020 EU funded project CREATE.The paper investigates the extent to which car-dependent urban development processes can be avoided in rapidly growing cities, to support transitions towards liveable and sustainable cities. Finally, it provides policy recommendations targeting growing cities with low levels of car-use, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the importance of acting swiftly to achieve targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda or the Paris Agreement, by supporting policies fostering efficient, sustainable and inclusive urban mobility and land-use across sectors and levels of governance.     

The safe mobility of older drivers: a challenge for urban road designers

For many older adults in most of the Western world, continued mobility (with associated health, well-being, independence and quality of life) means access to a private vehicle, either as a driver or as a passenger. However older driver serious injury and fatality rates per distance travelled are higher than middle-aged drivers, and crash and injury rates are likely to increase in the coming decades as a result of the ageing population, increased car ownership and overall travel amongst older people. Evidence suggests that contributory factors to this high risk are (for most) frailty, (for some) the high proportion of driving in urban areas, and (for a few) reduced fitness to drive as a result of medical conditions and associated functional limitations. Australasia has recently adopted the ‘Safe System’ approach which aims to manage vehicles, the road infrastructure, speeds, and the interactions between these components, to ensure that when crashes do occur, crash energies will remain at levels that minimize the probability of death and serious injury. A system which aspires to achieving Safe System objectives cannot ignore the challenges that older road users pose – and will pose – to the transport system. This paper discusses the so-called ‘older driver problem’, presents crash data and evidence of the impacts of driving location and reduced fitness to drive on crash risk, and recommends countermeasures within the ‘Safe System’ context, with particular reference to urban road design and operation.     

Socioeconomic differences in public acceptability and car use adaptation towards urban road pricing

Urban road pricing is regarded as an effective instrument to reduce traffic congestion and environmental-related problems in metropolitan areas. Whereas the overall impact of urban road pricing on car use adaptation and public acceptability is known, there are only inconsistent results concerning the socioeconomic differences in the response towards road pricing. However, this knowledge is necessary for the development of urban road pricing packages. This paper uses a segmentation approach to identify groups of car users with a similar background in relevant socioeconomic variables and compares their responses towards road pricing. Three groups are identified: young families, suburban families, and singles and couples. These groups indeed differ in their car use adaptation towards urban road pricing as well as in their preferred revenues use. While all three groups significantly reduced their private car use, the young families reduced their car use most, followed by the group of singles and couples. Complementary measures are discussed that are believed to facilitate car use adaptation of each group in response towards urban road pricing.     

Local authority and academic attitudes to urban road pricing: a UK perspective

Urban road pricing as an instrument of traffic management has generated a great deal of interest in the UK in recent years. Whilst this is the case there is still no urban road pricing scheme in operation in the UK. The reason for this is primarily one of ‘acceptability.’ This paper, through the use of a national survey, examines the attitudes of key stakeholder groups with respect to urban road pricing. How serious is traffic congestion and traffic related pollution perceived to be by Local Authority Councillors, Officials and the Academic community in the UK? How is urban road pricing viewed by this sub-group of the population in terms of its effectiveness and public acceptance when compared to other policy options? and how could the saleability of urban road pricing be improved? This raises issues in terms of how the revenue raised from urban road pricing should be utilised, the use of urban road pricing as part of a package of measures, the concerns expressed by the stakeholders with respect to urban road pricing, such as the invasion of road users’ privacy, and the type of technology which should be considered. Overall, the paper aims to further the debate among policy makers.     

The factors in residents' mobility in rural towns of China: Car ownership,road infrastructure and public transport services

The improvement of rural people's mobility in developing countries has informed many policies. Still, debates remain on which policies are efficient, for instance, building more roads, providing public transport or promoting car ownership. The empirical evidence for these debates at the national level remains scarce. As a result, this paper aims to provide fresh evidence for discussions by examining residents' mobility in China using nationwide survey data with 12,524 respondents from 119 rural towns. The results of the analysis show car ownership is the most significant factor influencing rural people's mobility than other factors. Higher car ownership relates to a higher travel frequency to counties or cities. Other kinds of transport vehicles (i.e. electric cars, motorcycles and electric bikes) also have positive but relatively weaker impacts on rural mobility. For public transport, it is more accessible to access bus stops, which encourages travel to higher-order centres rather than increasing the frequency of county bus services. The accessibility of high-quality road systems tends to have a negative influence and has combined effects with levels of local services. People from towns with insufficient local services and poor access to highways travel the most frequently to higher-order centres. This study highlights the critical role of road investments and car ownership enhancement policies in improving mobility. Moreover, this study also underscores the supplemental role of public transport services given the current low car ownership rates in rural towns of China and the global consensus on sustainable green transport development. It highlights the importance of engaging eco-friendly and locally adaptive transport alternatives, such as electric cars and electric bikes. It also calls for a rational distribution of bus stops and more flexible, convenient, and physically accessible public transport and carshare modes in rural China.     

The Contribution of Tourists and Visitors to Road Traffic Accidents: A Preliminary Analysis of Trends and Issues for Central Scotland

This paper reviews the literature on road traffic accidents and their role in the mobility of tourists within discernible regions of activity. The paper builds upon knowledge developed in the tourism, transportation and safety science areas of research to illustrate the significance of these issues in relation to tourist well-being, and argues that multidisciplinary perspectives informed by different cognate areas of research combined with interactive research with public sector agencies such as the police, can make major contributions to the formulation of policy and actions to improve tourist and visitor safety. Using a police derived data source permits analysis and discussion of the key issues facing leisure-related (in which tourism is subsumed) and non-leisure-related traffic in one region of Scotland. Through a regional analysis of the available data sources it is possible to identify areas of action for agencies.     

Using triangulation to assess a suite of tools to measure community severance

There is a lack of tools to identify and measure community severance caused by large roads and motorised traffic, despite the evidence of its negative impacts on local communities. This paper reports the development of a suite of tools to measure and value community severance, undertaken as a part of the Street Mobility and Network Accessibility research project. The tools include participatory mapping, spatial analysis, a video survey, street audits, a health and neighbourhood mobility survey, and a valuation tool based on a stated preference survey. They were tested in the area around Finchley Road, a busy arterial road in North London. The study found that Finchley Road is an unpleasant place for pedestrians due to high traffic levels, air and noise pollution, and the lack and poor quality of pedestrian crossing facilities. This has a negative impact on the mobility and accessibility of local residents and, to some extent, on their health and wellbeing. The analysis showed coherence between the findings from the different measurement tools applied individually, but also revealed interconnections between factors which contribute to severance, demonstrating that overall the suite is reliable for assessing community severance in urban areas. Overall, the paper provides a multidisciplinary approach to developing standardised methods to measure a negative impact of transport that is still relatively unknown.     

Attitudes,norms and difficulties underlying road sharing intentions as drivers and cyclists: Evidence from the Czech Republic

Cycling-inclusive urban planning is attracting attention worldwide because of the environmental, health, economic, and transport benefits inherent to cycling from the individual and the societal perspectives. The Czech Republic is one of the emerging cycling countries that are trying to promote and support cycling, but cycling mode shares are low because of the poor quality of the scarce infrastructure and the psychological barrier of the perceived lack of safety when cycling in mixed traffic. This study takes a multimodal approach based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and focuses on the factors underlying the willingness to share the road from the perspective of cyclists and drivers: positive attitudes toward cycling, positive attitudes toward cyclists’ behavior, social norms toward cycling and anxiety to share the road. A web-based questionnaire was tailor-designed and administered in the Czech Republic via social networks, web forums, and the Civinet network, and a hybrid bivariate-ordered model tested the behavioral framework. Results show that the willingness to share the road as a cyclist or as a driver relates positively to positive attitudes towards cycling and cyclists’ behavior, and negatively to the anxiety of sharing the road. Moreover, mediator effects are observed and a clear relation emerges between the experience on the road as both a cyclist and a driver on the willingness to share the road as a cyclist. Lastly, results show that the factors underlying road sharing intentions are related significantly to gender, travel habits, and perceived personal and infrastructure-related barriers to cycling.     

How can GPS/GNSS tracking data be used to improve our understanding of informal transport? A discussion based on a feasibility study from Dar es Salaam

Informal transport is an important factor for people's daily mobility in most developing countries, in urban as well as in rural areas. It has grown rapidly in recent years and influences cities' appearances all around the world. But little is known about its operation, as informal transport is highly dynamic and its operation mostly unregulated by the state. This paper discusses how informal transport can be better understood by using GPS tracking data. The methodology is exemplified using results from a feasibility study from Dar es Salaam. The results show that GPS tracking has great potential to provide insights into the functionality of informal transport, such as its role as a feeder mode in the transport system, as well as into the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different modes of transport. Moreover, by delivering spatially locatable information on mobility developments, it can deliver important information for integrated planning with regard to better coordinating the interwoven developments of urban settlements, growing mobility demand, and transport supply.     

Livelihoods in motion: Linking transport,mobility and income-generating activities

During the past decade, there has been an increased focus on mobility in the social sciences linked to the so-called ‘mobility turn’, which claims that as mobility is so pervasive it should not be viewed as a rupture in society but as a normal way of life. This is certainly the case in urban contexts of sub-Saharan Africa where mobility forms an integral part of livelihood and income-generating activities. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research conducted in Accra, the capital of Ghana, this paper explores the mobility of urban residents in differing parts of the city in relation to their livelihood strategies. Through illustrating the ways in which the mobility of urban residents is aided or hindered by Accra's transport system, and by examining how this in turn influences their livelihood strategies, the paper contributes to an alternative new mobilities paradigm that is more considerate of, and builds upon insights from, the global South where such research has a longer pedigree than in the global North.     

Road accessibility and articulation of metropolitan spatial structures: the case of Madrid (Spain)

In the last few decades, rapid growth in mobility has facilitated the inclusion of distant places in metropolitan processes and the modification of traditional metropolitan areas into Polycentric Urban Regions. This paper aims to understand the articulation of metropolitan urban regions through a diachronic road network accessibility analysis with a focus on the Madrid Metropolitan Region (Spain) over a period of general increase in accessibility. The findings reveal that the metropolitan core has been reinforced and that its influence area has expanded. However, the main contribution of this work is the proposal of a methodological approach to identify city-profiles among the sub-centres organising the emerging polycentric urban structures.     

Access to the city: Mobility patterns,transport and accessibility in peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam

This paper is concerned with access to the city for urban residents living in the periphery of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The paper presents an analysis of the mobility practices of residents and investigates the mobility constraints they experience in relation to the limited accessibility provided by the urban transport system. The paper draws upon qualitative interviews with residents in the periphery as well as recently collected travel speed data and offers a unique combination of testimony with GIS-based modelling of overall accessibility. A central finding is the overall importance of regular mobility and access to the city for residents in the periphery. Regular mobility is an ingrained part of residents' livelihood strategies. The majority of households rely on one or more members regularly travelling to central parts of the city in relation to their livelihood activities. The analysis reveals a widespread, near-to-universal, dependence on motorized transportation, with the vast majority depending on public transport. Raster-based modelling of overall accessibility provides an indication of the very high travel times endured by residents in the periphery. The analysis identifies and distinguishes between three overall mode types: 1) Private car, 2) public transport and 3) motorcycle/car combined with public transport. While private cars appear marginally faster, differences in travel times are actually limited. This suggests that travel times are less influenced by mode of transport than by road and traffic conditions and highlights how accessibility problems of peripheral settlements are not easily understood separately from the general dysfunctions of the overall mobility system of city.     

The safety impact of land use changes resulting from bypass road constructions

This paper analyzes the effect of bypass construction on road safety, specifically crash rates on bypass segments and in bypassed communities. It further investigates the effect of bypass construction on those communities’ economic development through changes in the number and spatial distribution of businesses and residential development, and examines whether these changes affect the road-safety level. Finally, it evaluates the effect on road safety of various traffic arrangements implemented in such communities. Drawing on an extensive data collection, the study focuses on Arab cities in the Galilee region of Israel, using cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis.The results show that bypass construction does not necessarily reduce overall crash frequencies or crash rates. It merely shifts road crashes from the highways (the bypass roads) to inner roads (bypassed) and from there to local traffic, with no significant reduction. The findings indicate a large variance in the effects of bypass constructions on safety.     

Does low income translate into lower mobility? An investigation of activity space in Hong Kong between 2002 and 2011

Daily mobility of disadvantaged social groups, particularly low-income people, has gained increasing interest since the daily life of these people may encounter significant constraints that lead to certain social issues such as social exclusion and segregation. The concept and measure of activity space have been applied to measure the spatial barriers and inequalities faced by the low-income group in their daily life. However, research on how the daily mobility of different social strata has evolved over a longer period in parallel with urban development has been very limited. This study aims to address these gaps by investigating the activity space of the low-income group in comparison with other income groups in Hong Kong from 2002 to 2011, a period when several subway lines were opened. Four indicators were employed to capture the spatial extent and diversity of activity space. Propensity score matching was used to compare the activity space and mobility of the low-income group with those of the below-average and higher-income groups, while controlling for several confounding factors. The findings indicate that the activity space of the low-income people has not improved over the decade, despite some marked expansion of public transport infrastructure and urban development. In addition, a persistent gap in activity space between the low-income group and other income groups has remained stark in both urban areas and the new towns. Policy recommendations are put forward with a view to improving the daily mobility of the low-income group, with avenues for future research identified as well.