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Browsing by Author "De Gruyter, Chris"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Exploring links between the sustainability performance of urban public transport and land use in international cities
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Currie, Graham; De Gruyter, Chris
    Sustainability is a major driver of world policy for cities, and public transport is said to be a more sustainable mode of travel than other modes. But how do public transport (PT) systems in different cities compare to each other? This paper measures the relative sustainability of public transport systems between cities rather than between modes within cities. However, its primary focus is to explore the extent to which public transport sustainability is influenced by land use. Do cities with low-density land use automatically have poor sustainability performance? Do high-density megacities always have good sustainability performance relative to other cities? Does land use mean some cities cannot improve sustainability performance? These are some of the questions this research seeks to explore through an empirical study of land use and PT sustainability metrics using correlation/cross sectional and regression analyses. Results suggest that westernized, developed countries (Western Europe, North America, and Oceania) have good environmental and social sustainability performance but poor service effectiveness and economic performance. Asia and Latin America perform the other way around, better on economic and service effectiveness and worse on social and economic performance. Eastern Europe is the one region with higher sustainability performance all around. Prague, Dakar and Tokyo are at the top of 98 cities studied, while Dubai, Shizuoka (Japan), Denver, and Johannesburg perform the worst. Land-use results show that population and job density present the highest correlation with PT sustainability metrics, implying that about a third of overall sustainability performance of public transport in cities might be explained by land use. Higher-density land use improves sustainability performance. A wider range of land-use indicators is more strongly correlated with the service effectiveness categories of sustainability indicators and to less strongly correlated with the economic sustainability indicators, suggesting that Western cities with poor service effectiveness and economic sustainability performance should densify cities to address sustainability challenges. Policy implications and areas for future research are explored.
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    How does the built environment affect transit use by train, tram and bus?
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2020) De Gruyter, Chris; Saghapour, Tayebeh; Ma, Liang; Dodson, Jago
    While much research has explored the influence of the built environment on public transport use, little focus has been given to how this influence varies by public transport mode. Using a case study of Melbourne, this study assesses the influence of the built environment and other characteristics (transit service quality, demand management and socio-demographics) on commuting by train, tram and bus. Key findings indicate that the built environment has a significant influence, but with notable differences between individual public transport modes. Commuting by tram was found to have the strongest association with the explanatory variables, while bus had the weakest explanatory power. Differences in the geographical coverage of public transport services in Melbourne play a key role in explaining the influence of the built environment. Population density is positively associated with tram use, which operates in older, higher density environments, but is negatively associated with train and bus use. Furthermore, the association with land-use mix is only significant for train and tram use, as buses tend to operate in areas with greater land-use homogeneity. When focused on inner Melbourne only, the influence of the built environment is diluted, while distance to public transport becomes more significant. The findings have important implications for practice, not only in terms of improving transit demand forecasting but also in targeting changes to the built environment to leverage higher transit ridership by mode.