Recent Methodological Advances in Urban Transportation Planning

Urban transportation planning in transition

A consistent pattern that emerged out of the consequences of COVID-19 is that public transport was hit particularly hard compared to private cars and other modes. This raises concern regarding the future of public transport and the sustainability of urban transport. While the current clash of challenges, trends and disruptions makes the future more difficult to forecast than ever, this chapter highlights both long-term and emerging trends that are likely to influence public transport beyond the pandemic. As a foundation for the discussion, the chapter first briefly outlines the state and development of public transport before COVID-19, as well as the immediate effects of the pandemic. Before COVID-19, strong trends included initiatives towards sustainable urban transport, digitalisation and automation, and increasingly personalised services. The pandemic induced lockdowns, restrictions to use public transport and anxiety towards crowding, which influenced people to travel less and shift to other modes. There were clear socioeconomic inequalities in the ability to do so and a loss of accessibility. Many agencies and operators suffered financially as a result of lost fare revenues and limited governmental support. Emerging trends such as less commuting and financial struggles are likely to influence public transport for many years to come. However, the pandemic, and the induced behaviour and exposed problems that have followed, can serve as a call for substantial changes in urban transport planning. A continued development and integration of sustainable mobility services, with public transport as a central actor, is widely seen as key in this ambition.

The development of U.S. urban transportation policy over the past 50 years illustrates the changing relationship between federal, state, and local governments. This comprehensive text examines the evolution of urban transportation planning from early developments in highway planning in the 1930s to the concern for sustainable development and pollution emissions. Focusing on major national events, the book discusses the influence of legislation, regulations, conferences, federal programs, and advances in planning procedures and technology. The book offers an in-depth look at the most significant event in transportation planning—the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962. Creating a federal mandate for a comprehensive urban transportation planning process carried out cooperatively by states and local governments with federal funding, this act was crucial in the spread of urban transporation. Claiming that urban transportation planning is more sophisticated, costly, and complex than its highway and transit planning predecessors, the book demonstrates how urban transportation planning evolved in response to changes in such factors as environment, energy, development patterns, intergovernmental coordination, and federal transit programs. It further illustrates how broader concerns for global climate change and sustainable development have braided the purview of transportation planning.

Integrating social equity into urban transportation planning: A critical evaluation of equity objectives and measures in transportation plans in North America

Large-scale multimodal transportation network models and algorithms-Part II: Network capacity and network design problem

In this paper, the problem that consists of the four travel choices (i.e., trip generation, trip distribution, modal split, and traffic assignment) with variable demand is deliberately formulated as a non-linear mathematical model. The associated optimality conditions are presented. A heuristic solution algorithm that adopts combined model concept was proposed. By way of supernetwork techniques, each combined model can be addressed as an “extended” traffic assignment problem and solved using any available traffic assignment solution algorithm. As compared with the traditional four-step travel demand forecasting procedure, this heuristic has advantage of considering the travelers' travel behavior throughout the solution procedure and hence more suitable to be applied to the transportation planning applications in the real world.

The design level of urban transportation planning is an important symbol to measure a city's modernization level. Improving the design level is of great significance for the performance of city functions, as well as the development of the regional economy. This paper firstly expounds on the main contents, basic ideas of the planning and the development tendency of current urban transportation planning. It then takes Paris, Hong Kong, and Seoul as examples to show the view's applications in actual traffic planning. Finally, it analyzes the reconstruction of Second Ring Road in Chengdu with the view of putting forward its own opinions.

N ow urban rail transit (URT) plan in China has some problems such as inconsistent with urban overall plan (UOP) and urban transportation plan (UTP). According to such condition, trinity system of UOP, UTP and URT plan is advanced, among which URT plan should be focused on and its system structure is researched on from URT development strategy plan and URT overall plan, and URT overall plan is analyzed from network plan and network control plan. Therefore, URT plan is studied and good plan can produce good URT construction so that healthy and sustainable development of URT can be achieved.

La riorganizzazione del sistema della mobilità è spesso una delle chiavi interpretative più rilevanti nelle scelte di governo delle trasformazioni urbane. Nella gran parte degli interventi di trasformazione urbana orientati alla riqualificazione della città il ruolo delle scelte connesse al sistema della mobilità è sempre più incidente anche per la definizione del disegno urbano delle aree di trasformazione, ma soprattutto per migliorare l’efficienza e la vivibilità del sistema urbano. Il ruolo della pianificazione del sistema della mobilità rappresenta l’oggetto di questo lavoro. In particolare, l’articolo si sofferma su alcuni piani urbanistici di recente produzione elaborati per città italiane di grandi dimensioni (Roma, Bologna, Milano) per i quali la pianificazione del sistema della mobilità ha costituito l’occasione per rilanciare una nuova visione della città. Gli esempi riportati in questo articolo rappresentano il tentativo di mostrare come, in qualche misura, la pratica urbanistica stia rispondendo alla necessità di integrare obiettivi di sviluppo urbano ed esigenze della pianificazione dei trasporti orientandoli verso obiettivi comuni tesi al raggiungimento di una maggiore vivibilità.

The performance of public transport operations, land-use and urban transport planning in Hong Kong

In 2017, the newly installed Dutch government announced in its coalition agreement to introduce a distance-based heavy goods vehicle charge, similar to the charges levied in other European countries. To study the possible transport impacts, we applied available models and methods in preparation for the introduction of this truck charge in the Netherlands in 2023, in order to present decision information to the government on different aspects of the charge. In this paper we present the analysis of different implementation scenarios for a distance-based truck charge. Different behavioural responses can be expected in terms of freight transport demand, mode choice, logistic efficiency, and route choice. Many studies however lack sufficient detail to properly describe the impact of road charges for HGV on OD flows and freight traffic. In our contribution we explore the bandwidth of impacts of different pricing schemes, using strategic transport models for freight demand and traffic assignment, with detailed modal split and route choice models, ensuring a proper representation of generalsed transport costs. We explain how we use available transport models in an overarching analytical framework to make a comprehensive impact assessment of the different responses, and to decompose the impacts on the different responses. Final impacts are quantified in terms of freight demand (spatial pattern of transport flows), modal split and traffic flows (route choice, and congestion).Depending on the pricing scenario the tonne kilometres decrease by 0.4%–4.8% on average. The modal shift impacts are stronger on longer transport distances: this is explained both by the larger impact of a distance-based charge on these routes, and by higher substitution possibilities to barge or rail. The results indicate that the overall impacts of the introduction of the different charging alternatives are moderate. However, the network impacts at local level can be substantial due to the impact of re-routing of truck trips to avoid charge.

Examining the clustering characteristics and fluctuations within urban areas during peak hours through the lens of bike-sharing is of utmost importance in the optimization of bike-sharing systems and urban transportation planning. This investigation adopts the principles of urban spatial interaction network construction and employs streets as the fundamental units of analysis to model bike-sharing activities during morning and evening peak hours within Beijing’s six central districts. Subsequent to this, a comprehensive analysis of the network’s structural attributes was carried out. A Walktrap method, rooted in modularity analysis, was introduced to discern and scrutinize the clustering patterns and characteristics of communities within the network across different temporal intervals. Empirical findings reveal a predominant usage pattern of shared bicycles for short-distance travel during both morning and evening peak hours. Notably, distinctive community structures manifest during these periods, characterized by two large communities and multiple smaller ones during the morning peak, while the evening peak showcases a single large community alongside several medium-sized and smaller ones. Moreover, the extended interaction radius points to an expanded geographic range of interactions among streets. These findings bear significant implications for the management of urban transportation, bike-sharing enterprises, and urban residents, proffering valuable insights for the optimization of bike-sharing schemes and transportation strategies. These research findings not only contribute to enhancing urban transportation planning and bike-sharing systems but also provide robust guidance for advancing more efficient and sustainable urban transportation solutions, thereby fostering the sustainable development of cities.

Transportation planning is changing. What used to be a concern with motorized vehicles only is evolving into a discipline dealing with multimodal systems where priority is given to transit and nonmotorized means of transport, chief among them being walking. The city of Bat Yam in Israel has chosen to pioneer planning for pedestrians as an integral component of its transportation master plan. This article presents a novel use of pedestrian movement modeling within urban transportation planning, by means of pedestrian movement volume prediction maps for the city, both at its current state today and at its future state planned for the year 2030. The study shows that a pedestrian movement distribution can be explained mainly by the spatial variables that represent properties of a street network. Changes to this network structure are relatively rare, and, therefore, pedestrian movement will not change in a fundamental way in the future. Furthermore, by overlaying the models for pedestrian movement and motorized traffic, as well as the underlying public transit and bicycle networks, focus can be on those streets and places where conflicts among the various road users (i.e., pedestrians, bicycles, transit vehicles, and private cars) are expected.

A combined land use-transportation model when zonal travel demand is endogenously determined

Factors influencing the residential location choice of individuals working at an integrated township