Transport for older people: Characteristics and solutions

Entering the 21st century, one of the most significant demographic changes in developed countries is the aging of the population. Travel is an important aspect of older people's economic well-being, so with the aging of the population, improving transport for older people is increasingly important. This article presents the results of a study of older people's travel behaviour based largely but not exclusively on LATS (London Area Travel Survey) 2001 data. The focus is on older people's trip chaining behaviour, including trip chain complexity, trip purpose sequence and mode choice in a chain. After identifying the policy implications it looks at the role of Special Transport Services in improving the supply of transport for older people, taking the London Borough of Camden as a case study.     

Population ageing,gender and the transportation system

Across the globe population structures are ageing and how older men and women interact with the transport system is increasingly important in maintaining a good quality of life and inclusion in society. The paper reviews three issues: the nature of older people’s interaction with the transport system by gender; older people’s attitude to travel; and the involvement of older people as road traffic casualties. Patterns of travel in the UK show that older people are heavily dependent on car use, but in the form of more frequent but shorter journeys than younger people. This is especially so for women over 70 years old who, as passengers, are very reliant on males to drive them. Attitudes suggest that there are few obstacles to public transport use, and most agree that bus travel is good, but convenience means many prefer cars. Involvement of older men and women in serious road traffic accidents show that they have lower killed and seriously injured (KSI) rates than 17–24 year old drivers. However, those aged over 70 years exhibit a trend of increasing KSI rates. Analysis of casualty rates of drivers by type of junction, manoeuvre and environmental conditions found that some gender-age groups are overrepresented in certain accident types, including higher serious accidents rates for men, and over representation of older women when driving in poor conditions and turning right and negotiating roundabouts, crossroads and T, Y and staggered junctions. Improvement in engineering design and driver training are suggested together with the need for a greater understanding of the transportation system needs of old and very old people.     

Rural transport – Valuing the mobility of older people

This paper describes a series of focus groups that were undertaken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to examine the challenges faced by older people in rural Ireland when trying to make trips. The paper outlines transport policy in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and describes the activity patterns of older trip makers and the modes they use. It also discusses some of the contrasts between challenges faced by older men and older women. Both older men and older women experience a shrinking in activity spaces and activity participation when older. Older women are less likely to drive and to own a car and so are seriously impacted by loss of a spouse in terms of their unmet travel needs. However, older men also experience difficulties: the alternatives that are available (such as community transport schemes) provide trips and services that are more attractive to women. In addition, the car dependent lifestyles of men throughout their adult lives seems to make them less prepared for life without a car than older women.     

Ground travel mode choices of air arrivals at regional destinations: The significance of tourism attributes and destination contexts

The aim of this paper is to examine the air leisure arrivals’ ground travel mode choice in the context of their decision to disperse beyond the gateway. A stated choice experiment was designed to examine the dispersal and travel mode choice of leisure visitors arriving on air transport at Cairns. Results show that for a hypothetical public bus alternative, attributes such as ‘sightseeing opportunities’ and ‘driver quality’ were significant for trips made to less known destinations located south of Cairns, compared to destinations north of Cairns. Findings suggest that while travel mode attributes and trip characteristics are significant determinants of the mode choice of air leisure arrivals, the extent of their significance varied markedly across destinations. Although the data examined in this paper were collected in Cairns, this research should be of relevance to many regions interested in understanding the relationship between destination transport and dispersal of air arrivals.     

Activity based travel demand models as a tool for evaluating sustainable transportation policies

India is in the course of an economic transition. The economic growth nurtured the life in the cities and cities have become a major livelihood destination for everyone. This migration of people contributed to the increased urbanization of Indian cities. The booming economy fostered the well-being and shaped the lifestyle of people in such a way that the dependency on private vehicle has become an unavoidable affair. Along with population growth, the increased vehicle ownership gave rise to overall spurt in travel demand. But the supply side lagged behind the demand adding to many of the transport related externalities such as accidents, congestion, pollution, inequity etc. The importance of sustainability is understood in the current urban transport scenario leading to the development and promotion of sustainable transport polices. The core agenda of these polices is to target the travel behavior of people and change the way they travel by creating a different travel environment. However, the impacts of many such policies are either unknown or complex. Hence, before adopting and implementing such policies, it is important for the decision makers to be aware of the impacts of them. The role of travel demand models comes here as they predict the future travel demand under different policy scenarios. This paper reviews the ability of travel demand models applied in India in analyzing the sustainable transport policies. The study found that the conventional model system in India, which is trip based four step aggregate methodology, is inadequate in analyzing the sustainable transport policies. A review of alternative approach, known as activity based travel demand modeling found that they are capable of handling such policies better than conventional models and are assistive to the decision makers in arriving at right mix of polices specific to the situations. Since there is no operational activity based travel demand model system developed in India, the study at the end envisaged a conceptual framework of an integrated activity based travel demand model based on the requirements identified from the review. This can potentially replace the existing travel demand models and can be used for planning applications once the modification & validation have been done according to the existing activity-travel behavior of individuals.     

基于交通条件改善的公路网交通生成预测方法研究

以经济、人口、车辆保有和广义出行时间为基本变量,采用回归分析方法建立交通生成预测模型,从而在交通生成阶段中考虑了交通出行条件改善的影响,将交通生成预测和诱增交通预测两者结合,既考虑了社会经济对交通的决定作用,又考虑了交通供给对交通生成的反作用。模型应用于江苏省高速公路网规划实践,结果表明,模型能够反映不同地区经济、人口、车辆保有以及交通条件等因素对各地区交通生成特性的差异,并且具有实用、精度高、可操作性强的特点。     

Commuting times – The role of gender,children and part-time work

It has been widely established in the UK and other developed countries that men commute longer than women and that fathers travel furthest to work while mothers travel least. This paper models a wide variety of factors that affect commuting times including gender, presence of children and working hours (part- and full-time work). It finds that of particular importance to the length of commute are the worker’s age, having children, the age of their youngest child, occupation, weekly pay, and mode of transport (with public transport being associated with longer commutes). The region of residence was important for men and women working full-time but not for part timers (except for women in London), while ethnicity and owner occupation were associated with commuting length for full-time men only. The results suggest that while gender, working hours and childcare responsibility are often inter-related, it is useful to disaggregate their effects when modelling or developing policy.     

Land use/transport models and economic assessment

This paper discusses the economic assessment of policies using land use/transport models. It argues that conventional forms of assessment focussing only on transport changes can underestimate the economic benefits of a policy. The paper argues that the benefits need to be measured by the changes of prices at the end of a trip and not just by the changes in travel costs. Models that do not estimate the changes of prices at the end of a trip cannot properly assess the impact of a policy.The model used in this paper is based on the MEPLAN software and estimates the location of households and employment and the interaction between them. It also estimates the cost of living for households and the production costs for employment. With these costs, it is possible to calculate the wider economic benefits beyond transport.The paper illustrates the assessment of policies for the Cambridge sub-region involving investment in public transport, orbital highway and congestion charging policies. The results forecast by the model are assessed in terms of the conventional cost-benefit using traveller’s surplus as benefits and compared with a wider assessment measure of compensation variation. It demonstrates that the last measure encompasses the wider benefits associated with transport policies which are not taken into account in conventional cost-benefit analysis.     

山地城市居民出行特征分析

在归纳山地城市形态和道路网结构特征的基础上,根据2010年攀枝花市居民出行调查数据,对攀枝花市居民出行方式、出行时耗、出行时空分布等特征进行了分析,发现城市形态与路网结构对于居民出行特征有着重要影响。     

Escorting economies: Networked journeys,household strategies and resistance

This paper is an exploration of strategies used by households to ensure safe journeys for household members. It has been long been argued that women's travel demand is suppressed. There is no doubt that this is an important issue simply on the grounds that women make up one half of the population but it is also timely and pertinent for policy makers and practitioners as legislation at national and international level asserts and legitimates rights to access, safety and security as demonstrated in the European Union's assertion in the 2007 Green Paper that “Every EU citizen should be able to live and move in urban areas with safety and security”. An understanding of social networks, reciprocity and exchange within and between households is integral to our understanding of travel demand. This paper, through an exploration of micro-social practices, identifies competencies and strategies, such as skills of transaction negotiation, scheduling among household members and across households, escorting, social synchronisation and cost sharing in women's travel, which add to our theoretical understanding of household coping strategies and practices to overcome exclusion. This paper brings together contemporary and historical evidence on the strategies and competencies used by women and in households to ensure safe travel for household members. There is a paucity of data on networked practices and resources which impacts on the efficacy of social policy and societal aspirations for sustainability and inclusion.     

Investigating links between transport disadvantage, social exclusion and well-being in Melbourne - Updated results

This paper updates results of an international study aimed at quantifying the links between transport disadvantage (TD), social exclusion (SE) and well-being (WB) in Melbourne, Australia. The study extends knowledge associated with SE and transport by quantify social and behavioural implications of lack of public and private transport and the nature of the social WB benefits associated with improving services.Study aims and methodology are outlined. Recent findings covered relate to car ownership on the urban fringe, patterns of transport disadvantage, the analysis of time poverty related to transport disadvantage, measuring the economic value of additional mobility and use of a Structural Equation Model (SEM) to relate WB and SE to TD and a series of explanatory factors.Overall results suggest that those without a car on the urban fringe adjust well with their circumstances by living close to activity centres. They demonstrate sustainable choices, trading off budgets and home location to balance mobility and accessibility. Poorer households with high car ownership value mobility and cheaper more remote fringe dwellings but demonstrate numerous strategies to reduce high car costs which are acknowledged as a significant burden. Analysis identifies 4 key types of transport disadvantage including a ‘vulnerable/impaired’ group which should be of much greater concern for targeted policy than others due to poor scoring on SE and WB scales. The economic value of new mobility is also explored with results suggesting $AUD 20 per average new trip which is four times larger than conventional values for generated travel.Analysis has also suggested that transport disadvantage can relate to socially advantaged as well as socially disadvantaged groups through time poverty. This was found to be an important mitigating factor when relating TD to WB. A statistically reliable structural equation model is developed suggesting the SE-WB link is strong (−.87) with a modest link between TD-SE (.27).Areas for future research in the project are also summarised.     

出行者特征要素对公交服务模式的影响分析

公共交通是面向大众的服务,公共交通服务模式的制定与完善需要重点考虑出行者的出行需求,才能从根本上提高公共交通的竞争力。借鉴服务经济学的理论将公共交通服务模式分为公交服务标准、出行者界面、公交服务环境和技术4个维度。基于攀枝花市居民出行调查与公交专项调查数据,应用SPSS定量分析出行者特征要素与公交服务选择的相关性,以考察研究出行者对于公交服务的需求,并提出改善策略。通过研究表明,出行目的、出行时间、职业和年龄与公交服务模式的相关性较大。     

The place of transport in facilitating social inclusion via the mediating influence of social capital

Social policy makers rarely associate the ability to be mobile with having a role in the facilitation of social inclusion. This paper provides an initial exploration of the association between a person’s travel patterns and their risk of social exclusion. Information is drawn from a major Australian Research Council transport study which interviewed 535 people from Metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. It includes an analysis of the extent of the person’s bonding and bridging social networks, their connectedness to the community, self-assessed level of well-being and their beliefs about whether or not they are able to control outcomes in their life. It was found that those who had the greatest risk of social exclusion, travelled less often and less distance, owned fewer cars and used public transport less, than those who were more socially included. However, those who were more at risk of social exclusion did not identify their lower trips as due to either a lack of transport, or problems with the public transport system. The ability to have good bridging networks appears to be related to increased trip-making and promotion of social inclusion but not necessarily self-assessed well-being which is satisfied by bonding networks.     

厦门快速公交系统的功能定位

结合厦门的城市规模及经济水平、居民的出行方式、城市道路条件等自身条件，对厦门快速交通系统（BRT）进行了合理的功能定位，并介绍了厦门BRT一期工程情况。实践证明，厦门BRT定位准确，对改善出行条件、缓解交通拥堵及提高出行效率起到很大作用，为破解城市交通难问题做出了有益尝试，充分体现了BRT“大容量、安全、便捷、准时、舒适”的特点。     

Congestion pricing for Latin America: Prospects and constraints

In an effort to reduce the adverse impacts of the car and promote sustainable transport in Latin America, some governments have either implemented travel demand management policies or have considered ways of directly reducing the number of vehicles in congested areas. While demand management measures have been promoted in a small number of countries, including vehicular restrictions as well as the promotion of public transport modes, there are currently no congestion pricing programmes in operation in Latin America. This paper begins with an overview of travel demand management, including its principal aims as well as its primary objectives within the Latin American context. It discusses past efforts to promote traffic restraint and perspectives for developing congestion pricing schemes in both São Paulo and Santiago. Finally, it examines the potential role of congestion pricing as a demand management tool. While it is one of the most effective demand management measures in the industrialised world, a number of barriers currently prevent it from being widely adopted in Latin America.     

Accommodating perceptual conditioning in the valuation of expected travel time savings for cars and public transport

Travel time variability (i.e., random variations in travel time) leads to a travel time distribution for a repeated trip from a fixed origin to destination (e.g., from home to work). To represent travel time variability, a series of possible travel times per alternative (departure time, route or mode) are often used in stated choice experiments. In the traditional models, the probabilities associated with different travel scenarios (e.g., arriving early, on time and late) shown in the experiments are directly used as weights. However, evidence from psychology suggests that the shown probabilities may be transformed (underweighted or overweighted) by respondents. To account for this transformation of probabilities, this study incorporates perceptual conditioning through a non-linear probability weighting function into a utility maximisation framework, within which the empirical estimate of the value of expected travel time savings is estimated. The key advantage of this framework is that the estimated willingness to pay value can be directly linked to the source of utility (i.e., the probability distribution of travel time), while taking into account the perceptual transformation of probabilities.     

The provision of home to school transport in Northern Ireland

The provision of home to school transport is an important element of transport policy in local communities. This paper examines the provision of home to school transport in Northern Ireland. It reviews the nature of demand and provision, and the costs involved in providing the current system of home to school transport compared to other parts of the UK. In addition it also discusses issues surrounding the use of the statutory walking distance, safety on buses including the provision of ‘3 for 2’, standing on buses and seatbelts in Northern Ireland.     

Analysis of thirty years evolution of urban growth,transport demand and supply,energy consumption,greenhouse and pollutants emissions in Greater Cairo

The objective of the paper is to analyze evolution of urbanization, transport demand and supply in Greater Cairo (GC) over the last three decades of the 20th century. This is in addition to investigating the impact of city growth on energy consumption and emissions from transport. It utilizes results of 1971, 1978, 1987, 1998 and 2001 travel demand surveys, undertaken during the corresponding GC transport studies; each was published a year or two later. No further transport studies have been carried out in GC over the past decade and in view of the current political situation, it is not envisaged that similar studies will be undertaken in the near future. The analysis includes the evolution of daily trips, trip purpose share, modal share and number of cars. More recent trends for 2006/2007 vehicle registration by type and size are given. The evolution of transport supply covers projects until early 2012. In parallel estimates of the evolution of energy consumption and cost, emissions of greenhouse gases (CO₂) and pollutants (CO, HC and NO_x) are given for 1971/2001. The adopted estimation methodology is summarized. Comparative analysis of relevant evolution indexes and trends of growth between 1971 and 2001, taking the former as base year, is given. Land use and transport policies and projects that in some cases helped, directly or indirectly, to reduce traffic congestion, or at least prevented an increase, are addressed, commenting on their outcomes. Thus, transferable experience are useful to sister cities benefiting from successes and avoiding drawbacks. The evolution of the impact of GC metro on energy consumption and cost, and GHG emissions is given for 1987/2001, assuming the scenario “metro did not exist”. More recent impact analysis is given for 2007/2008, as the data allowed estimating traffic volumes that would have been added to the congested metro corridors under the above scenario; and the related fuel consumption and cost and GHGs. The paper ends with conclusions on GC evolution, learned lessons and suggests repeating similar work in other mega cities of the developing countries. Further research is emphasized, e.g., modeling the relationship between land use, transport, energy and emissions; modeling emission factors by vehicle type; and studying fuel-subsidy-reduction scenarios and their socio-economic effects.     

Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport

Without questioning the fact that to achieve efficiency emitters should pay for the true costs of their actions (a core principle of economic policies such as pollution taxes), we find sufficient evidence in the literature to demonstrate that many other policy instruments can be used in combination with taxes and permits to ensure that the transport needs of the present generation can be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet any needs of their own.The policies and policy aspects considered in this paper broadly fall into three categories: physical policies, soft policies, and knowledge policies. All three aim to bring about changes in consumers’ and firms’ behaviour, but in different ways. The first category includes policies with a physical infrastructure element: public transport, land use, walking and cycling, road construction, and freight transport. We also consider the particular challenges for mobility in developing countries, and how these may be addressed. Soft policies, on the other hand, are non-tangible aiming to bring about behavioural change by informing actors about the consequences of their transport choices, and potentially persuading them to change their behaviour. These measures include car sharing and car pooling, teleworking and teleshopping, eco-driving, as well as general information and advertising campaigns. Finally, knowledge policies emphasise the important role of investment in research and development for a sustainable model of mobility for the future.The main findings can be summarised as follows.

Physical policies

An increase in the use of public transport, combined with a decrease in the use of private cars, can reduce traffic congestion and, more importantly, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, as public transport generally causes lower CO₂ emissions per passenger kilometre than private cars. Public transport fares are subsidised in most places, which can be justified by economies of scale and by the fact that public transport can reduce total road transport externalities. London, Singapore, Portland and Curitiba are all examples of good practice at government level, having achieved reliable, frequent and integrated public transport.Policies to increase public transport use must be part of an integrated policy. Integrated policy refers to integration across different modes of transport, different government objectives (such as the economy, health and the environment), considering the needs of different social groups, and coordinating action between the relevant government institutions. There is evidence that a lack of coordination can jeopardise the achievement of policy objectives.A sustainable model for transport policy also requires integration with land-use policies. These may be somewhat limited within the bounds of existing cities, but as cities grow and new cities are built, urban planners must put more emphasis on land use for sustainable transport in order to reduce congestion and CO₂ emissions. Sustainable land-use policy can direct urban development towards a form that allows public transport as well as walking and cycling to be at the core of urban mobility.Walking and cycling, which improve general health and produce no tailpipe emissions, constitute an excellent alternative to motorised transport on short-distance trips within towns and cities. The policies which can incentivise walking and cycling include crime reduction to make streets safer, well-maintained and clean pavements, attractive street furniture, safe crossings with shorter waiting times, dedicated cycle paths, showers in offices, and lower speed limits, to name but a few.Road construction and expansion used to be seen as one of the most promising ways to reduce traffic congestion. However, in the mid-1990s, the issue was reassessed and it was found that building and expanding roads, increased, rather than decreased, congestion, and ultimately induced higher levels of travel demand. The reason for this is that the extra capacity reduces the general cost of travelling and the less expensive the travel, the more it will be demanded. Regarding freight modal shift, road transport is much more polluting than rail per tonne-km of goods transported and therefore a shift towards greater use of rail in freight transport is desirable. Inadequate infrastructure is the main obstacle preventing this modal shift taking place.Developing countries face great mobility challenges: rural areas are often extremely poorly connected to transport infrastructure, such that, in contrast to the situation in developed countries, the benefits of road construction can strongly outweigh the total costs (including environmental ones). The main challenge, however, is to develop a solution to the problems arising from the combination of urbanisation and motorisation. Integration of transport and land-use policy will be key to rising to this challenge.

Soft policies

Car sharing and car clubs can also potentially reduce CO₂ emissions, although the aggregate reduction in congestion and emissions has not been measured with an adequate degree of precision in the literature. Teleworking and teleshopping can potentially reduce congestion and also CO₂ emissions. However, the evidence for this reduction is rather mixed, as it is unclear whether these measures lead to overall reductions in road transport.Eco-driving campaigns aim to inform and educate drivers in order to induce them to drive in a fuel-efficient and thus environmentally friendly way. There seems to be some consensus in the literature that eco-driving could lead to reductions in CO₂ emissions of around 10 per cent.Information and education policies have often been advocated as instruments which may affect behavioural change. We find in this paper that these types of measures are necessary, but not sufficient for behavioural change. Advertising and marketing may go a long way in changing peoples’ behaviour. In California, for example, Kahn (2007) finds the “Prius” effect: the Toyota Prius is preferred by consumers relative to other similarly green vehicles, probably due to extensive marketing and celebrity endorsements. Family life changes are also found to trigger changes in behaviour ( [Goodwin, 1989] and [106]). People whose lives are being changed by some important development (birth of a child, retirement, etc) tend to respond more to changes in the relative attractiveness of different transport modes. Advertising campaigns promoting a modal shift towards public transport, for instance, may thus be more successful if targeted at people in the process of important life transitions.

Knowledge policies

Research and Development is crucial for developing sustainable and low-carbon transport for the future, and it is essential that governments provide incentives to undertake R&D, so that new low-carbon technologies in the transport sector can be demonstrated and applied at a large scale.Finally, we consider the issue of policy combination and integration. There is evidence that the combination and integration of policies can lead to positive side-effects and synergies. Policy integration is crucial in order to rise to the challenges we face in moving towards a sustainable mobility model. We conclude that classical economic policies may be successfully combined with a number of policy measures discussed in this paper in order to achieve sustainability in transport.     

全球供应链视角的东亚港口物流服务绩效与趋势分析*

东亚港口基于旺盛的贸易运输需求而在全球供应链体系中崛起,同时也因为港口拥挤等问题而存在降低贸易成本的空间。首先从全球供应链视角解析港口物流服务格局,突出了东亚地区、特别是中国港口的地位,评价港口物流的综合绩效和竞争状态,然后对发展趋势做出预测。研究发现：东亚港口将通过持续投资实现供给需求的动态平衡;日本地震引致的全球供应链重组将使港口物流服务发生结构性变化,东亚将加强跨国港口物流合作以满足区域经济一体化的要求。