One of the articles we found, talks only very briefly about our project assignment. It is an interview of the British physicist Laurie Winkless and her findings for her Book ‘Science and the City’. She researched various topics which define the design of a city. Traffic being one of them, she discovered that scientists look at it like tiny particles moving around under differently defined rules. They are doing this to understand what it takes to reach a state of free flow traffic in the city. Free flow traffic means a system of traffic lights, where most of the participants, preferably everyone, has green lights for most or all of the time of his or her travels. This would make traffic much cleaner, since no energy is wasted in the many accelerations and brakes at intersections. Unfortunately this theory is so mathematically complex that it can not be implemented.
As the chart below from accessmagazine.org shows, there is a big drop of fuel consumption over speed. Most of the measuring points are in the area between 60 and 80 miles per hour [mph] (96 -130 km/h). The drop starts at 20 mph (32 km/h), meaning that the fuel consumption is higher due to a less efficient burning process, which shows that a lot of speed 30 zones might be counter productive. This, obviously, means that free flow traffic should be promoted and congestions avoided. For our project this means it could be helpful for example to close a certain street for cars and completely open it to pedestrians and additionally improve the traffic flow on another side.
What can be interesting from this topic for us is: using the idea of free flow traffic at least for some parts of traffic participants. This can bring us into a dilemma since there are two different options on how to handle it. On the one hand it seems obvious to favour sustainable ways of travelling, like bikes, walking or busses, to promote their usage, on the other hand more emissions can be saved, at least in the short term, if the fossil fueled cars would take advantage of ‘more free flow’. The last options seems very counterintuitive though. A nice possibility for us could it be to let bikes get a quicker green light with contact loops in the ground which recognize their arrival at the intersection. The same would work for bus lanes, it is a very complicated system to implement, but it works efficiently and is very convenient and appreciated if people realize it actually works in their favour. In Utrecht this works extremely well.
The second paper we found is issued by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals and includes three chapters of sustainable transition in the transportation sector, which accounts to a worldwide average of 15% of greenhouse gases. In the beginning it shows the three different stages that a person usually goes through when changing from a car based travelling to a more sustainable way. The first stage is using public transportation sometimes for certain trips. The second one is searching for faster alternatives like getting to the train by bike instead of waiting for the bus. As soon as they reached this point, people will use their bike more often to get their groceries or go to the doctor. We could benefit from these stages to understand better how to change behaviours.
The first chapter mentions certain ways of what to consider when creating a car sharing service and showing the advantages of this service. The text advises mainly companies and institutions on how they could use car sharing as a way for their workers to stay mobile for the company and also privately. The most important aspects mentioned were that the existence of the car sharing system has to be public and that there are more convenient parking spots for the users than from individual drivers. 40% of the customers of the US-based company zipcar seem to give up one of their cars in the household or decided not to buy a new one.
‘Facilitate vehicle sharing’ is the topic of the second chapter. It gives suggestions that are intuitive but nice to see that they are based on research. Again there are suggestions mainly for companies and municipalities like incentives (e.g. subsidized bus passes & carpool parking places) and disincentives (e.g. parking fees & reducing parking spaces). Since biking is still the most sustainable way of quick transport it should be as encouraged as public transportation. Furthermore, the text proposed another interesting concept, in which employees could earn two hours of free time per month if they come to work in a sustainable way. The testing phase of this project based in the state of Washington / USA showed that the productivity is not going down, proving the efficiency of this project. This is a very good and new concept for us to think about, it could get a lot attention and awareness to our ultimate target.
The last transportation chapter is about ‘Encouraging alternative transportations’. Important thoughts about biking is making it safe while riding (e.g. put bike lanes between sidewalks and parked cars & having one continuous bike lane without interruptions) and the convenience after the trips (e.g. bike racks and lockers). One innovative idea, we already learned about in Utrecht, are facilities with showers for people who bike to their job. The municipality in Utrecht has those in their office which makes bike rides much more convenient, because nobody wants to be sweaty the entire day. This can be easily combined with a sustainability makeover for companies together with the two hour work reduction.
The last article we would like to talk about a study which researched the question ‘What does a one-month free bus ticket do to habitual drivers?’. The study was done with students as the target group. 43 students had to answer a questionnaire in the beginning and the end of the study with the aim to investigate if a temporal structural change would change the behavior in a long term. Attitudes toward, habits of, and frequency of using automobile and bus were measured. The tested group was divided into two groups, one got a free bus pass for a month and the other did not as a control group. The result, being that the frequency of bus use increased, shows that many people are just too lazy to try the supposedly less convenient option of public transport. They must have realized that it either is not that inconvenient or simply much cheaper, or both. The results suggest that a temporary structural change, such as offering auto drivers a temporary free bus ticket, may be an important travel demand management tool for converting automotive travel demand to public-transport travel demand. This gives hope that we, as a group, could come up with a similar action for Alcoi and maybe find a local sponsor for free tickets for students or young adults.
Sources:
(The paper from the last website is unfortunately only accessible as a student or teacher from the HAW Hamburg via the network from the university, there is a abstract available at the link above.)
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