Smart City Centres Sustainable Solutions

Smart Cities Sustainable Accessibility Bikes Cars

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Smart Moving Cities Sustainable Mobility

Traffic Engineers on Smart Moving Cities

Experts on Urban Mobility, National and International

Global Cities Experts In Access Urban Mobility

Cities becoming more and more congested with vehicles as the demand for travel grows. The city centre is overloaded by individual transport and the con-coordination and non-regulated supplying of business activities creates problems. The city has a target to improve the urban environment and ensure a better life for its inhabitants.

The city centre covers a rather small area. Its function is various, from providing residents with housing, offering cultural realisation, business opportunities, shops, services, offices, medical facilities, etc. Therefore, accessibility of the centre has to be on a high level.

A feasibility study was developed to determine feasibility of implementing a city centre access control and develop a plan of measures that could be implemented as part of the Sustainable Urban Transport Plan in with the aim to reduce the volume of traffic in the centre and to improve the environment in the city.

The study is aimed at following issues:
how to reduce the proportion of transit traffic
how to reduce the number of vehicles entering the city centre
how to improve conditions for safe walking and cycling
how to reduce traffic congestion
how to improve traffic safety and traffic flow
how to improve conditions for public transport services in the area
how to solve the parking problem in the city centre

More bikes, better car accessibility!
There is growing global awareness of the fact that money is earned at places where people come together.
They prefer to meet in inspiring surroundings, a clear example of these being the streets and squares in old city centres.
Culture, architecture and the bustle on the streets all contribute to a climate that leads to innovation, inspiration and, ultimately,
business. Both locally and internationally. It was long assumed that making space for cars would result in more economic progress.
Being easily accessible by car was considered crucial to a companys competitive position. However, both infrastructure and cars disturb an area.
Not only by their claims on the scarce space available, as when beautiful buildings and parks are destroyed, but also by their simple presence on the streets.
Parking and moving along. Creating space for cars can harm a citys competitive position. When searching for a balance between the claims made on space,
we have to negotiate among the various interests. And you must decide on which economic activities you want to stimulate, what customers are involved and the demands that they make on the quality of the space and its accessibility. In other words, who gets a red-carpet treatment and who should be refused?
From this viewpoint, it can easily be concluded that facilitating unnecessary traffic is not the right decision to make, certainly not if that damages the spatial quality of the city centres.
Up to now, alternatives have been sought in ring roads, parking/rates policies and public transport. However, many motorists still choose to remain in traffic queues.
Public transport is evidently not an attractive option for them. And bicycles are not common in many cities even though most trips by car are very short and could conceivably be done by bike.





Figure 1: Planning smart moving cities is an interdisciplinary task


How should we approach this issue?
Not every city starts from the same position. Newer cities tend to reserve space for the increasing number of cars.
Other cities have already used all of their extra space and are faced with daily traffic jams. In both cases, focusing on cars is a dead-end approach.
But how do cities deal with new options? Austin, Texas, is a good example of an alternative. Austin is a fast growing city that has chosen intermodality
as the means to connect to the city centre. By participating in the Green Lanes Project, Austin can work with experts from, for example, Goudappel Coffeng BV in the Netherlands.

The analyses made during workshops clearly showed the following for Austin:

» A large number of their roads are used particularly for short car trips (< 3 miles).
» A cycling network could easily be created based on the patterns of car movements.
» Because of electric bicycles a much larger residential area becomes accessible
then with conventional bikes, partly because its no longer a problem to cycle uphill.
» Perhaps the most important lesson learned:
» Car congestion could be reduced simply by making a small change to the modal split.
» And that you can create better accessibility by car with less space.

Essential to the work process was that, thanks to fast web tools, analyses could be made during workshop sessions.

The following conclusions were quickly shared:

» Bicycles are a serious alternative for motorists if the cycling network is in order;
» Investing in bicycles is far less expensive than investing in cars, and car accessibility improves as well;
» Cyclists create a more attractive street scene;
» The advantages to both the environment and health (obesity) are evident.





Figure 2: A small modal shift from car to bike, leads to less V/C problems on your network


Move Mobility Contact
Correspondence P.O. Box 234, 7400 AE Deventer

Visitors:

Keizerstraat 31

7411 HD Deventer

The Netherlands


info@movemobility.nl


MOVE Mobility Consulting BV
+31 (0)6 5357 6317

MOVE Mobility R&D BV
+31 (0)6 2269 9964

MOVE Meter BV
+31 (0)6 2237 9887




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