Karst Teunis Geurs

Social Impacts of Transport: Literature Review and the State of the Practice of Transport Appraisal in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

Abstract Transport appraisals in European countries increasingly address three dimensions of sustainability—economic, ecological and social. However, social impacts of transport have been underexposed in (ex‐ante) transport project appraisal, at least in the Netherlands. Firstly, this article presents a theoretical framework describing the relationships between determinants of social impacts of transport; it also provides a definition and categorization of those impacts. Secondly, the article reviews the state of the practice of national transport project appraisal in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The article shows that social impacts of transport investments can take on many forms and their levels of importance may vary widely, in project appraisal. The UK transport appraisal guidance includes a spectrum of social impacts through quantitative and qualitative assessments that is broader than the Dutch appraisal guidance. However, it does not cover the full range as identified in the literature. This holds, in particular, for the temporary impacts of transport investments, health impacts, social cohesion, the distribution and accumulation of impacts across population groups and social justice. All in all, it can be concluded that there is a long way to go before social impacts of transport projects are completely included in appraisals, in a way that allows us to compare them to economic and ecological effects.

Ex Post Evaluation of Thirty Years of Compact Urban Development in the Netherlands

Despite the wide array of academic research, the impacts of compact urban development are not very well understood. What is lacking are, first, the insights into how a region or country would have appeared under policy regimes other than those realised and, secondly, a broad evaluation of relevant land use, transport, accessibility and related societal and ecological impacts. Here, we report on an initial attempt to establish a methodology and evaluation framework for analysing the effectiveness of Dutch compact urbanisation policies implemented between 1970 and 2000. Our conclusion is that, without compact urban development policies, urban sprawl in the Netherlands is likely to have been greater, car use would have been higher at the cost of alternative modes, emission and noise levels in residential and natural environments, and the fragmentation of wildlife habitats would have been higher.

The effects of motivational factors on car use : a multidisciplinary modelling approach

Current transport models usually do not take motivational factors into account, and if they do, it is only implicitly. This paper presents a modelling approach aimed at explicitly examining the effects of motivational factors on present and future car use in the Netherlands. A car-use forecasting model for the years 2010 and 2020 was constructed on the basis of (i) a multinominal regression analysis, which revealed the importance of a motivational variable (viz., problem awareness) in explaining current car-use behaviour separate from socio-demographic and socio-economic variables, and (ii) a population model constructed to forecast the size and composition of the Dutch population. The results show that car use could be better explained by taking motivational factors explicitly into account, and that the level of car use forecast might change significantly if changes in motivations are assumed. The question on how motivational factors could be incorporated into current (Dutch) national transport models was also addressed.

Option Value of Public Transport: Methodology for Measurement and Case Study for Regional Rail Links in the Netherlands

Abstract Transport option values can be interpreted in terms of a risk premium that individuals with uncertain demand are willing to pay over and above their expected user benefit for the continued availability of a transport facility. These values represent a benefit category not included in conventional transport appraisal. This paper describes a methodology for measuring the option value of public transport services, and its application to two regional railway links in the Netherlands. From an Internet‐based survey examining the value of regional rail services to residents, option values were concluded to be a potentially relevant benefit category in public transport policy appraisal. This survey included three different stated choice experiments to separate the willingness‐to‐pay for use, option use and non‐use. Significant option values could be obtained from the stated choice experiments for both regional railway links.

Accessibility Appraisal of Integrated Land-Use - Transport Strategies: Methodology and Case Study for the Netherlands Randstad Area

Conventional approaches to measuring accessibility benefits are not capable of fully measuring the total accessibility benefits of integrated land-use-transport strategies, in which both land-use and transport changes form part of the policy strategy. In this paper a comprehensive methodology for analysing accessibility impacts and accessibility benefits, which is based on location-based and utility-based accessibility measures within an integrated land-use-transport interaction modelling framework, is described and applied in a case study. The case study examines the accessibility benefits and related user benefits of intensive mixed-use strategies aimed at increasing the density and diversity of activities around railway stations for the Randstad area of the Netherlands for the 1996–2030 period. A heavy concentration of activities near railway stations is shown to result in decreasing marginal returns for public-transport users and disbenefits for car users.

Recent advances and applications in accessibility modelling

Accessibility is a concept that has become central to physical planning and spatial modelling for more than fifty years. As measure of the relative nearness or proximity of one place and persons to all other places or persons, conceptually linked to Newtons law of gravity, its origins can be traced back to the 1920s when it was used in location theory and regional economic planning (Batty, 2009) and retail planning (Stewart, 1948). In his classic paper, Hansen (1959) was the first to define accessibility as a potential of opportunities for interaction and applied the concept to forecast employment developments in Washington D.C. Hansens gravity-based measure of accessibility was a generalization of the concept of population potential, which was based on the notion of potential in physics systems by Stewart (1948). Since then, accessibility analyses have addressed the issue of spatial interaction. Spatial Interaction Models (SIMs) provide an explicit link between accessibility modelling, and economic, demographic and transport flows. SIMs have a long history and have been used in a wide variety of contexts. Wilson (1970) gave SIMs theoretical strength by deriving them using the entropy maximization approach, and the doubly-constrained form formed the bases for transport flow modelling. The formal equivalence between SIMs and logit models/micro-economic theory was shown by Anas (1983). The accessibility function can be directly derived from SIMs and it therefore contains SIM behavioural cost components ( Reggiani, 2014). Moreover, the relevance of topological/connectivity structures in the accessibility analyses has, in some way, been anticipated by Weibull (1980), who considered accessibility as a property of configuration of opportunities for spatial interaction. Accessibility models have in the past decades been applied in several academic fields such as urban geography, rural geography, health geography, time geography, spatial economics and transport engineering. Many different applications have been developed in these fields and can be categorized in several ways. Here, we use the categorization of accessibility measures from the well-cited review paper from Geurs and Van Wee (2004). They provide an overview of components of accessibility and perspectives on accessibility, which we will use as a categorization of accessibility measures. Geurs and Van Wee distinguish four basic perspectives on accessibility: (i) infrastructure-based measures, analyzing the performance or service level of transport infrastructure, (ii) location-based measures, analyzing accessibility of spatially distributed activities, typically on an aggregate level, (iii) person-based measures, founded in the space-time geography, analyzing accessibility at the level of the individual level, and (iv) utility-based measures, analyzing the welfare benefits that people derive from levels of access to the spatially distributed activities. These perspectives focus on one or several of the four components of accessibility distinguished by Geurs and Van Wee: (i) the land-use component reflecting the amount, quality and spatial distribution of opportunities, (ii) the transportation component describing the disutility of travel in terms of time, cost and effort, (iii) the temporal component reflecting the temporal constraints and variability, and (iv) the individual component reflecting the needs, and abilities of individuals. Here, we describe the directions which academic literature in the recent years took to improve the treatment of the four components in accessibility modelling.... Language: en

Accessibility modeling and evaluation: the TIGRIS XL land-use and transport interaction model for the Netherlands

In current practice, transportation planning often ignores the effects of major transportation improvements on land use and the distribution of land use activities, which might affect the accessibility impacts and economic efficiency of the transportation investment strategies. In this paper, we describe the model specification and application of the land use transport interaction model TIGRIS XL for the Netherlands. The TIGRIS XL land-use and transport interaction model can internationally be positioned among the recursive or quasi-dynamic land-use and transport interaction models. The National Model System, the main transport model used in Dutch national transport policy making and evaluation, is fully integrated in the modeling framework. Accessibility modeling and evaluation are disaggregated and fully consistent, which is not common in accessibility modeling research. Logsum accessibility measures estimated by the transport model are used as explanatory variables for the residential and firm location modules and as indicators in policy evaluations, expressing accessibility benefits expressed in monetary terms. Modeling results indicate that accessibility changes from transport investments in the Netherlands have a significant but modest positive influence on the location choice of residents and firms. This is probably mainly due to the spatial structure and already dense and well developed transport networks, and the large influence of national, regional and local governments on the Dutch land use markets.

Coupling a Detailed Land-Use Model and a Land-Use and Transport Interaction Model

As already described in the preceding chapter, the study ‘The Netherlands in the Future; The Second Sustainability Outlook’ (MNP, 2007) constructed alternative future spatial strategies for the Netherlands and evaluated them using a diverse set of sustainability indicators, such as flooding safety, biodiversity, accessibility and landscape protection. As in previous studies, Land Use Scanner was used here as an instrument to allocate demand for land of different land-use types within a region. At a regional level, this demand had been calculated earlier by sector-specific models for the Baseline scenarios. The analytical framework was further extended with the Tigris XL model, a Land Use and Transport Interaction model (Significance & Bureau Louter, 2007). The specific objectives for using the Tigris XL model in addition to Land Use Scanner were:

The impact of fixed and variable costs on household car ownership

Abstract Car purchase taxes in The Netherlands are among the highest in the EU. The Dutch government plans to gradually replace car purchase and ownership taxes by a national road user charging system (kilometre charge) in the period 2012 to 2016. As a result, new and second hand car prices in the Netherlands will drop up to 30%. Relatively little research has been conducted on the impacts of such large price changes on car ownership. Reduced car prices are likely to lead to an increase in car ownership. But consumers could also refrain from buying extra cars when they consider the extra operating costs resulting from the kilometre charge. This paper presents one of the few empirical studies to examine the effects of both (large) fixed and variable car cost changes on both car ownership and use. An internet survey among Dutch households was designed and conducted including stated intentions and stated preference experiments. We investigated whether households react more to present one-off fixed costs than to recurrent variable costs, for various specifications of car costs. Model analysis was conducted to derive fixed and variable price elasticities for private car ownership and effects of the kilometre charge. The study shows in their car purchase decisions, households react more strongly to a change in euro per year in fixed car costs than to a euro per year in variable car costs. Abolishing the Dutch car purchase tax while at the same time introducing a kilometre charge will lead to 2% rise in car ownership on the short to medium run (1–5 years).

Accessibility Analysis and Transport Planning

Contents: 1. Accessibility and Transport Planning: An Introduction Karst T. Geurs, Kevin J. Krizek and Aura Reggiani PART I: ACCESSIBILITY CONCEPTS: NEW APPROACHES 2. Accessibility, Connectivity and Resilience in Complex Networks Aura Reggiani 3. ICT and Accessibility: Research Synthesis and Future Perspectives Bert van Wee, Caspar Chorus and Karst T. Geurs 4. Assessment of Infrastructure Investments Using Agent Based Accessibility Christof Zollig and Kay W. Axhausen PART II: DIMENSIONS OF LOCAL ACCESSIBILITY 5. The Connections Among Accessibility, Self-selection, and Walking Behaviour: A Case Study of Northern California Residents Xinyu Cao and Patricia Mokhtarian 6. Perceptions of Accessibility to Neighbourhood Retail and Other Public Services Kevin J. Krizek, Jessica Horning and Ahmed El-Geneidy 7. Accessibility to Public Service Delivery: A Combination of Different Indicators Tijs Neutens PART III: ECONOMIC VALUATION OF ACCESSIBILITY EFFECTS 8. Accessibility Benefits of Integrated Land Use and Public Transport Policy Plans in the Netherlands Karst T. Geurs, Michiel de Bok and Barry Zondag 9. The Impact of Accessibility on House Prices: An Application to Large Urban Planning and Infrastructure Projects in the Netherlands Thomas de Graaff, Ghebreegziabiher Debrezion and Piet Rietveld 10. A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Valuing Accessibility Effects of a New Bridge Arnstein Gjestland, David McArthur, Liv Osland and Inge Thorsen PART IV: ACCESSIBILITY, SOCIAL EQUITY AND EXCLUSION 11. A Justice-theoretic Exploration of Accessibility Measures Karel Martens and Aaron Golub 12. Who Benefits from New Transportation Infrastructure? Using Accessibility Measures to Evaluate Social Equity in Transit Provision Kevin Manaugh and Ahmed El-Geneidy 13. A Critical Assessment of Accessibility Planning for Social Inclusion Karen Lucas PART V: TRANSPORT PLANNING AND ACCESSIBILITY MEASUREMENTS 14. Integrating Transport in the UK through Accessibility Planning Derek Halden 15. Accessibility: A Key Indicator to Assess Past and Future of Urban Mobility Yves Crozet, Aurelie Mercier and Nicolas Ovtracht 16. European Transport Policy: Methodology to Assess Accessibility Impacts Panayotis Christidis and Nicolas Ibanez Rivas Index