Surprisingly little is known about the role that public transport actually plays in the daily movements of people in and around the urban areas of the Netherlands. That is why the Dutch Ministry of Transport took the initiative for a study focusing on the potential of public transport in alleviating urban congestion. The study started by developing an assessment method using data for three regions, from regional transport models and the national transport survey. Whereas most existing studies are concentrating on forecasts of the travel flows in future years, the current situation wasanalysed in this study. Other important characteristics of the assessmentmethod were: a focus on passenger travel in the daily morning peak, as that is the period in which most delays are occurring; a focus on the economically most important destinations within the urban areas; considerationof all transport modes, including the bicycle, which is important in Dutch urban areas; considering travel time differences between the modes as animportant choice factor, but including the congestion experienced by car drivers in these time differences; and a focus on the potential of quick win measures. The study was done in two steps: making a picture of the present situation through the analysis of data; and identifying the potential for improvement using the knowledge of experts in the field. The second step was made in regional workshops, in which the data describing the present morning peak travel patterns were presented to the experts from the urban areas in such a way, that they could easily judge what the effects wouldbe if the conditions would be changed. The presentation was evaluated by the policy makers as being much more transparent than traditional modelling results, which they often see as a "black box". After the first three trial areas, the assessment was applied to nine other urban areas, so all the important Dutch cities and their surrounding regions were covered and a country-wide picture of the morning peak in urban areas and the potential of public transport was made. On average, public transport is used for 5% of the morning trips studied, the private car being used for most longer distance trips and the bicycle being very popular on the shorter distances.But looking beyond these averages, in some market segments the share of public transport can be as high as 40%, indicating that different segments should be treated differently. It was estimated that the share of public transport could potentially increase by 15% of its present share, given theright mix of measures. Most of this increase was expected to come from people who change from the private car to public transport, as the suggestedmeasures were mostly concerning flows where the only choice is between those two modes. The experts think the measure with the highest potential isimproving the level of service of public transport. Second best is parking policy, as the parking regimes in many business districts still have room for more regulation and higher fees. In the longer run co-ordination between land use and transport planning is seen as very effective. The results also show the importance of policy packages as opposed to isolated measures and stress the need for public authorities to co-operate to achieve this. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Abstract