Search results

Purpose — This chapter examines links between mobility, risk of social exclusion (SE) and well-being and uses its findings to impute a value to improved (or reduced) mobility. It applies the relevant value to show the benefits of the Melbourne route bus network and to estimate loadings on individual services that are required for service user benefits to break-even with service costs.

Methodology — The research findings are based on econometric modelling of risk of SE and well-being, as a function of a range of likely contributory factors. The modelling draws on household travel survey data and on survey data specifically collected on factors thought likely to affect risk of SE and/or well-being. These factors include social capital, sense of community, household income and trip making, together with a range of psychological and personality variables.

Findings — The modelling shows that a reduced risk of SE is associated with increases in social capital, sense of community, household income and trip making. A lower risk of SE, in turn, is associated with improved reported personal well-being, which is also affected by a range of psychological variables and age. The analysis shows that additional trip making is very highly valued and that this value increases as household income declines. A case study that applies the resulting values shows that Melbourne’s route bus services produce benefits almost four times their costs and that the ‘social inclusion’ benefits calculated in this research comprise the largest single benefit component. This result is particularly important in supporting further investment in improved public transport services.

Purpose — The Department for Transport's 2011 GPS National Travel Survey (NTS) pilot study investigated whether personal GPS devices and automated data processing could be used in place of the 7-day paper diary. Using GPS technology could reduce the relatively high burden that the diary places upon respondents, reduce costs and improve data quality.

Design/methodology/approach — Data was collected from c.900 respondents. Practical changes were made to the existing methodology where necessary, including the collection of information to support data processing. Processing was undertaken using the University of Eindhoven's Trace Annotator. Results from the GPS pilot were then compared to those from the main NTS diaries for the same period.

Findings — There were no insurmountable problems using GPS devices to collect data; however, the processed GPS data did not resemble the diary outputs, making GPS unsuitable for the NTS. The GPS data produced fewer and longer trips than the diary data. The purpose of a quarter of the GPS trips was unclear, and a disproportionate share started and ended at home.

Research limitations — Further work to manually inspect trips identified via validation as unfeasible and subsequently refine the processing algorithms would have been desirable had time permitted. GPS data processing may have been hindered by missing GPS data, particularly in the case of rail travel.

Originality/value — This research used an accelerometer-equipped GPS device to better predict the method of travel. It also combined addresses that respondents reported having visited during the travel week with GIS data to code the purpose of trips without using a post-processing prompted-recall survey.

This chapter focusses on the use of immobility policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific nations of East and South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand to respond to COVID-19 across 2020–2021. Concepts from the field of mobilities studies are adopted for analysis. Transport system managers in the region have increasingly played roles either limiting movement, adjusting transport supply, creating proscribed ‘mobilities passageways’ for travellers that present COVID-risk, and encouraging or mandating passenger compliance with other pandemic measures. The series of immobility policies and practices used at the international, intra-national and local scales are analysed. Transport agency responses differed greatly including whether to retain levels of public transport supply or reduce them in line with falling patronage. A summary of known travel behaviour impacts is then discussed, using available data from government travel portals, and, for Shanghai, Brisbane and Hong Kong, a range of road volumes, public transport boardings, micro-mobility, bicycle and pedestrian counts. There are indications that a series of socio-technical transitions have occurred, such as increased work-from-home, new social practices around walking, increased demands for roads to provide place functions (as opposed to movement functions) and the role of cycling and micro-mobility as liberating technologies in a world of increased control and fear of contagion. Transport agencies have harnessed some of these changes in attitudes and societal needs, using radical institutional responses such as pop-up bike lane trials and other ‘tactical urbanism’ approaches, to adapt their cities to life during and after the pandemic.

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, low-cost carriers grew rapidly in many low- and middle-income economies. In this chapter, we examine the geography and network structure of low-cost carriers in such economies across Asia in 2018. We use these analyses to explore the relationship between budget airlines and economic development. Levels of disposable income and infrastructure adequacy help to account for the significance of low-cost airlines in some middle-income economies. And in turn, these airlines by fostering higher levels of accessibility and personal mobility may help catalyze faster development. However, the environmental externalities associated with aviation, especially atmospheric emissions, raise concerns about the sustainability of this mode. We assess these concerns and focus in particular on the development of low-cost carriers fleets in Asia. We ask whether the acquisition of more fuel-efficient aircraft will ameliorate aviation's environmental impact.