Functional road categorization: new concepts and challenges related to traffic safety, traffic managment and urban design: reflections based on practices in Belgium confronted with some Eastern European cases

The last decade functional road categorization has drawn new attention in several countries in Europe. In this paper some reflections are made on practice in the Flanders Region in Belgium, confronted with some cases in Latvia and Romania. New challenges for the road system related to spatial planning, traffic safety, transport and traffic management and urban design are inducing research for new concepts for road categorization. These new concepts can be considered as new frames for road planning (and prioritization of investments) as well as for road design

Smart mobility: opportunity or threat to innovate places and cities

The concept of the “smart mobility” has become something of a buzz phrase in the planning and transport fields in the last decade. After a fervent first phase in which information technology and digital data were considered the answer for making mobility more efficient, more attractive and for increasing the quality of travel, some disappointing has grown around this concept: the distance between the visionarypotentialthatsmartness is providingis too far from the reality of urban mobility in cities. We argue in particular that two main aspects of smart mobility should be eluded: the first refers to the merely application to technology on mobility system, what we called the techo-centric aspect; the second feature is the consumer-centric aspect of smart mobility, that consider transport users only as potential consumers of a service. Starting from this, the study critics the smart mobility approach and applications and argues on a“smarter mobility” approach, in which technologies are only oneaspects of a more complex system. With a view on the urgency of looking beyond technology and beyond consumer-oriented solutions, the study arguments the need for a cross-disciplinary and a more collaborative approach that could supports transition towards a“smarter mobility” for enhancing the quality of life and the development ofvibrant cities. The article does not intend to produce a radical critique of the smart mobility concept,denying a priori its utility. Our perspectiveisthat the smart mobility is sometimes used as an evocativeslogan lacking some fundamental connection with other central aspect of mobility planning and governance. Main research questions are: what is missing in the technology-oriented or in the consumers-oriented smart mobility approach? What are the main risks behind these approaches? To answer this questions the paper provides in Section 2 the rationale behind the paper;Section 3 provides a literature review that explores the evolution on smart mobility paradigm in the last decades analysing in details the “techno-centric”and the “consumer-centric” aspects. Section 4proposes an integrated innovative approach for smart mobility, providing examples and some innovative best practices in Belgium. Some conclusions are finally drawnin Section 5, based on the role of smart mobility to create not only virtual platforms but high quality urban places

Decision making process on the Antwerp Oosterweel link: lessons learnt

The Oosterweel link (completion of the Antwerp ring road, including a river Scheldt crossing) was planned to be the largest infrastructure project ever built in Belgium. It started as a noiseless process for more than fifteen years, the decision seemed to be taken in 2008: the reference design was approved and a DBFM consortium selected. Then the project became controversial. Action groups dominated the debate and could enforce a public referendum. The project was rejected by the Antwerp citizens. Can the rejection of the project be explained by opening the black box of the planning process? A research of the Antwerp University College Artesis reveals that the decision process of the Oosterweel link can be described within the three streams model (problems–policy alternatives–politics), developed by W. Kingdon. In each stream actors intervene with their own logic (e.g. experts use traffic models, politicians make political deals, and administrations refer to administrative rules...). The process streams were bundled by a policy maker (the governor of the province), creating for a certain period a 'window of opportunity'. But the research confirms that a project idea has its expiry date. From Kingdon's three project survival criteria the weak point of the Oosterweel project is its small problem definition (traffic congestion on the main road system). Major projects should refer to the mobility issue and not only to a traffic problem. Infrastructure planning should not be limited to the physical object to be built, but be embedded in the urban and regional environment (avoiding e.g. white backgrounds in project evaluations and design). Planning processes that only focus on control (of financial and technical issues) and omit interaction (with stakeholders and the general public) have a great risk to fail. This has huge consequences for project management

How to monitor sustainable mobility in cities? Literature review in the frame of creating a set of sustainable mobility indicators

The role of sustainable mobility and its impact on society and the environment is evident and recognized worldwide. Nevertheless, although there is a growing number of measures and projects that deal with sustainable mobility issues, it is not so easy to compare their results and, so far, there is no globally applicable set of tools and indicators that ensure holistic evaluation and facilitate replicability of the best practices. In this paper, based on the extensive literature review, we give a systematic overview of relevant and scientifically sound indicators that cover different aspects of sustainable mobility that are applicable in different social and economic contexts around the world. Overall, 22 sustainable mobility indicators have been selected and an overview of the applied measures described across the literature review has been presented

Naar een nieuwe stedelijke mobiliteitscultuur: parkeerbeleid als hefboom

Sustainable urban development urges a new mobility paradigm, new concepts for mobility design and a new mobility culture. Several cases in Europe show that cities possess an important key: namely parking policy. According to D. Banister four crucial elements exist to obtain a sustainable mobility policy: making the best use of technology, reflecting the external cost in the actual cost of travel and integrating land use planning and mobility planning. The fourth crucial element is clearly targeted personal information. Ghent University has participated in the Interreg IIIC project ‘City Parking in Europe’ and identified good practices fitting in the policy for a new urban mobility culture

Evolution of mobility governance in Flanders: opening up for bottom-up initiatives or suffering from lock-in?

Mobility policy in Flanders lacks a clear discourse on implementing the policy objectives for 2020 and beyond. Though mobility planning can show success stories, mobility problems seem to aggravate. For supra local mobility projects in Flanders the executive power often lies with deconcentrated administrations at the level of the province, this is e.g. the case for public transportation and major roads, where province boundaries impede public transport projects across borders. For local mobility plans, the local administration and council have the power. But as these local mobility plans have highly formalised procedures, they tend to be rigid frameworks or administrations and risk to be suffering from lock-in. There is a need for new dynamics in mobility policy in reference to present developments. Here bottom-up or outside-in initiatives can be regarded as the key to real change. To that end radical changes in the organisation and mobility planning itself are necessary to meet these new inititiaves from the bottum-up and outside-in. Next to hardware and software approaches or innovations to turn mobility planning more sustainable, we additionally propose in this paper an ‘orgware’ solution, demonstrated in some case studies. In these cases key actors of bottom-up projects and their associations with other actors are visualised. Furthermore barriers and potentials for implementation are formulated leading onto recommendations for further research in order to improve the implementation of the policy objectives

The assessment of traffic livability, including local effects at home, during trips and at the destination, based on the individual activity pattern and trip behaviour

The environmental quality of the living environment is mainly linked to the direct and indirect impact of traffic in the neighborhood of the dwellings. In the Flemish mobility and urban planning, the term ‘livability’ is used focusing on the living conditions of people’s home location: what is the satisfaction about their living environment? The more specific term ‘traffic livability’ is used to describe the impact of all types of traffic on the livability of a dwelling location. Some methodologies were developed for an objective measurement of the traffic impact on quality of life. In Flanders the most commonly used methodologies are the ‘traffic livability index’ and the ‘bearing capacity’, which use a very narrow interpretation of the traffic livability, as they are highly based on the local road design (number of lanes, cycle path, …) and the local traffic characteristics (traffic flow, speed, traffic safety, …) of the street of the dwelling. The main critic is that these methods should measure over the complete living environment of a person, rather than just at the dwelling. For this reason, an alternative methodology was developed for an objective measurement of the impact of traffic on the local quality of the living environment. Compared to the current practice, this new methodology aims at the following objectives: • The evaluation is not done for the average person, but includes individual needs and travel patterns, based on personal characteristics, representing the large diversity of the mobility needs. • The methodology should reflect a daily activity pattern, including the traveled routes and destinations. The traffic livability of a specific household in a specific area will reflect the full extent of their needs at home, during the trips and at the destinations. • Traffic livability is measured by means of a broad set of indicators, representing different types of traffic impacts (accessibility, traffic noise, traffic emissions, …). The separate indicators are combined into an evaluation of the traffic livability, including an extensive set of secondary effects. This is mainly realized by a better simulation of the personal trip behavior, using the data from the Flemish Trip Behavior Survey. In order to evaluate the livability at a certain home location (a number of) households are sampled from this database, with the specific characteristics of the household (composition, car availability, children, …), the people in the household (age, employment, …) and their activities and trip pattern. With this information, the different indicators for traffic livability can be evaluated on the home location, as well as during the trip and at the destination