Sustainable transport development is an important field of research and practice in spatial planning and research. This includes a large variety of topics: the shift from driving to active travel and public transport use (multimodality with as little driving as possible), climate protection, the reduction of noise and pollutants, inclusion in mobility and access to social and economic activities, new mobility services ('mobility as a service', MaaS), the just distribution of negative transport effects, efficient transport flows, coordination of urban structures and transport provision, improvements in traffic safety, and many more. Increasing automation and interconnectedness can be seen as being of growing importance in this respect.
At the same time it has become clear in past decades that the concepts of sustainable transport policy and planning have been successful only to a limited extent, and they have been accompanied by counter-trends and effects – cars growing in size and weight, longer driving distances and higher speeds have counterbalanced and sometimes outweighed technological developments by rebound effects. To put it briefly: Technical solutions were unsuccessful because mobility patterns have become more unsustainable.
Methodologically rigorous evaluation studies about transport concepts are rare. Therefore a better understanding of transport trends are of great importance for sustainable transport development. This not only includes transport on the local (and, increasingly, the regional) level, but also the ever growing long-distance transport on the interregional and international levels. These connections are highly differentiated as regards their spatial, economic and social structures.
We seek contributions