Search Results (9)

Mobility hubs (MHs), where various transport modes converge, are increasingly being implemented as a key policy strategy to promote sustainable travel behavior. The existing literature is rich with proposals for various types of MH and suitable siting locations for them. However, studies comparing the role of land use patterns on the performance of different types of MH are scarce. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing transit patronage and active mode share as performance indicators of MHs. It compares the effects of land use patterns on the performance of different types of MH classified by the nature of transport integration (e.g., train-tram-bus, train-tram, and train-bus) in different contexts (e.g., city district and suburb) in the Greater Melbourne Area, Australia. Results show that MHs enhance the use of transit and active transport modes for commuting purposes by up to 279% and 17%, respectively, compared to a unimodal train station, with maximum usage observed in a train-tram-bus hub, followed by train-tram and train-bus hubs. However, the underlying land use patterns significantly affect their performance. Specifically, each additional hectare of commercial land within the catchment of a train-tram-bus MH in the city district, a train-tram-bus MH in a suburban area, a train-tram MH in a suburban area, and a train-bus MH in a suburban area increases transit patronage by 6%, 9%, 5%, and 4%, respectively. These findings suggest that MH typologies should be designed in tandem with supportive land uses to maximize sustainable travel behavior. The findings inform urban and transport planners in designing optimal land use patterns for different types of MH to maximize sustainable travel behavior. They also support the development of tailored land use zoning policies to enhance the effectiveness of MHs. Full article

This review paper examines the appropriateness of a hyperloop line between Mumbai and Pune in India, examining, in particular, its potential economic implications and impact on people. This assessment builds on an earlier in-depth examination by the authors of the key urban and transport planning, technical, environmental, economic and human factors surrounding the hyperloop technology. The current detailed analysis of hyperloop’s expected implications in the Mumbai to Pune corridor is based upon use of a wide variety of existing indicative data from many sources, which are sufficient to provide a very broad “first-step” reality testing of hyperloop’s suitability to India. It could be argued that this is precisely the kind of analysis that should have been conducted, or at least made public, prior to committing to hyperloop in India. The paper highlights many negatives concerning hyperloop’s construction and operation, including a very high capital cost compared to other needed urban transport infrastructure projects in India, a potential lack of patronage due to a range of factors and its potentially exclusive upper income patronage cohort. It is concluded that rather than making a costly mistake, India should address current urban mobility challenges and needs such as bus rapid transit (BRT) and metros in its innumerable cities, whose construction costs are vastly lower than the expected cost of a single hyperloop line. Technology, such as the hyperloop, would need time to mature and gain operational experience. Should any corridor be found suitable, there would still need to be a thorough, detailed benefit–cost analysis together with a dedicated examination of the technology’s broader urban planning implications and less tangible factors. Setting aside the ultimate worthiness of hyperloops, India would need to at least achieve certain preconditions before proposing or pursuing such systems in the country. Full article

This research explores the figurative culture that flourished in Sicily during the 12th and 13th centuries, focusing on the interplay between artifacts of different types, materials, techniques and uses. Paintings, sculptures and objects that share a common visual language are analyzed with the aim of highlighting recurring motifs, mutual influences and related sources. The main focus is on the decorative apparatus of the Sacramentary Ms. 52 (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España), one of the most famous illuminated manuscripts from Sicily. The date, origin and patronage of this luxurious liturgical book have been the subject of intense scholarly debate. In order to shed light on these controversial issues, this study re-examines the various hypotheses considered by scholars, taking into account the historical events that affected Sicily from the end of the Norman to the beginning of the Swabian era. This analysis also shows how the decoration of the manuscript fits into the wider dynamics of cultural exchange that characterized Sicily and the Mediterranean during this transitional period. Full article

The transition to net-zero emission urban bus (ZEB) systems is receiving increased attention in research and policymaking. Most studies in this area focus on techno-economic aspects and the views of a narrow group of stakeholders. This offers limited insight into the range of barriers that constrain transitions in real-world contexts. This article offers a political-economic and multi-stakeholder perspective on the technical and non-technical barriers to ZEB transitions within the UK context. It develops a theory-guided empirical case study, informed by stakeholder theory perspectives and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the local bus transportation system. It finds that a transition to net zero will require addressing technical, policy, market, and cooperative barriers across sectors and policy levels. On the one hand, this relates to high costs and performance uncertainties over ZEB technology and infrastructure. On the other hand, it concerns unsustainable bus networks from passenger patronage and coordination perspectives, stakeholder cooperative gaps, and high car use and dependency in urban areas. Policy portfolios and stakeholder collaborations, beyond a ‘net-zero’ and sectoral focus, could tackle barriers to system-level change. Further application of the theoretical framework can contribute to a broader body of knowledge about transition barriers operating in different political and economic contexts. Full article

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the areas of influence of bus stops and the decrease in ridership during COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent initial reopening processes. A novel GIS methodology was developed to determine these characteristics from a large amount of data with high spatial detail and accurately assign them to individual bus stops. After processing the data, several multiple linear regression models were developed to determine the variables related to different activities and changes in mobility during lockdown that may explain the variation in demand owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The characteristics related to population and land use were also studied. The proposed methodology can be used to improve transit planning during exceptional situations, by strengthening public transport in areas with a predictably higher transit demand, instead of uniformly decreasing the availability of public transport services, promoting sustainable mobility. The efficiency of the proposed methodology was shown by performing a case study that analysed the variation in bus demand in A Coruña, Spain. The areas with the highest sustained demand were those with low inhabitant incomes, a high population density, and significant proportions of land use dedicated to hospitals, offices, or supermarkets. Full article

This paper addresses the conditions that can facilitate the long-term effectiveness of civic crowdfunding fundraising strategies. While previous studies have provided a broad picture of the possible conditions for fostering effective fundraising strategies, most have considered the implications of fundraising only for management or only for cultural policy, neglecting an integrated approach that contemplates the needs of both. Thus, this work integrates cultural management and cultural policy perspectives by discussing a specific exploratory case study: Art Bonus, a cultural patronage tax incentive strategy introduced by the Italian government in 2014, which also includes civic crowdfunding features. To the best of our knowledge, Art Bonus is the first national civic crowdfunding platform supported by a national government. As an innovative and unique platform, its analysis is particularly relevant. This work analyzes the system’s functioning and the results obtained in its first years of operation (2014–2016) by accessing the public database relating to the donations transited through the platform. While the initiative effectively channeled more fundraising resources into the cultural sector, the results also illustrate potential points for improving such a system. Full article

In this work, we present a novel approach to understand the quality of public transit system in resource constrained regions using user-generated contents. With growing urban population, it is getting difficult to manage travel demand in an effective way. This problem is more prevalent in developing cities due to lack of budget and proper surveillance system. Due to resource constraints, developing cities have limited infrastructure to monitor transport services. To improve the quality and patronage of public transit system, authorities often use manual travel surveys. But manual surveys often suffer from quality issues. For example, respondents may not provide all the detailed travel information in a manual travel survey. The survey may have sampling bias. Due to close-ended design (specific questions in the questionnaire), lots of relevant information may not be captured in a manual survey process. To address these issues, we investigated if user-generated contents, for example, Twitter data, can be used to understand service quality in Greater Mumbai in India, which can complement existing manual survey process. To do this, we assumed that, if a tweet is relevant to public transport system and contains negative sentiment, then that tweet expresses user’s dissatisfaction towards the public transport service. Since most of the tweets do not have any explicit geolocation, we also presented a model that does not only extract users’ dissatisfaction towards public transit system but also retrieves the spatial context of dissatisfaction and the potential causes that affect the service quality. It is observed that a Random Forest-based model outperforms other machine learning models, while yielding 0.97 precision and 0.88 F1-score. Full article

Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy. Full article

A core contemporary planning approach is the promotion of transit-oriented developments (TODs) and in recent times cities have committed substantial financial investment to encourage sustainable precincts around public transport. Evaluation of the success of TODs is key for continuing the planning efforts. A frequently applied framework for characterizing TODs draws on Bertolini’s Node-Place (N-P) model, enriched through application in various contexts. We offer here an extension to the N-P model, using a case study in a low-density city, Perth, Western Australia. A typology of railway stations is developed using 43 indicators and then linear models are applied to ascertain the association between patronage and station precinct features. The results show that various types of measures are required to increase public transport ridership for the four clusters that emerged from the analysis. Density alone does not lead to increased use of public transport; it must be associated with city-wide accessibility, as well as access/egress to and from the station. Full article