Promoting active travel and public transport for a post-pandemic world. In many major cities, COVID-19 stimulated the provision of open streets, pop up bike lanes and widened pedestrian access, prompting unprecedented increases cycling and walking. While this type of infrastructure has always been supported by urban planners and designers, the pandemic has served as a vital inflection point, enabling cities to pursue long-term sustainable transport initiatives, including investment in Active Tra ....Promoting active travel and public transport for a post-pandemic world. In many major cities, COVID-19 stimulated the provision of open streets, pop up bike lanes and widened pedestrian access, prompting unprecedented increases cycling and walking. While this type of infrastructure has always been supported by urban planners and designers, the pandemic has served as a vital inflection point, enabling cities to pursue long-term sustainable transport initiatives, including investment in Active Travel (AT). There is an opportunity to promote AT as part of an integrated transport strategy, and to develop tools for the robust evaluation of AT impacts to inform future investment strategies. This proposal will provide our partner organisation Transport for New South Wales (with the knowledge required to achieve this.
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Integrating Attribute Decision Heuristics into Travel Choice Models that accommodate Risk Attitude and Perceptual Conditioning. This proposal has the specific objective of integrating two disconnected literatures that are having a major influence on the behavioural and statistical performance of discrete choice models in travel choice modelling. These fields are attribute processing strategies and the conditioning of the marginal utility of attributes by risk attitude and perceptual conditioning ....Integrating Attribute Decision Heuristics into Travel Choice Models that accommodate Risk Attitude and Perceptual Conditioning. This proposal has the specific objective of integrating two disconnected literatures that are having a major influence on the behavioural and statistical performance of discrete choice models in travel choice modelling. These fields are attribute processing strategies and the conditioning of the marginal utility of attributes by risk attitude and perceptual conditioning. These two major developments have not been jointly integrated into a behaviourally richer representation of choice making. Given the encouraging evidence from both literatures, the research will determine more precisely the benefits in terms of improved estimates of willingness to pay for specific attributes and also increased predictive power. Read moreRead less
Funding on the line: public transport financing and property value capture. This project aims to develop property value capture schemes that would provide alternative funding for public transport infrastructure. It plans to model the timing and spatial patterns of property value uplift from recent investments in rail, busways and ferries in Queensland and New South Wales. It then intends to conduct a survey of Australian stakeholders and discrete choice modelling to determine willingness-to-pay. ....Funding on the line: public transport financing and property value capture. This project aims to develop property value capture schemes that would provide alternative funding for public transport infrastructure. It plans to model the timing and spatial patterns of property value uplift from recent investments in rail, busways and ferries in Queensland and New South Wales. It then intends to conduct a survey of Australian stakeholders and discrete choice modelling to determine willingness-to-pay. This data is then expected to be used to develop an institutionally, legally and politically feasible scheme for implementation in Australia, focused on cases including extension to the Gold Coast light rail network.Read moreRead less
Improving external validity of stated choice experiments. This project aims to deliver more accurate estimates of choice behaviour by reducing biases due to choice task complexity in surveys as well as design artefacts. Extracting 'true' preferences is challenging, not only due to possible hypothetical bias, but also due to increasingly complex choice tasks and the existence of design artefacts. This project will investigate the latter two in the context of marketing, transport, health, and envi ....Improving external validity of stated choice experiments. This project aims to deliver more accurate estimates of choice behaviour by reducing biases due to choice task complexity in surveys as well as design artefacts. Extracting 'true' preferences is challenging, not only due to possible hypothetical bias, but also due to increasingly complex choice tasks and the existence of design artefacts. This project will investigate the latter two in the context of marketing, transport, health, and environmental economics, and proposes new methodologies to extract preferences that more closely reflect true behaviour in real markets.Read moreRead less
Business location decisions. This project aims to develop a forecasting model system for economic planning that integrates business (re-) location and co-location choices. Improved transport infrastructure connects places and can influence the location of businesses. This project will use forecasting models to quantify the drivers of firm location decisions linked to an integrated strategic transport and land use modelling system. This project expects to provide guidance for transport investment ....Business location decisions. This project aims to develop a forecasting model system for economic planning that integrates business (re-) location and co-location choices. Improved transport infrastructure connects places and can influence the location of businesses. This project will use forecasting models to quantify the drivers of firm location decisions linked to an integrated strategic transport and land use modelling system. This project expects to provide guidance for transport investment that brings gains in productivity to industry and the economy and wellbeing to individuals and society.Read moreRead less
Integrating Accident and Travel Delay Externalities in an Urban Speed Reduction Context. The recognition that accident externalities are not independent of travel delays, and hence travel time savings and losses will promote a serious policy rethink about strategies designed to reduce the risk of exposure to accidents. The evidence is designed to identify that additional externality that has to be factored into the accident costs to recognise the other sources of externality typically ignored in ....Integrating Accident and Travel Delay Externalities in an Urban Speed Reduction Context. The recognition that accident externalities are not independent of travel delays, and hence travel time savings and losses will promote a serious policy rethink about strategies designed to reduce the risk of exposure to accidents. The evidence is designed to identify that additional externality that has to be factored into the accident costs to recognise the other sources of externality typically ignored in accident costing and speed restriction studies. The implication on the development of a national program of road safety is likely to be profound. Read moreRead less
Valuation of service reliability and crowding under risk and uncertainty: neglected drivers of demand for public transport. The reliability of public transport services, and the amount of crowding at stations and also on trains and on buses, have come under strong criticism. This study identifies the role that improved service reliability and reduced crowding play in influencing the switch from car to public transport for the commute.
Development of a behavioural system of stated choice models: modelling behavioural, pricing and technological opportunities to reduce automobile energy levels. Automobile use is attributed with over 70% of CO2 emissions from the transport sector. This project delivers a new framework to assess the impact of policies to reduce CO2 and other energy sources associated with existing ICE fuel sources and a range of scenarios that involve futures with alternative fuels. The proposed framework will rad ....Development of a behavioural system of stated choice models: modelling behavioural, pricing and technological opportunities to reduce automobile energy levels. Automobile use is attributed with over 70% of CO2 emissions from the transport sector. This project delivers a new framework to assess the impact of policies to reduce CO2 and other energy sources associated with existing ICE fuel sources and a range of scenarios that involve futures with alternative fuels. The proposed framework will radically change the approach used by practitioners in prediction, and provide a way of capturing behavioural responses of car users to new environmental futures, in which price, performance, distribution and maintenance play a crucial role in adopting environmentally friendly fuels and vehicle designs. Australia lacks this behavioural capability.Read moreRead less
The Social Impact of the Transformation of Asia-Pacific Ports. The Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region of maritime trade. Globalisation has resulted in changed management and ownership structures for ports with implications for labour relations, dockland redevelopment and relations with their social and economic hinterlands. These changes have social and environmental consequences, that are especially stark in the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. While environmental issues have b ....The Social Impact of the Transformation of Asia-Pacific Ports. The Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region of maritime trade. Globalisation has resulted in changed management and ownership structures for ports with implications for labour relations, dockland redevelopment and relations with their social and economic hinterlands. These changes have social and environmental consequences, that are especially stark in the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. While environmental issues have been thoroughly expolored, social transformations and impacts are poorly understood. We a suitable conceptual framework and methodology to anticipate, manage and assess the implication of change. This project seeks to conceptualise, compare and measure the social impact of changes to Asia-Pacific ports.Read moreRead less
Does retail petrol price respond asymmetrically to changes in its cost? A modelling framework. This project will offer a model for assessing the abnormal-price setting for various goods and services, leading to greater transparency of the market. The modelling framework proposed in this project will assist in resolving a significant policy issue, which is now the subject of considerable public debate and not thoroughly examined to date.