Forecasting and Mapping the Environmental and Health Impacts of Sustainable Regional Transport Policies

Abstract

Research on evaluating sustainable transport policies is predominantly focused on their urban effects, often overlooking similar challenges in suburban and rural mobility. Therefore, the development of regionally integrated sustainable transport strategies becomes essential to comprehensively address these concerns. This study aims to bridge this gap by introducing a GIS-supported methodology that combines multiple linear regressions with hazard ratio models to quantify and map the impacts of environmentally driven regional transport policies on air pollution and human health. The main findings of an illustrative case study highlighted the importance of stronger efforts to promote the transition to shared and active transport and address the articulation between urban and rural mobility. This study offers a novel contribution to transport researchers and policymakers by proposing a methodology that (1) forecasts the impacts of regional transport policies using open data and software, ensuring its applicability for diverse regional settings, (2) provides the results in quantitative and visual formats, facilitating output analysis and visualisation and, consequently, decision-making and public consultation on proposed sustainable transport policies, and (3) sets the groundwork for including future transport-related dimensions.