Improving Transport Planning for Accessible Cities

Abstract

transit-oriented development strategies; building pedestrian-friendly cities to improve connectivity, i.e. building infrastructure; and offering different transport options, i.e. public transport, walking and cycling to reach a destination, such as in London, Milan and Stuttgart.Third, fostering accessibility needs promoting synergies across social, economic and environmental aspects for urban development.The aim is to ensure that planning the city's movement and transport contributes to building accessible and attractive cities, as in Gothenburg's transport strategy, for example.This requires both the national planning framework to set goals and outline a general vision for spatial development, and subnational governments to operationalise national transport priorities through a transport strategy that seeks to improve transport services, redesign existing neighbourhoods, and build transit-oriented communities (TOCs).By design, TOCs allow people to drive less and walk, cycle and take public transport more often, as in the Metro Vancouver Regional District.However, TOCs may create equity challenges by favouring individuals and families who are able to pay the extra premium to live in valuable real estate close to rapid transit.A transport policy that seeks to improve accessibility requires strong linkages to housing policy under a transit-oriented affordable housing approach.One of the risks of densification is that the price of housing close to public transport stations tends to rise to the point that the only people who can afford to live near those stations are the least likely to depend on it.Thus, expanding the offer of affordable housing that benefit different socio-economic groups in areas close to public transport hubs may be necessary.And fourth, accessible cities require more ambitious and coherent transport and urban policy actions based on a sound governance framework.It ensures a stable institutional framework, reliable sources of funding, governmental capacity and community engagement.It enables coordination across ministries, city departments and levels of government.Transport can greatly contribute to regional integration by connecting different cities through a regional transport network.In metropolitan areas, urban accessibility requires the joint action of the different municipalities.To facilitate the planning and implementation of the transport strategy in metropolitan areas, a metropolitan transport authority is often given the mandate of organising and/or providing transport services, for example: Île-de-France Mobilités, the Regional Organiser of Prague Integrated Transport, and Transport for London.Cities need a sustainable financial framework to promote urban accessibility projects.Funding transport projects accounts for almost 40% of subnational investment across OECD countries in 2016.Many cities apply a combination of fares, dedicated taxes, and subsidies by municipal or higher levels of government.Local authorities need to explore different potential sources of funding for transport infrastructure and services.Some options include granting more financial powers to cities to diversify their revenue generation activities such as London's proposal to seek additional taxes and financial powers; land-value capture mechanism like the betterment tax in Hong Kong, China, the accessibility increment contribution such as the one implemented in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; the creation of public partnerships for transport investment such as those adopted in Vancouver, Canada; and mobilising private sector funding as in Chile.Cities require greater capacity and capability to implement their public transport plans and achieve their accessibility objectives.Investing in a talented workforce in the administration and in the transport authority, which could take the form of a specific recruitment initiative, such as the New York City (NYC) Department of Transportation's Next Generation Programme, is key to plan accessible cities. Developing the ability to exploit the power of data is another key factor in improving capacity for developing long-term transport plans, such as smart traffic management in Stockholm, and conducting ex-post assessments of urban plans and transport strategies as in Malmö, through its Accessibility Index criteria.Promoting dialogue with and engagement of a wider set of stakeholders helps identify preferences and build support for transport strategies and investment decisions.This is the aim of initiatives such as the NYC Department of Transportation's Vision Zero Outreach, Sydney's Future Transport Campaign, and Vancouver's community engagement practices.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.