Developing a methodology to determine the potential of areas for regional mobility hubs

Abstract

As a solution to the high greenhouse gas emissions and declining quality of life caused by the private vehicle, the mobility hub is introduced. The mobility hub is a place where multiple modalities come together, including public transport and shared mobility. As the mobility hub is a relatively new innovation, limited research is available on the topic, especially on finding potentially suitable locations for a mobility hub. In this research, the knowledge gap on the potential of locations for a mobility hub is addressed by developing a globally applicable methodology to determine the potential of locations for a specific mobility hub type: the regional mobility hub. The regional mobility hub is located outside of the city center, and for this type of hub, an area potential determination methodology has the highest added value. The developed methodology is a combination of the GIS-Multi-Criteria Analysis and Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis available in the literature, leading to all areas in the region being evaluated for their regional mobility hub potential, taking the end user, operator and government perspective into account. The result is presented in multiple heat maps based on scenarios with varying stakeholder influences. The methodology consists of 5 criteria (Potential demand, Costs, Generalized travel costs, Link to surroundings and Impact) measured by 9 attributes to incorporate all relevant influential factors found in the literature. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to determine the criteria weights. The developed methodology is applied to the region of Rotterdam, to find out whether the methodology works as expected. From multiple analyzes, it appears that the methodology is suitable for tackling the location potential determination problem, as it works logically. In future research, the focus should be on extending the methodology to incorporate freight transportation. Besides, the methodology can be improved by incorporating revealed preferences of shared mobility users. This information can be collected by analyzing the usage of existing shared mobility systems.