Multimodal Mobility Research Articles

Why do sustainable shared mobility practices not proliferate more widely? Insights from digital mobility diaries

Sharing instead of owning consumer goods should significantly reduce their production and the associated environmental damages. However, this ecological promise has yet to be fulfilled, even in mobility, where sharing practices have become mainstream. This is because the most widespread mobility-sharing practice (free-floating carsharing) has the lowest ecological benefit. This study asks why the adoption of more ecologically beneficial shared mobility practices remains lower, addressing this question through digital ethnography. Using digital mobility diaries for three weeks, 21 respondents documented their mobility practices (including various shared mobility practices and private car travel) by uploading pictures, videos and text notes on a dedicated smartphone application. The data show that free-floating carsharing has proliferated because it can leverage the ‘system of automobility’ as its users are relatively monomodal. Other shared mobility services function well; however, we found that they have not proliferated as widely because the overall multimodal mobility mix (e.g. walking, cycling, public transport, on-demand sharing) associated with this form of shared mobility is highly demanding. Better conditions for multimodal mobility, created through appropriate infrastructure, are crucial for sustainable shared mobility practices to spread. However, space limitations mean this will likely come at the expense of car-centred infrastructure and necessitate its exnovation.

Understanding multimodal mobility patterns of micromobility users in urban environments: insights from Barcelona

AbstractMicromobility, which includes bicycle-sharing systems, e-scooters, and shared moped-style scooters, has emerged as a popular alternative to traditional transport modes in urban environments, thus expanding the number of transportation options available to urban travellers. Previous research has primarily relied on trip-based data to explore the multimodal character of micromobility. However, existing evidence has failed to understand the ways in which urban travellers have reshaped their mobility patterns as a consequence of the introduction of micromobility. Using a travel survey (N = 902) set in Barcelona, Spain, cluster techniques are used to group micromobility users according to their frequency of use of three different micromobility modes (bicycle-sharing systems, private e-scooter, and moped-style scooter-sharing services). Then, a multinomial logistic regression was used, in order to explore each cluster’s usage of traditional modes of transport, along with all potential weekly combinations between modes. Results show that most micromobility users rely on a single type of micromobility mode on a weekly basis. The model further indicates that private e-scooter, shared bicycle, and shared moped-style scooter users develop different weekly mobility combination patterns. While personal micromobility options (private e-scooter) are associated with monomodal tendencies, sharing services (bicycle sharing and moped-style scooter sharing) encourage multimodal behaviours. These findings contribute to the limited knowledge concerning the role of some micromobility alternatives in creating more rational and less habit-dependent travel behaviour choices.

New ways for carsharing – Can mobility as a service boost carsharing?

Mobility as a Service is a potential game changer in the transition from individual motorized to sustainable and multimodal mobility in urban areas. These innovative concepts are an opportunity for existing forms of sustainable mobility to reach a broader user base and extend their service offerings. Although there are some practical examples of carsharing applications in such concepts, there is a lack of data-driven research about Mobility as a Service in practice and, above all, findings about the influence on usage behavior within such systems. We analyze usage data of the “Mobil-Flat”, a subscription-based mobility offer that integrates carsharing, public transportation, and bike sharing into a single service in a medium-sized German city, to determine the impact of Mobility as a Service on carsharing use. This results in a structured overview of the business model and the implications of such concepts on user behavior and acceptance in the context of carsharing, based on a real-world dataset.

Assistive Systems for Visually Impaired Persons: Challenges and Opportunities for Navigation Assistance.

The inability to see makes moving around very difficult for visually impaired persons. Due to their limited movement, they also struggle to protect themselves against moving and non-moving objects. Given the substantial rise in the population of those with vision impairments in recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research devoted to the development of assistive technologies. This review paper highlights the state-of-the-art assistive technology, tools, and systems for improving the daily lives of visually impaired people. Multi-modal mobility assistance solutions are also evaluated for both indoor and outdoor environments. Lastly, an analysis of several approaches is also provided, along with recommendations for the future.

Index Air Quality Monitoring for Light and Active Mobility.

Light and active mobility, as well as multimodal mobility, could significantly contribute to decarbonization. Air quality is a key parameter to monitor the environment in terms of health and leisure benefits. In a possible scenario, wearables and recharge stations could supply information about a distributed monitoring system of air quality. The availability of low-power, smart, low-cost, compact embedded systems, such as Arduino Nicla Sense ME, based on BME688 by Bosch, Reutlingen, Germany, and powered by suitable software tools, can provide the hardware to be easily integrated into wearables as well as in solar-powered EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) for scooters and e-bikes. In this way, each e-vehicle, bike, or EVSE can contribute to a distributed monitoring network providing real-time information about micro-climate and pollution. This work experimentally investigates the capability of the BME688 environmental sensor to provide useful and detailed information about air quality. Initial experimental results from measurements in non-controlled and controlled environments show that BME688 is suited to detect the human-perceived air quality. CO2 readout can also be significant for other gas (e.g., CO), while IAQ (Index for Air Quality, from 0 to 500) is heavily affected by relative humidity, and its significance below 250 is quite low for an outdoor uncontrolled environment.

Learning spatio-temporal dynamics on mobility networks for adaptation to open-world events

As a decisive part in the success of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), spatio-temporal dynamics modeling on mobility networks is a challenging task particularly considering scenarios where open-world events drive mobility behavior deviated from the routines. While tremendous progress has been made to model high-level spatio-temporal regularities with deep learning, most, if not all of the existing methods are neither aware of the dynamic interactions among multiple transport modes on mobility networks, nor adaptive to unprecedented volatility brought by potential open-world events. In this paper, we are therefore motivated to improve the canonical spatio-temporal network (ST-Net) from two perspectives: (1) design a heterogeneous mobility information network (HMIN) to explicitly represent intermodality in multimodal mobility; (2) propose a memory-augmented dynamic filter generator (MDFG) to generate sequence-specific parameters in an on-the-fly fashion for various scenarios. The enhanced event-aware spatio-temporal network, namely EAST-Net, is evaluated on several real-world datasets with a wide variety and coverage of open-world events. Both quantitative and qualitative experimental results verify the superiority of our approach compared with the state-of-the-art baselines. What is more, experiments show generalization ability of EAST-Net to perform zero-shot inference over different open-world events that have not been seen.

Context-aware multi-modal route selection service for urban computing scenarios

The rapid urban population growth introduces novel challenges to urban mobility scenarios, requiring innovative and connected solutions to relieve traffic congestion and enhance transportation efficiency, using unusual roads and public transportation modals. For instance, multi-modal routes allow more flexible modal combinations to offer smart multi-modal mobility. In this context, the route selection service must rely on different context information, such as criminality, accidents, air quality, and others, where Internet of Things technologies introduce active and ubiquitous sensing of many contexts along the urban scenario, providing data for statistical analysis to offer a safer and healthier urban reality. However, designing an efficient multi-modal route selection service that considers different context information to offer personalized routes is important. In this article, we describe a context-aware route selection service that considers adequate contextual information to provide routes according to the user’s preference. The multi-modal route selection service applies a multi-criteria method to give different degrees of importance to each criterion based on the user profile (i.e., Worker, Green, Safe, and Tourist). We present extensive evaluation results from applying our multi-modal route selection approach to a London dataset. The approach successfully enables user-preferred transportation choices using four balanced selection profiles and ten route features. The proposed multi-modal route selection service demonstrates better performance in terms of economic, ecological, and time-saving metrics for each user profile compared to a greedy selection manner.

Evaluation Framework for Multi-Modal Public Transport Systems Based on Connectivity and Transfers at Stop Level

Multi-modal public transport (PT) networks within metropolitan areas are often characterized by complexity resulting mainly from their infrastructure, design, operations, and demand. This complexity leads to a significant amount of effort on behalf of the transit agencies to properly evaluate their performance at certain locations and proceed with improvements. This study proposes a methodology based on clustering techniques that facilitates the evaluation of PT networks. The evaluation framework refers to the comparison between the levels of supply and demand at a certain stop. Service supply is quantified through an existing connectivity index, whereas demand is considered through the number of transfers that are performed at each stop. Transfers are critical within multi-modal mobility and often serve as a hindrance for choosing PT. The case study here is the Helsinki PT network in Finland. General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data are used for quantifying connectivity and a dataset deriving from smartphone ticketing application for quantifying transfers. Results include the evaluation for each PT mode and for the overall multi-modal PT network. Focusing on the evaluation of the overall multi-modal PT network, connectivity and transfers levels for 75.60% of stops are found to be well aligned. Therefore, these stops could be eliminated from the list of candidate stops for performing improvements. Of the remaining stops, 19.73% belongs to the case of higher connectivity than transfers and 4.67% to the case of lower connectivity than transfers. Stops included in these two cases require further attention and prioritization during planning processes.

Designing corporate mobility as a service – Decision support and perspectives

Corporate Mobility as a Service (CMaaS) integrates company-exclusive fleets and public mobility services, such as car sharing, bike sharing, or taxis, into one multimodal mobility system. As a result, companies may reduce their own vehicle fleet, their total mobility costs, as well as their emissions by shifting trips to alternative mobility modes. Against this background, we present a strategic-tactical decision support tool for corporate mobility managers to design a CMaaS system. We include strategic decisions on the fleet size and composition of company-exclusive fleets. The fleet composition addresses decisions on the inclusion of various mobility modes, e.g., cars and bikes, as well as on the choice of vehicle classes, e.g., regarding drive train technologies, and on how these vehicles are provided to the company, e.g., leased or owned vehicles. Further, we include tactical decisions on the choice of price tariffs offered by public mobility providers. Herein, our decision support tool accounts for structural requirements, such as the spatio-temporal corporate mobility demand, costs, upper bounds on the number of vehicles, technical vehicle restrictions, and the use of micromobility modes, like bikes and scooters. Finally, a comprehensive case study with ten mobility services and driving profiles of 144 companies enables us to draw general insights on the current and future potentials of CMaaS. Results promise average cost savings of 33% and a shift of 21% of trips to public mobility services.

Understanding train tourism mobilities: a practice theories perspective

By integrating mobilities research with practice theories, this paper uncovers the interdependencies between tourism, transport and mobilities that allows for a more comprehensive analysis of individual mobile practices and their connections with other mobilities and tourism practices at a destination. By analysing train travel as a performance, practice entity (materials, meanings and competencies) and practice bundle, we also bridge the structure–agency gap in transport and tourism research. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on three longdistance branch lines in Northern England, we unpack train mobilities in the tourism context to show the interconnectedness of and the competition between seemingly unrelated practices. Our findings reveal the structures and dynamics that shape rural train travel within the tourism context. Moreover, train mobility is transformed through various micro-changes that occur through tourists’ performances and changes in the practice elements, such as the presence of skilled or unskilled travellers. We furthermore show that train tourism is an interlocked system of what we have termed ‘multimodal mobility bundles’ involving the interplay and competition between different mobilities and practices and the role of governance in shaping these dynamics.

Historical conditions of Ukraine’s tourism and recreation sector formation and its development in the era of sustainable multimodal mobility

The purpose of the proposed article is a show the history of the formation of the sphere of tourism and recreation of Ukraine in the context of world trends. Methodology is base on application of such scientific methods, as literary, historical, chronologic, dichronic (method of division into periods), approach of the systems, івент- and content-analysis, that did possible complex study and selection of the basic historical stages of development of tourism and recreation. Scientific novely. The authors considered the main approaches to the periodization of the formation of tourism and the tourism industry in Ukraine and the main stages of the development of the field of tourism and recreation from the earliest times. It is emphasized that the formation of tourism and recreation in different geographical regions of Ukraine had certain features, and this industry can take place according to the following main models. Conclusions. The processes of the origin and development of tourism and recreation in Ukraine and the world, the emergence of tourist enterprises, the creation of international tourist organizations, and the globalization of tourism are highlighted. The analysis of the points of view of foreign and domestic authors on international tourism market research made it possible to substantiate the historical aspects of the development of the field of tourism and recreation as a factor in the European integration of Ukraine, as well as to determine the current directions of development of the field of tourism and recreation in the context of European integration processes in Ukraine.

A methodological application of the capability approach to investigate access to multimodal public transport information in a hybrid network

While information and communications technologies offer avenues for disseminating information to help passengers navigate multimodal systems, they also come with challenges in the form of usefulness of information content, imbalances in information supply across modes, and barriers to information access. This paper reflects on the design of a mixed methods approach framed within Amartya Sen's capability approach for investigating and addressing these challenges. Using Cape Town, South Africa as a lens of study, this paper investigates user information needs, technology capabilities related to mobility information, and informational capabilities of captive public transport users to access multimodal mobility information through technology.

Optimization of the location and capacity of shared multimodal mobility hubs to maximize travel utility in urban areas

Nowadays, urban areas are exposed to various challenges such as climate change, social inequalities, and congestion. Shared mobility hubs present the opportunity to reshape our cities and mitigate the previously mentioned challenges by contributing to a more sustainable transport system. These are places where shared cars, mopeds, and e-bikes are offered to improve connectivity in urban areas. In this paper, we investigate the impact of efficiently allocating multimodal shared mobility hubs on modal split, service level, and environmental factors while assuring economic feasibility. Given a limited budget, cities would like to optimize the hubs’ locations to maximize the population’s benefits. For that purpose, we introduce a multi-stage design algorithm model that distributes the hubs and allocates fleets of shared cars, mopeds, and e-bikes to maximize travel utility for all the population traveling using traditional and/or shared modes while accounting for multimodal trips. The model is divided into several modules: computational modules that calculate the demand for the hubs; an optimization module to optimize the hubs’ capacities, availability, and relocation of shared vehicles; and finally, a genetic algorithm to find the optimal hub distribution. Our proposed model is one of the first that optimizes the location and capacity of multimodal hubs by considering multimodal trips in a large network. Additionally, it allows to assess mobility, spatial, and environmental impact of shared modes. The model is applied to the case of Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, with around 800,000 inhabitants. After running several scenarios with different budgets allocated to build the hubs, results show that having more hubs with a lower number of shared vehicles is more beneficial than having fewer hubs with higher capacity. That is because the travel time savings increase considerably when investments lead to complete coverage of the area by the hubs network. A modal split of 5% for the shared modes is expected when Amsterdam is covered by 288 hubs. From an environmental point of view, only 32% of the shared trips replace trips previously made by ICE and electric cars, leading to a limited CO2 emissions reduction of 1.27%. Hence, introducing shared modes and mobility hubs without push measures for the use of private cars appears to offer limited benefits to decrease the negative impacts of private car usage.

Credit charge-cum-reward scheme for green multi-modal mobility

To promote green mobility and alleviate congestion and emissions, this study proposes a credit charge-cum-reward (CCR) scheme where the government determines mode-specific credit charging and rewarding rates together with charging and redemption prices to achieve regulation objectives. Over a CCR scheme period, travelers choose either driving by consuming credits or taking transit to accumulate credits to minimize individual travel costs. At the end of the period, the individual credit balance will be settled by the government at a charging (redemption) price for credit deficits (surpluses). From the viewpoint of travelers, we consider their heterogeneity in value of time and characterize their periodic mode usage equilibrium by formulating a decision optimization problem. From the viewpoint of the government, we discuss the design of CCR schemes without and with revenue constraints. We also investigate the Pareto-improvement and revenue-neutrality of CCR schemes. We prove theoretically and numerically that the proposed CCR scheme flexibly facilitates multi-modal traffic demand management by regulating travelers’ periodic mode usage behavior via charging and rewarding rates and differentiated charging and redemption prices.

Unlocking the potential of Google’s mobility data

The widespread adoption of smartphones has facilitated the collection of multimodal mobility data. Google Location History (GLH) has gained considerable popularity and has a large user base. This article discusses the importance of GLH data and illustrates its value by identifying specific use cases. It also presents ongoing initiatives in which individuals donate GLH data for research purposes. In particular, the adequacy of the collected data is validated, demonstrating their reliability and suitability for rigorous analyses.

A Novel Geospatial Assistive Navigation Technology for Seamless Multimodal Mobility of Wheelchair Users.

Mobility is fundamental for social participation of people with disabilities. Unfortunately, traditional design of urban environments, including infrastructure and services are developed based largely on a standard perception of an independent, fully functional citizen without disability which limits the mobility social participation of PWD. This paper presents the design and development of a novel geospatial assistive navigation technology to support multimodal mobility of people with disabilities, especially those using manual wheelchair in urban areas.

Beyond a transport node? What residents want from transforming railway stations

ABSTRACT Transport planning authorities and operators in various countries are planning far-reaching transformations of secondary railway stations into so-called mobility hubs with the aim to foster rail-based and intermodal mobility. The transformations of railway stations do not only affect the transportation network, but also the urban fabric surrounding railway stations. Projects of this nature, therefore, require a deeper understanding of the preferences of local residents, the key users of such hubs. We developed a three-stage adaptive survey experiment with a random sample of 2,028 adult residents in the perimeter of three secondary railway stations in Switzerland to identify preferences towards four potential railway station functions: public transport provision, access to multimodality, retail and services, and stations as a public space. The main findings are that the transportation function is the top priority, followed by the public space function. Other functions, such as retail, services, and multimodal mobility, are less preferred by residents. The findings reveal the importance of also considering non-commercial functions of these hubs and that residents are viewing railway station as more than merely transport hubs or shopping centres; they are considered key neighbourhood components that shape local identities through their role as public spaces.

Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) with appendage repurposing for locomotion plasticity enhancement

Robot designs can take many inspirations from nature, where there are many examples of highly resilient and fault-tolerant locomotion strategies to navigate complex terrains by recruiting multi-functional appendages. For example, birds such as Chukars and Hoatzins can repurpose wings for quadrupedal walking and wing-assisted incline running. These animals showcase impressive dexterity in employing the same appendages in different ways and generating multiple modes of locomotion, resulting in highly plastic locomotion traits which enable them to interact and navigate various environments and expand their habitat range. The robotic biomimicry of animals’ appendage repurposing can yield mobile robots with unparalleled capabilities. Taking inspiration from animals, we have designed a robot capable of negotiating unstructured, multi-substrate environments, including land and air, by employing its components in different ways as wheels, thrusters, and legs. This robot is called the Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot, or M4 in short. M4 can employ its multi-functional components composed of several actuator types to (1) fly, (2) roll, (3) crawl, (4) crouch, (5) balance, (6) tumble, (7) scout, and (8) loco-manipulate. M4 can traverse steep slopes of up to 45 deg. and rough terrains with large obstacles when in balancing mode. M4 possesses onboard computers and sensors and can autonomously employ its modes to negotiate an unstructured environment. We present the design of M4 and several experiments showcasing its multi-modal capabilities.

MaaS Adoption and Sustainability for Systematic Trips: Estimation of Environmental Impacts in a Medium-Sized City

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is often seen as a promising solution to address societal and environmental challenges. Despite the importance of quantifying its potential benefits, few previous works have focused on the impacts on the environment, and all of them considered large cities. This study aims to forecast the diffusion of MaaS in a medium-sized city and quantify the consequent reduction in pollutant emissions for commuting trips. Answers from a mobility survey administered to employees of the Municipality of Padua (Italy) were used to calibrate a model predicting MaaS adoption, which was applied to real working trips to estimate daily vehicle emissions savings in future scenarios with different MaaS bundles. The results indicated that the opportunity to have multimodal mobility options providing door-to-door travel is a fundamental element to ensure wide MaaS diffusion. Furthermore, public transport was confirmed to be the backbone of such a system. Compared to the current scenario, we observed up to a 41% reduction in pollutant emissions. The analysis pointed out that MaaS adoption is highly dependent on the characteristics of the proposed bundles, thus highlighting the importance of a proper design of the service and ex ante evaluation of emission savings.

Behavioural norms or personal gains? – An empirical analysis of commuters‘ intention to switch to multimodal mobility behaviour

Existing research has revealed that there is a growing dominance of multimodality in urban areas, which is frequently considered to be an important part of the solution to the burdens associated with heavy car use, such as traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution, as well as associated risks to human health. Yet, while the role of private motorized transport is decreasing in densely populated urban areas, monomodal travel patterns, as exemplified by single occupancy car use, are still dominating work-related mobility. To date, studies on modal shift have investigated the decision-making processes with regard to particular travel modes. However, the intention to switch to multimodal mobility in a commuting context, which may represent a first step towards car use reduction, remains relatively unexplored. Therefore, this paper aims to understand and identify the predecessors of car commuters’ intention to switch to multimodal commuting via an online questionnaire. Our theoretical framework is based on an extension of Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) with Lindenberg and Steg’s Goal-framing Theory (GFT), including a novel fourth goal frame, habit, and person-organisation fit (POF) as additional constructs. Contrary to our expectations, gain and hedonic goals, as well as POF and habit, were not found to affect switching intention. Instead, our findings suggest that a switch to multimodal mobility is strongly dependent on people's normative goals, underlining the need for employers to encourage and reward sustainable multimodal commuting. These findings can assist policy makers, corporate mobility, and HR managers to promote more sustainable, multimodal mobility behaviour.