Sustainable urban structure, land use, and transport

The aim is also to examine the possible contribution of spatial and urban planning to reduce car transport and the environmental pressure and energy consumption from personal transport. Furthermore the aim of the project is to develop methods to include land use in travel modelling. This acitivity has taken place within a ph.d. study. As part of the project 5,500 interviews with dwellers in 51 new housing areas and 20,000 interviews with employees in 101 office workplaces have been carried out. Also data from the national Danish Travel Diary Survey (TU) has been used, i.e. 77,000 interviews. The project demonstrates a clear correlation between the location of urban functions such as dwellings and workplaces and travel behaviour by dwellers and employees. For dwellings the most important factor is distance to the city centre. Up to certain distances to the city centre you find that the greater distance the longer daily total transport and the longer daily car transport. At the periphery of the urban region or town the dwellers average daily total transport will be twice the average among dwellers in the city centre, and the average daily car transport 2.5 to 4 times longer. These relations exist even when you only include people at the same income level, having access to a car or having children etc. How far the periphery is from the city centre depends on the size of the town and urban region. Secondary, in the Greater Copenhagen also proximity to stations influences the modal split. For office workplaces and other workplaces the average daily total transport by employees does not vary in a systematic way depending on location within the urban region. But that is certainly the case when looking at the modal split. Car use is much lower in commuting to down town workplaces in the cities than to workplaces outside the inner cities. In the Greater Copenhagen Area proximity to stations has a substantial influence on modal split. The isolated impact on car transport by proximity to station locations are estimated to be about 10 km less car transport per worker per day. This influence is up to 600-700 m from a rail station well served by public transport. Similar impacts are not found at loations well served only by busses. The project also demonstrates great impacts of the urban pattern and shopping supply on travel behaviour. The project demonstrates that the urban development in Danish cities in the next fifteen to thirty years - and thus physical planning - has an impact on the total amount of car transport that are not to be neglected. Furthermore, future location of urban functions very much influence the impacts of other means to reduce car transport. Thus interaction between different means are required if one want a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions an energy use from transport. To reach such reduction one has to avoid housing constructions in smaller towns and villages and has to avoid urban sprawl in the urban regions. Workplaces must be located either in the central parts of the cities and towns or in proximity to stations at the suburban railway system best served by public transport. At the same time you have to be aware that urban development within the city limits and in dense urban areas put a pressure on the local environment (noise, air pollution etc.). The aim of a sustainable urban planning is also to reduce these local environmental problems