The UK Government encourages alternative modes of travel that could help to reduce overall levels of congestion and pollution. Various groups have suggested that the increased use of motorcycles could result in lower congestion, reduced fuel consumption and thus lower emission of pollutants. The objectives of the research are: (i) to estimate the effects of transfer of trips from cars to motorcycles in terms of congestion and network performance; and (ii) to estimate, to the extent possible without substantial new work, the consequential effects on pollution, noise, interaction with other traffic, road infrastructure, etc. For the study to assess the network-wide effects of an increase in TWMV usage, it was necessary to estimate the extent to which people could gain benefit by switching to motorcycle when compared to those using private vehicles or public transport. The impact that such usage has on road safety, noise, emissions and the demand for road space were estimated. Once these relationships were understood it was possible to extrapolate these findings forward to assess the impact of increased usage. There were however a number of inherent uncertainties within this approach, which were considered within the research project. These, and other more general issues, are: (i) Use of motorcycles - Motorcycling currently represents a small proportion of total travel in the U.K; (ii) Occupancy of road space; (iii) Behaviour of motor-cyclists; (iv) The environmental impact of a switch to motorcycling; and (v) Accidents to motor-cyclists. In order that the overall research programme met the objectives of the study, we: (a) examined past research; (b) investigated some relevant behavioural characteristics of motorcyclists; (c) determined the journey time savings that motorcyclists might experience in differing situations; (d) estimated the environmental impacts of different levels of motorcycle usage; (e) estimated the safety implication of motorcycle usage; (f) estimated how all these factors might change with increased usage; and (g) identified the issues that required further investigation.
Samenvatting