Data gaps in transport behavior are bottleneck for tracking progress towards healthy sustainable transport in European cities

Abstract

Abstract Shifting to healthy, sustainable transport modes is essential to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, improve air quality, and promote physical activity in European cities. To date, a major barrier to monitoring progress towards this objective has been the absence of harmonized passenger transport data across cities. This Perspective synthesizes the outcome of a workshop bringing together experts in urban transportation, climate change mitigation, and health with the aim to identify solutions to overcome this barrier. We identified four data streams that could improve monitoring shifts towards active and public transport at the European level: (i) surveys, (ii) mobile phone data, (iii) street view data and (iv) bicycle and pedestrian counters. We examined the strengths and limitations of each data source and mapped publicly available datasets. We identified few coordinated efforts to collect active travel data among European cities; data gaps remain a critical bottleneck for research, benchmarking, and monitoring progress. Priorities for addressing these gaps include survey harmonization and support for longitudinal monitoring, the expansion of street view data and bicycle counter networks and the sustainable development of open access data repositories.