0000000000240430
AUTHOR
Sinziana Rasca
Applicability of Existing Public Transport Sustainability Indicators to Norwegian Small Cities and Towns
World-wide, developed countries tend to have a higher share of transport related emissions. In Norway, approximately one third of transport emissions are connected to passenger cars. With most inhabitants living in small cities and towns that have low population densities and high car dependency, and having made passenger transport decarbonization a national priority, there is a need to account for the success or failure of implemented sustainable transport solutions in Norway.Research on sustainable transport and indicators to measure its development tends to focus on large cities raising the question if indicators defined for large cities fit to the realities of smaller urban settlements?…
Do International Urban Sustainability Monitoring Frameworks Respond to the Perceived Needs of Norwegian small and mediumsized cities? – Results of a Workshop
Cities are estimated to have a 70% contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. This makes urban sustainability monitoring necessary, but are urban sustainability monitoring frameworks applicable to cities of all sizes? And do they offer a consistent overview of the sustainability status of core urban development areas, such as transport? The present research tests if the specific needs of small and medium-sized Norwegian cities, as perceived by local stakeholders, are consistently covered by the indicators of urban sustainability monitoring frameworks. To this purpose, four international frameworks were evaluated in the frame of a workshop: Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities, K…
Impacts of COVID-19 and pandemic control measures on public transport ridership in European urban areas – The cases of Vienna, Innsbruck, Oslo, and Agder
The study uses the case of two regions with small and medium sized cities (Agder in Norway and the greater Innsbruck area in Austria) and two European capitals, Vienna and Oslo, to showcase the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public transport ridership in northern and central Europe. The comprehensive timeline of actions taken by governments and public transport providers in Austria and Norway, and their impact on public transport ridership in the first and second waves of the pandemic form the basis of a descriptive study. Comparing the data, a strong negative impact on the public transport patronage in the first wave of the pandemic was found, despite a comparable low number of cases p…
Exploring the factors influencing the use of public transport by commuters living in networks of small cities and towns
The use of public transport is directly associated with a reduced environmental impact for satisfying daily mobility needs. Current research has focused on identifying the factors affecting the use of public transport, elements such as age, car ownership, travel distance, or parking availability having been associated with a direct impact on an individual’s transport mode choice. However, most of these studies focused on the travel behaviour of individuals living in large cities, where the population density is high, and public transport is usually more developed than in small cities and towns. The present study provides additional insights into the impact of eleven different factors on the…
Public Transport Passenger Count Forecasting in Pandemic Scenarios Using Regression Tsetlin Machine. Case Study of Agder, Norway
Challenged by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, public transport is suffering from low ridership and staggering economic losses. One of the factors which triggered such losses was the lack of preparedness among governments and public transport providers. The losses can be minimized if the passenger count can be predicted with a higher accuracy and the public transport provision adapted to the demand in real time. The present paper explores the use of a novel machine learning algorithm, namely Regression Tsetlin Machine, in using historical passenger transport data from the current COVID-19 pandemic and pre-pandemic period, combined with a calendar of pandemic-related events (e.g. daily …