Abstract
Technological progress and the economic and social environment dynamics lead to changing mobility needs. Modifying travel practices, increasing the pressures for fast and predictable services, and expanding the demands of users for individualized offers determine requirements for diversifying the mobility supply in an integrated framework that must meet sustainable development objectives. In this framework, intermodal public transport plays a significant role. The chapter introduces the definitions of multimodality and intermodality in urban mobility systems. Intermodal transportation accounts for the different capabilities of diverse modes, including their availability, speed, density, costs, limitations, and, therefore, their most appropriate operating. The functions of intermodal public transportation are discussed. It is emphasized that solutions for sustainable mobility can be developed through a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the new mobility services.
TopIntroduction
Mobility requirements are changing all over the world. Urban travel behaviors are adjusting, and various travel modes and services are supplied. Innovative technologies have been developed to meet daily urban mobility needs according to current urban spatiality and temporality. The spread of cities, with direct effects on density, affecting the economic efficiency of public transportation, determined the development of more appropriate solutions for the reduced and dispersed travel flows. New mobility solutions can be stimulated both by adapting collective public transportation to individual requirements and by the shared use of personal vehicles. Transportation operators must satisfy the travel demand with ever more convenient, fast, and predictable services (Van Audenhove et al., 2014).
At the same time, users must become more concerned about the sustainability of their mode of travel because mobility brings many benefits for its users but with costs for our society. These include greenhouse gas emissions, air, noise, and water pollution, crashes, congestion, and biodiversity loss – all affecting people's health and well-being. Actions to ensure a more sustainable operation of all transportation modes and to provide available sustainable options in a multimodal transportation system are necessary to achieve the aspiring goals defined at European Union level (COM, 2020). The European Green Deal calls for a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The EU will become a climate-neutral economy by 2050 while working towards a zero-pollution ambition.
According to these goals, cities with a high proportion of individual motorized travel need to (COM, 2020):
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Redesign Their Mobility Systems (defined by the set of infrastructures, travel patterns and related services, as well as the offer of parking spaces) to become more orientated towards public transportation.
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Integrate the travel value chain to encourage smooth, intermodal mobility and increase public transportation's overall attractiveness by service extension.
In this framework, this chapter highlights the advantages and challenges of intermodal public transportation and discusses the levels of integration required by intermodal services as sustainable mobility solutions. The first part discusses the objectives followed in the design of intermodal networks. It demonstrated how the main functions of intermodal mobility contribute to achieving the goals of sustainable development in cities. In many cases, the development of public transportation networks has been segmented by mode of transportation/travel, sometimes leading to complex and inflexible routes for passengers. Designing appropriate intermodal solutions correlated to local circumstances requires identifying correct competition and complementarities between different travel modes. In this regard, the main particularities of urban travel modes are reviewed, and key components of urban intermodal mobility systems are explained. The last part of the chapter analyzes the challenges related to the attractiveness of intermodal services. It presents the required levels of integration and the main problems in ensuring seamless transitions from one mode to another (continuity of the journey chain, compatibility between modes, consistency, readability, etc.).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Shared Mobility: Public individual travel services provided based on short-term hire payment vehicles (bikes, scooters, cars) operated by users, function on their needs, according to restrictions of urban authority and service provider operator.
Urban Mobility System: Set of traffic and transport infrastructures, technologies for all modes of travel (walking, cycling, private car and scooter usage, public transportation offerings) and related services (including parking supply) satisfying the mobility demand at the urban level.
Mode of Transportation: A variant of transportation provided by a specific ensemble of infrastructures, vehicles and technologies, characterized by a set of features in terms of accessibility, capacity, speed, reliability, safety, etc.
Urban Multimodality: A set of available alternative transportation and travel modes for different trips over a certain period (e.g., a day or week).
Urban Intermodality: A Set of different travel modes and transportation services integrated to ensure a seamless trip made with more than one mode (e.g., walking, metro, and bus) to offer travelers a seamless journey. It combines the most robust features of different mobility options in terms of accessibility, travel mode, and travel preferences to increase urban mobility efficiency.
Accessibility: Capability of reaching destinations. It can be assessed at different levels of transport networks or systems based on various metrics (distances, time, money, other quality factors).
Trunk-and-feeder service: A set of low-capacity travel or transport services connected to a transport corridor organized to feed flow to use the provided high-capacity efficiently.
Urban Intermodal Hub: Transport node that concentrates multimodal and intermodal flows, including facilities that enable access for all user categories to all modal service networks, allow physical transfers between different transportation modes, mobility service integration and additional value-added services.
Feeder service: Low-capacity mobility or transportation services (e.g., scooters, cars, local buses) provided to supply passenger flow to fixed high-capacity service systems (tram, light rail, metro, rail).