Efficient Urban Interchanges: The City-HUB Model

Abstract

Multimodal trips are increasing in metropolitan areas, making public transport less attractive. There is a need for integration in order to achieve effective seamless mobility. One dimension of integration is to reduce the disruption of transfer among modes and interchanges appear as the best solution when big number of travellers has to transfer.The City-HUB 7FP project1 has developed a three years research for deploying new interchanges and improving existing ones. It starts by identifying two groups of dimensions that define Interchange key features. The first dimension is related to Physical&Size, including passenger demand, modes of transport, services and facilities and location in the city. The second dimension is related to Local Impacts such as developing of new activities –housing, offices, nearby shopping-, jobs creation and its connection with the local Development Plan. The combination of the elements of the two dimensions define the following key features: building design, stakeholders’ involvement and the type of business model. The findings are based on interviews to practitioners undertaken in 26 selected interchanges in 9 European countries.According to these key features, the interchange should organize the space among three different zones: access-egress zone; facilities zone; and arrival-departure-transfer zone. The first one is where links to the local area and access to transport modes are focused. The last one caters for intermodal transfers. Travel information and intermodal services are spread across both zones as well as the facilities and retailing.Users’ perceptions should be collected to improve interchange efficiency. To that end a travellers’ attitudinal survey has been carried out in interchanges in 5 European cities. From the user point of view the most important factors identified in the surveys are safety and security, transfer conditions, emergency situation, information, design, services&facilities, environmental quality and comfort of waiting time. All these elements define the interchange from two different perspectives: “as a transport node” and “as a place”. The first one is related to the functionality as a node of the transport network; the second includes all the features for make the transfer experience more attractive and efficient.The project has identified a number of recommendations for developing urban transport interchanges. Some of them refers to users, other to operators and the third part deals with local impacts, governance issues and business models. All these findings have served to develop an integrated concept of interchange: City-HUB model.