Urban dimension will grow in importance being estimated that the percentage of the European citizens living in urban areas will increase from 74% at the time being to around 85% in 2050. Designing sustainable cities is one of the greatest challenges that the political decision makers are confronted with. Fortunately, the urban environment offers several alternatives as regards mobility.
Shifting to less polluting energy stra-tegies is facilitated by reduced requirements for the types of vehicles. Public transport choices are more widely available, as well as the option of walking and cycling. Demand management and land-use planning can lower traffic volumes.
Over the next decades, as a consequence of reduced urban space and increasing energy and infrastructure access costs, journeys should no longer rely on multifunctional automotive vehicles which, usually, don’t carry the maximum number of passengers, the White Paper on Transport estimates.
To enhance the use of public transport and thus reduce the use of individual cars, local authorities and public transport companies should aim at improving the quality of public transport services and to implement viable measures. Among them, the extension and simplification of the public transport network by re-designing the configuration of the network or increasing frequency and the number of tram operation hours. The modernisation of infrastructure (especially in intermodal shift points) and increasing the comfort of the journey by public means of transport are other measures which could be applied. The mo-dernisation of rolling stock to adapt it to the requirements of potential customers by increasing accessibility and promoting rail transport (underground, light metro, tram) are measures aimed to attract passengers to public transport. But these measures have to be implemented not only in big urban agglomerations, but also in medium-sized cities (from the point of view of their surface and number of inhabitants) and in their adjacent metropolitan areas.
To improve the quality of public transport infrastructure, local budgets must include investment costs for new waiting rooms, pedestrian islands or seats (construction, acquisition) and land acquisition costs if a large space is necessary for new arrangements (for example, “park & ride” spaces and intermodal connections between the different urban transport modes).
“By implementing the mentioned measures, public transport becomes more practical, more comfortable, more accessible and easier to understand for all of us. The number of passengers using public transport will increase, disabled people can feel less excluded by society and the citizens’ dependency of their personal vehicles should decrease with beneficial consequences for the environment”, shows Civitas in a report on the improving the quality of public transport services.
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