Planning shared mobility hubs in European cities

Abstract

In the move towards sustainable urban mobility through seamless
intermodality, European cities are faced with the possibility of
implementing shared mobility systems. They constitute an opportunity to
create new urban hubs, considered as nodes of intermodality and places
of urban intensity. In order to effectively plan the future locations of
shared mobility hubs, this paper outlines the methodological framework
that sustains the design of a new decision-support tool, the so-called Mcda2MobilityHub (M2MHub),1
using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic
Information Systems (GIS). For this purpose, the analysis of existing
literature and interviews with local authorities and transport
operators, led to the identification of six main location criteria
(mobility, compactness, diversity of uses, profile of potential users,
spatial configuration and environment). The criteria weights were
calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the framework
was applied to the case study of the city of Barcelona. The results
obtained are presented in the form of heat maps, highlighting the
flexibility of the decision-support tool to transform open data into
appropriate indicators and detailed maps. This output can be used to
support future policies for planning shared mobility hubs as places for
convenient multimodal transfers, which also enable social activities and
improve the quality of life in European cities.