Many cities are planning car-reduced neighbourhoods, to provide more housing and stimulate sustainable mobility. Nonetheless, it is important to know what potential residents value, to be able to attract them. This study investigated the preferences of potential residents regarding the accessibility of car-reduced neighbourhoods, available amenities, green and amenities in public space. It revealed that the car is still very important when deciding where to live. Also, other forms of transport are important, especially if one wants to relinquish his car. Nonetheless, this study also shows that car-reduced neighbourhoods are able to attract car-owning residents, especially when a train station is available and cars have access, but with limitations.

This study examines the extent of which residential location and workplace location affect commuting duration and commuting distance. Moreover, by splitting to income groups social equity issues in commuting in connection to rising property values in Amsterdam come to the fore. The report employs data from the 2010, 2011, 2016 and 2017 OViN surveys to investigate changes over a time period of five years.

The findings from the spatial analysis, data analysis and regression models indicate that not low income households but instead middle income households more often live less central than high income households. Middle income commuters did not reduce their commuting duration and commuting distance by moving away from the city centre. Both increase when they reside less central. Low income commuters, however, did improve their commute and now commute shorter than middle and high income commuters. When working outside Amsterdam commuters who reside central in Amsterdam but not central outside Amsterdam experience the shortest commutes. People who reside not central outside Amsterdam experience shorter commuters than those who reside central outside Amsterdam.

Given the findings described in this report a new debate could arise in which not the worsening opportunities of low income households should be prioritised, but instead should give way to the worsening conditions of middle income households. Future research should focus on personal preferences of individual commuters. In this research the assumption was made that every respondent that lives in Amsterdam choses to do so. This assumption cannot be made for people living elsewhere, because they may not want to live in a dense urban area. By integrating the personal preferences of respondents the different groups can be better compared.

The fifteen-minute city (FMC) concept aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve urban liveability and free up space by promoting a modal shift from car to active modes. According to theory, the proximity of all basic needs should have a maximum travel time of 15 minutes by bike or foot to achieve the FMC goals. However, basic needs are poorly specified and discussed, the effectiveness of the FMC concept is unknown and difficult to measure by current indicators. Therefore, this paper clarifies the FMC concept. It statistically analyses the effect on the promotion of active modes by logistic binary regression, applied to the Rotterdam-The Hague metropolitan region. It introduces FMC indicators to measure and geographically analyse urban regions. It reveals a set of amenities that characterises the FMC. Further, it demonstrates that the FMC concept has a positive effect on the probability of making trips by active modes, but also demonstrates the effects of other relevant variables, such as car ownership or the quality of cycle paths. Moreover, an FMC indicator that combines both the proximity of amenities and the number of amenities within 15 minutes predicts the effect of the FMC concept best. The FMC concept is beneficial to promote active modes, but to be most effective, active modes should also be stimulated via other measures, including the improvement of the quality of cycle paths and discouragement of car ownership for areas with all FMC amenities in close proximity.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 seriously impacted the world. Some previous researches suggest that global incidents could strongly influence the demand for passenger air transport services (Sobieralski, 2020). And the impacts on the demand can be ascribed to the change in the air travel behaviour of travellers (Ito & Lee, 2005). However, the influence of a pandemic on passengers’ air travel behaviour has been rarely studied. This thesis studies the differences in air travel behaviour between the COVID-19 period and the non-pandemic period, in order to benefit the decision-making of policy-makers.In this thesis, it is assumed that the COVID-19 pandemic influences air travel behaviour through changing the air transport context. Three context aspects are found to influence how air travellers behave during the pandemic. Firstly, the policies including travel restrictions and travel recommendations imposed by the government discourage travel motivation. Secondly, the rise in public risk perception triggers their health-protective behaviour which leads to low willingness to fly or changes in travel choice decision-making. The operation adjustments of the airlines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic also influence the offered flight options in the market which could change flight choice behaviour.Two important air travel choice behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic are further studied, which are the choice between flying and not flying (willingness to fly) and the choice between flight alternatives. Stated choice data is used since it avoids the bias of revealed choice data in studying willingness to fly. Discrete choice modelling is used because of its advantage in studying individual choice.Air travel convenience and airborne health safety are considered important to air travel choice-making during the pandemic. Therefore, they are added as two attributes in the stated choice experiment. The perception of them is scaled by the perception rating experiment using the Hierarchical Information Integration theory. The results show that the perception of air travel convenience is influenced by the requirement of health-related paperwork, such as health statement and virus test result, for travelling and the travel flexibility, such as change and return policy given, by the airlines. The perceived health safety is influenced by the intensity of the virus precautionary measures implemented in the cabin.The results of the stated choice experiment show a considerable change in the attribute trade-off between flight alternatives made by air travellers during the pandemic. Perceived health safety is the foremost factor that air travellers consider. If an intermediate serious pandemic is assumed, air travellers are willing to pay at least 100% more money to improve the virus precautionary measures by 1 level compared to the non-pandemic situation. This percentage difference becomes larger when the safety level Increases to a higher level, which means that air travellers are more willing to take the safest flight during the pandemic. Transfer and flying time are considered as other two important attribute during the pandemic because they indicate the chance of the exposure to the risky environment. Therefore, travellers are willing to pay 87.9 euro during a serious pandemic to reduce 1 transfer, while they would only pay 42.6 euro during the non-pandemic period. Correspondingly, the ticket price of the flight becomes less important in the exchange for a better performance of other attributes.The willingness to fly is significantly deteriorated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of a serious pandemic, the willingness to fly reduces from 83.5% to 37.6% if the flights in the market have a medium attribute performance. Although improving several flight attributes including price, transfer, travel convenience and health safety can pull up the willingness to fly, however, the negative impact of the pandemic is so strong that even the most extreme attribute improvement, ignoring the profitability and sustainability, still cannot totally offset the willingness to fly reduction because of the COVID-19.The following recommendations are given to policy-makers. Firstly, meeting the customers’ expectation of health safety is the best way for airlines to compete during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two methods to do so include providing non-stop flights as much as possible and improving the intensity of virus precautionary measures in the cabin. Reducing the price is still effective in attracting customers, but less than during the non-pandemic period. Secondly, airlines can increase their load factor by improving flight attributes. But the negative impact of the virus cannot be fully compensated. Thirdly, because the willingness to fly is strongly related to the seriousness of the pandemic, the government should never underestimate the rebound of travel motivation in order to avoid the uncontrollability of the pandemic when the situation gets better. Fourthly, as the COVID-19 is unlikely to disappear soon, the low willingness to fly will remain and threaten the survival of airlines. The governments should work out a sustainable financial aid plan with airlines that can also balance the other goals for the society including economic growth and environmental protection.

It is well known among the academicians and urban transport studies have repeatedly reiterated that transport transit-oriented development (TOD) can and is increasing the propensity to use transit. TOD essentially brings housing, jobs, entertainment options, restaurants, groceries closer to the transit stop.But the success of a TOD area is only possible when people are living in TOD areas and more often than not, also their workplaces are in TOD areas. In that case both workplaces and residence are close to transit stops, thereby making transit a dominant mode choice. But what happens when only side of a work-based trip is well connected will people still use transit for work? Does living closer to transit stop (access time), still play a key role in influencing people to use transit even if workplace is further away from transit stop? This study tries to answer this ambiguity by considering multiple combinations of access and egress walking time. By doing so this study aims to specify the importance of access and egress time, both individually and the combined effect on the propensity to use transit.

In order to stop climate change, it is inevitable to transition to more environmental-friendly ways of transportation, such as cycling. An important criterion for selecting the bicycle as a modality is the distance to the destination. An increase in travel distance coincides with a decrease in modal share of bicycles compared to alternative modalities. Literature does not explain why cycling is preferred for certain distances and not for others, except for some practical reasons. This thesis investigates the built environment in relation to cycling distance. Literature indicates the built environment as being important for destination choice, mode choice and route choice. Moreover, literature also indicates a relationship between cycling distance and these decision choices. As urbanization of the built environment increases, more destinations are within reach and this tends to reduce travel distance. At the same time, network friction reduces due to increasing network density. Finally, preferences to cycle through or avoid certain characteristics of the built environment may result in detours, which increase travel distance. People’s decisions on travel destination, transportation mode and route appear to be crucial for choosing the bicycle as mode of transport. Humans make these decisions simultaneously, but in this thesis, it is assumed that it is done in the order: destination, mode, and route. By making this assumption, it is possible to say that (a) destination choice is connected to Euclidean distance, (b) mode choice is connected to network friction, and (c) route choice is connected to behavioural detour. The 7D’s framework of Ewing & Cevero (2010) has been used to quantify the built environment. It will turn out that only the first three D’s (Design, Density and Diversity) are influencing cycling distance. The choices for destination, mode and route choice are also influenced by the following elements: network density, cycle paths, green environments, smooth surface, built environment density and the mixture of functions in the built environment. This research has been conducted with bicycle trip data within the municipalities of Amsterdam, Amstelveen, Diemen and Ouder-Amstel. Those municipalities offer a fitting case study, since the ‘Greater Amsterdam’ has a varied built environment and has a need to reduce car traffic significantly. In this thesis, the relation of the elements with cycling distance are statistically tested with a multiple linear regression analysis. In order to do so, elements have to been quantified and combined with the bicycle trips. Explanatory models are developed to explain cycling distance, Euclidean distance, and detour distance with the elements of the built environment. The models constructed in this thesis show that the elements green environments, waterbodies, smooth surface material, and cycle paths have a positive increasing impact on cycling distance, while network density and built environment have a negative decreasing impact. No clear impact on travel distance is found for the element mixture of functions. This thesis also show that the built environment is more important for determining the Euclidean distance than its importance detour distance. The results from this thesis confirm the relationship between built environment and cycling distance. To be specific, the results show that the built environment density is most important for Euclidean distance and therefore destination choice. Green environments and waterbodies are incentive elements of the built environment to overcome the distance added by the network friction. The two elements can also affect the cycling distance due to the choice of behavioural detour. This shows that bicycle use for longer distances can be stimulated by adding more green and potential waterbodies in the built environment.

With regard to climate change and air pollution within cities, interest in sustainable modes of transportation for regular use has taken a rise. Utilitarian cycling is being seen as a frontrunner for replacing everyday motorized travels within and between cities, supported by the rapid emergence of the electric bicycle. Governments are trying to use the increasing opportunities involving bicycle transportation to reduce car traffic and the related air polution, by stimulating the use of bicycles. In this light, interest is drawn to cyclist travel behavior to uncover preferences of cyclists. Existing literature shows a significant impact of weather conditions on cyclist travel behavior in terms of tranportation mode choices. Especially adverse weather condtions leave their mark on the use of bicycles as a means of transportation, as it is recognized by many studies as a main deterrent for cycling. On the other hand, the relation between weather conditions and cyclist route choice is an underexplored topic in existing literature. Consequently, it has remained unclear to what extent cyclists attempt to mitigate the influence of weather condtions through choice of route, and based on which determinants. Insights in ways to mitigate unchangeable external circumstances like weather conditions could be another step forward in stimulating utilitarian use of bicycles in the search for transportation modes that can replace motorized trips. This thesis made an attempt to partially address the research gap in existing literature, by departing from findings in the field of pedestrian mobility. In these studies, pedestrians have been found to adapt their choice of route to the degree of shelter that is offered by the built environment as a measure to change level of weather exposure. These findings were projected on cyclist route choice, to evaluate to what extent cyclist alter their choice of route based on weather conditions and the degree of shelter that can be found within a built environment. An elaborate methodology was proposed in which observed routes throughout the study area of Tilburg (the Netherlands), comprising trips made with conventional and electric bicycles, were compared with shortest and fastest alternatives. The weather conditions under which a route was conducted were modelled through a set of individual meteorological factors, spatially related to the location of an observed route. To operationalize the degree of shelter provided by the built environment, a new method was developed using aspects from existing theories on street climate design and spatial openness in order to provide a detailed description of the potential shelter along a route. Three different shelter factors were established, describing the degree of mean building shelter, maximum building shelter, and vegetational shelter in the form of tree density along a route. Through estimation of a set of linear regression models, independent and combined effects of the meteorological and shelter factors on cyclist route choice were modelled. Initial moderate influences of windspeed, temperature, and cycling under twilight conditions on the choice of route were found, while cyclists generally chose routes with a lower degree of building and vegetational shelter compared to alternative shortest and fastest routes. Interactions between the effects of meteorological and shelter factors showed very limited additional effects, suggesting that utilitarian cyclists in the study area did not value the degree of built environment shelter along a route sufficiently as a mitigator of weather conditions to diverge from the shortest or fastest route. These findings imply that built environment shelter does not have to be accounted for in policy design to stimulate utilitarian cycling.

The acute obstetrics (AO) sector in the Netherlands faces two challenges. The increasing difficulty to find personnel and the closing down of several locations have put a major pressure on the existing AO locations. This has led to questions about the quality of the spatial distribution. The measures currently in place are based the travel time to the closest hospital. However, the recent developments have forced AO locations to say ‘no’ when asked to take care of a woman in labour. In other words, the unavailability of beds in the nearest hospital. The current accessibility measures cannot capture this and therefore the concept of substitutability is introduced. The mathematical model for substitutability offers a possibility to assess the effect of elimination of the preferred option. The input parameters for the substitutability calculations have been derived from a stated choice experiment among 151 female residents of the Netherlands. The cost and time parameters were estimated using a multi nominal logit model. A comparison between minimum travel time, LogSum accessibility values and normalised substitutability values guided the assessment of the spatial distribution. This comparison provided insights in new critical areas of the network. The study serves as an exploration of substitutability and it has proved it to be a promising concept for future research.

In the Netherlands, many cities aim to promote cycling as a solution for sustainable mobility. However, the bicycle parking shortage is common. The popularity of ‘car-free city’ concept provides the opportunity to solve the problem by replacing car parking spaces to bicycle parking spaces. This study used a GIS-based location-allocation method to optimally locate the bicycle parking facility in car parking spaces. Through a case study in the city centre of Leiden, the results show with the small amount of car parking spaces, bicycle parking shortage can be largely relieved.

Globally seen, two trends are noticed that threaten the quality of the living environment in cities. First of all, a strong urbanization trend is seen. Secondly, cities have to deal with increasing climate changes. These two trends lead to the development of new policies with the aim to sustain the liveability of city centres by making motorized vehicles less dominant in city centres and improve the quality of public space. Such new policy development always takes place in a network consisting of public and private actors, as well as non-profit organisations and societal stakeholders. All these actors in the network are highly interdependent and characterized by different values and interests. In practice these differences lead to strategic choices and actions of actors to stand up for their own interests which cause complex decision-making processes during spatial redevelopment projects. Despite such varying values and interests, to achieve good outcomes of such collective decision-making processes, support of a suggested policy by involved actors in the network is important. However, although trust is considered as an important condition for support and consequential successful policy development, based on earlier studies it can be concluded that the amount of literature on trust in public-private networks” in public administration, public management and policy science is remarkably small. Consequently, it is not clear which governmental interventions can be carried out during decision-making processes in governance networks to steer on trust. For this reason, the goal of this research project is to find out how trust within public-private networks works and if this can be influenced. The following research question is formulated: “Which and to what extent lead interventions to trust within networks during the initiating phase of spatial redevelopment projects in city centres with the aim to make motorized vehicles less dominant and improve the quality of public space?”

This research project starts with literature research to construct a preliminary model that shows how we assume that “trust within networks” evolves during the initiating phase of spatial redesigning projects. During the second phase of the research project three cases in Rotterdam are investigated. Neighbours, entrepreneurs, municipal officials and independent researchers are interviewed. This explorative research leads to a number of observations that improve the model and answer the question which specific interventions and events lead to more or less trust during the initiating phase of spatial redevelopment plans.

It is observed that the initial amount of trust that actors have at the start of the initiating phase, is not significantly changed by current investigated interventions during the initiating phase. Especially the trend of competence trust and collaborative trust seems hardly changed during the process by interventions. The trend of companion trust is influenced by the investigated interventions, but not necessarily in a positive direction. Companion, competence and collaborative trust during the initiating phase of spatial redevelopment projects are already merely subject to overarching, longer term processes that characterize actor networks.

The transition towards fully Automated Vehicles (AV) can lead to inefficient use of the available infrastructure in the Netherlands, while space is already scarce. - Knowledge from AV impact studies can help the government in the management of available infrastructure. Therefore, in this research a systematic literature review was carried out in order to describe the spatial impact of AVs. Secondly, this research used an interview method, a workshop and a questionnaire, to show how Dutch stakeholders (urban planners of the government and transportation companies) perceive these impacts and what actions they are planning to take in reaction to these impacts. The results showed that urban planners are worried about introducing AVs, but despite these worries, the introduction of AVs is not included in most strategies and policies. The actions that are preferred by most of them to manage potential negative AV impacts are stimulating car-sharing, public transport and bicycle use and discouraging private vehicle use by parking policies. These actions are supported in the literature. Recommendations for further research are on estimating the effect of these actions in practice and on evaluating the potential support of citizens for these actions.

In the Netherlands, only 55% of the Dutch population meets the norm of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week. To increase overall physical activity, the Dutch government wants to stimulate active travel. Active travel has two important benefits: the accessibility effect and the health effect. Yet, the effect of active travel on the total net health benefits is not completely understood and “wrong” conclusions can be made if the complex causal relationships between active travel and health are overlooked. In this research, two hypotheses are tested that are a possible explanation for active travel to not have the same health benefits as physical activity: 1) active travel substitutes for other forms of physical activity, 2). there exists a causal bi-directional relationship between active travel and health. Leisure physical activity is used to examine other forms of physical activity. BMI and general mental health are used to examine health. To test the hypotheses, the Cross-Lagged Panel model is used and is estimated on the LISS Panel data. The findings indicate that there exists a positive effect between active travel and other forms of physical activity. Furthermore, this research indicates no relationship between active travel, BMI and mental health. Especially, the findings of the positive effect of active travel on other forms of physical activity are uplifting. This means that the current health benefits are underestimated. We recommend that these values will be changed in future reports regarding the health benefits of active travel.

In previous studies on cyclist route choice, many influencing factors have been identified. Openness of the built environment, which can be described as the extent of open space above and around a specific point, has no yet been related to cyclist travel behaviour. Monotony of the built environment, described as the extent of visual variation of elements that form the built environment for a sequence of locations, has been related to transportation problems but not to cyclist route choice in particular. This research seeks to bridge this gap in existing literature by determining the effect of the openness and monotony of the built environment on cyclist route choice in the Province of Noord-Brabant. The openness value for a specific route has been modeled by accounting for the building heights and distance to a building for a sequence of locations. Applying a linear regression analysis with the openness and monotony model as input shows that openness of the built environment has a negative influence on the amount of distance people are willing to diverge from the shortest path, while on the other hand, cyclists prefer to use roads with higher variation in the built environment. However, the results show that the proportional influence of both factors can be considered as low.