Happy Birthday Marie Curie!

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934)
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas”

Popular posts from this blog

New article: Stay local or go regional? Urban form effects on vehicle use at different spatial scales: A theoretical concept and its application to the San Francisco Bay Area

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Abstract: This paper explores the respective roles of local and regional characteristics of urban form on vehicle travel. We hypothesize that the effects of urban form on vehicle use at the local and regional levels are complementary, and we introduce the concept of local and regional action spaces, which are defined based on the accessibility of alternative means of transport within an acceptable travel time, to test this hypothesis. Multilevel and ordered logit models are developed for the San Francisco Bay Area to estimate the effects of urban form and socioeconomic characteristics on vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and vehicle trip frequency (for work, shopping, and social/recreational purposes). We find that the two urban scale characteristics exert complementary effects on VKT. However, because people in the San Francisco Bay Area display significantly lower VKT in the local than in the regional action space, we conclude that regional-scale inter-ventions would c…
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New article: Do people consider an acceptable travel time? Evidence from Berkeley, CA

Abstract: This paper explores the extent to which people identify an acceptable travel time for each trip they want to make and investigates the primary characteristics of this behavioural threshold. We assume that an acceptable travel time is defined through utilitarian processes that are related to cognitive and affective evaluations of travel that develop throughout a person’s lifetime. We apply a mixed methods approach to explore our hypothesis, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with a stratified, according to commuting mode, random sample of 20 individuals living in Berkeley, CA. Our results support the validity of the acceptable travel time concept and offer (a) initial evidence on its variation to the travel mode and sociodemographic characteristics and (b) insights into people’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings and experiences about their travel. Thus, our results can contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ travel decisions and valuation of…
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New book chapter: The case of Mobility as a Service. A critical reflection on challenges for urban transport and mobility governance

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In our new book chapter with Kate Pangbourne, Dominic Stead, and Miloš Mladenović, we critically reflect on the “(false) promise of freedom” that accompanies MaaS. We contend that MaaS could feed unsustainable travel behaviours and pose threats to transport and social resilience and we discuss the implications for governance.

Here is the abstract of our book chapter:

This chapter provides a reflective critique of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), an emerging development seeking a role within the Smart Mobility paradigm. We assess a range of its future implications for urban policymakers in terms of governance and sustainability (i.e., social and environmental impacts). We begin by describing the origins of the MaaS concept, along with the features of precursor technologies and current early examples. We then reflect on the marketing of MaaS and use it to consider how we might anticipate some potentially less desirable aspects of the promoted business models. Finally, we discuss the implica…
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