Terry Li

Investigating private motorised travel and vehicle fleet efficiency: using new data and methods to reveal socio-spatial patterns in Brisbane, Australia

Australian cities have seen continued growth in car travel that has imposed increasing vehicle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates the spatial patterns of vehicle energy consumption on urban areas through an analysis of vehicle travel and efficiency of the vehicle fleet in Brisbane. This is achieved through by combining motor vehicle registration records and Australian government’s ‘Green Vehicle’ fuel efficiency data. Through a spatial analysis of the vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) derived from journey to work (JTW) data and fuel energy consumption associated with the private-owned vehicles decomposed to local areas, the results show that vehicle energy use per VKT tends to be greater with increasing distance from the city centre (e.g. CBD). This analysis demonstrates that not only VKT levels but also the lower frequency of highly efficient vehicles in the outer suburbs aggravates vehicle energy consumption in those locations. The paper then compares vehicle energy intensity results for Brisbane against spatial patterns of suburban socio-economic disadvantage. The paper demonstrates that vehicle fleet technology may compound other forms of socio-economic disadvantage and vulnerability.

Improved modelling for urban sustainability assessment and strategic planning: local government planner and modeller perspectives on the key challenges

Many technical and modelling tools are available to support the strategic assessment of land-use and infrastructure policy proposals in local government. However, there remains a lack of guidance and general confusion as to how modelling may be integrated into the policy- and decision-making process or how to practically set up participatory model-building with practitioners. Although major advances have been made in modelling over recent decades, several unresolved implementation issues remain in practice. This paper provides the results of a panel survey, which explored what planners and modellers believe to be key modelling implementation issues, their perceived importance and a set of modelling requirements. The results suggest that planners generally feel that they do not understand models and the modelling process, and modellers, in turn, feel that they do not always understand policy development and decision-making. Problems regarding data preparation were viewed as the most important challenge. Ensuring leadership and management support and initiatives aimed at improving the communication and confidence of participants were perceived as key requirements. Limited resources, leadership support and a lack of education are some of the challenges that are perceived as important before planners and other government officers can take advantage of modelling.

Urban Structure and Socioeconomic Barriers to Consumer Adoption of Energy-Efficient Automobile Technology in a Dispersed City: Case Study of Brisbane, Australia

The capacity for suburban households to respond to a changing global energy context by changing their motor vehicle technology is examined. Transforming transport systems will make up a crucial element in policy and planning responses to energy and climate challenges. Government policy appears focused on a transition to more-efficient vehicle types or alternative fuel and engine types. Yet such policies have failed to account for the considerable social differences in household exposure to the costs of transport energy and the adaptability of households in altering their use of modes and vehicle types. Nor do such policies recognize how urban social structure, household social status, and automobile type intersect spatially within Australian cities. The links between urban social structure and composition of the motor vehicle fleet are examined to test whether the households that are most reliant on motor vehicles for transport have the financial capacity to rapidly alter their vehicle technology in response to changing energy prices and supply conditions. Australian Bureau of Statistics census data and motor vehicle registration data at the postcode level are used to compare socioeconomic status with the age, fuel consumption, and value of the suburban vehicle fleet for the Brisbane and South East Queensland regions of Australia. This spatial deployment of census and vehicle registration data is novel in the Australian context. It is argued that policies that focus on vehicle technology alone face a number of social equity hurdles as measures to overcome urban transport fuel security problems.

What Happens When Government Workers Move to the Suburbs? Impact on Transport of Planned Decentralization of Employment in Brisbane, Australia

A resurgence of state-led decentralization activity is occurring in Australia, with governments promising to move 20% of all public servants in the city center to middle and outer suburban locations in two of the countrys largest cities, Perth and Brisbane, within a decade. The effects of these policies on transport, however, have not been assessed or meaningfully considered by the government. Therefore, this study asked the following: What will be the effects on transport of government office decentralization policies in cities with strong monocentric structures? “Decentralization” may be defined as the process by which city regions increase the proportion of jobs located outside the central business district and its immediate frame. In this paper two key research activities are reported on to address this research gap. An extensive review of previous modeling and travel behavior studies on monocentric versus polycentric urban structures and workplace relocation programs is summarized. This review highlighted mixed results for the transport sector and suggested possible research paths to identify the impacts for cities where decentralization was proposed. The review led to a large modeling effort with the multimodal Brisbane Strategic Transport model to examine the likely impacts for greater Brisbane under specific decentralization scenarios. Results are provided for modal shares, vehicle kilometers traveled, travel times, levels of service on key links, and transit patronage. The type of decentralization policy selected was found to affect reverse commuting and transit use. The results suggested that only those policies directing employment to key rail and busway nodes would mitigate potentially adverse impacts.

Investigating urban oil vulnerability

This chapter describes and discusses the problem of combined volatile petroleum prices and varying housing mortgage cost pressures with household socio-economic patterns and urban structure within a large, dispersed city region. The chapter addresses two prominent economic phenomena witnessed in the past decade that have impacted on urban transport systems. The first phenomenon has been the sharp increase and uncertainty in global oil prices from 2004 onwards and that marked a departure from relatively consistent and modest prices experienced during the previous two decades. This global petroleum price growth increased vehicular fuel costs in most countries and spurred concerns about their impact on households. As of mid-2013, global oil prices remain volatile having risen to record highs in 2008 followed by a precipitous plunge at the onset of the global financial crisis before gradually increasing to settle around US

Disaggregate GIS modelling to track spatial change: exploring a decade of commuting in South East Queensland, Australia

110 per barrel. The second significant urban phenomenon during this period was marked inflation in house prices in many urban housing markets and the subsequent plateauing or decline within these markets due to the global financial crisis (GFC). The global credit market failures witnessed as a result of the GFC have been tied to domestic mortgage lending in a number of countries. This weakness has reduced the vitality of housing markets in many nations, including Australia.