The occupancy of space is one of the criteria for evaluating a transport system. Different from other criteria, such as energy consumption and emissions, a space occupancy is physically restricted. For this reason, space occupancy might be (or become) the most important criterium. Several authors give the space occupancy by modes, but each of them uses a different definition and none of them pays attention to complicating factors. The most important complicating factor is the shared use by different modes and even by different activities. For this reason, the space occupied by, for instance, a road can not be fully imputed to the car system. This paper is an introduction to the field of imputing space occupancy to transport modes. The complicating factors are described and a method for dealing with these factors is suggested. (A)
Abstract