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Travel mode choice prediction is essential for transportation planning and travel demand prediction. One of the conventional travel survey methods is collecting data over landline telephones, which lacks efficiency because of financial and time resource needs. In this regard, smartphone-assisted travel surveys can be applied to overcome the mentioned deficiencies. Smartphone-assisted travel surveys allow respondents to record GPS data, travel purpose, and travel mode via an application, simplifying the survey process. With various sensors equipped, the precision of data is ensured. Based on the survey results, varied approaches have been seen to travel mode identification. For this study, a travel survey was conducted in Hangzhou, China, supported by the smartphone application TraceRecord integrated with online mapping services. Several steps were undertaken to recognize different kinds of travel modes. First, preprocessing was adopted to screen out defective logs. With the employment of A-Map Application Programming Interface (API), trajectory segmentation was substantially boosted. Then, separately, features related to velocity, acceleration, and heading were extracted from the survey data. To achieve better accuracy and efficacy, two classification algorithms—support vector machine (SVM) and gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT)—were applied to model the travel mode identification problem. Compared with the SVM, GBDT produced a higher prediction accuracy of 90.16%. Further analysis was implemented based on the results of the GBDT model, and velocity-related features contributed the most to the identification problem. The study explores the possibility of applying travel mode recognition in real-world conditions and discusses further mining of the survey data.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous, significant challenges for elderly in their daily life. In order to reach a deeper understanding of the feelings and thoughts of the elderly related to their possibilities to travel and engage in activities during the pandemic, this study takes a qualitative approach to exploring the views of the elderly themselves. The study focuses on experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of in-depth semi-structured interviews with elderly aged 70 and above, were conducted in June 2020. Applied Thematic Analysis (ATA) was applied, as a first stage, to investigate meaningful segments of data. In a second stage these identified segments were combined into a number of themes. This study reports the outcome of the ATA analysis. More specifically we report experiences, motivations and barriers for travel and activity participation, and discuss how these relate to the health and well-being of elderly, and vice versa. These findings highlight the strong need to develop a transport system that to a higher extent addresses the physical as well as the mental health of old people, with a particular focus on facilitating social interactions.

Numerous multicriteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods have been developed over the last decades and are now applied in various domains, sometimes using facilitated group workshops to create models. These models are all designed to improve decision processes. However, the lack of follow-up and post-project evaluations limit the understanding of how the participants experienced the group workshops and how the results were subsequently used within the organization. This is in contrast with the public participation research field, where a rich literature was developed for a posteriori evaluation of projects. Based on this literature, our research proposes a framework to evaluate, ex-post, MCDA projects. In order to illustrate this framework, we apply it to an MCDA project in Quebec City where a spatial decision support system to prioritize the redesign of streets as Complete Streets was built. Individual interviews were conducted with the Quebec City professionals that currently use, were leaders of the project, or have participated in the development of the decision support system. This research has identified that the need for change of practices within the workplace, communication problems, and the requirement for multidisciplinary work were at the root of the various challenges encountered during the workshops. Based on our experience, we propose some lessons learned and potential solutions that can enhance the body of literature in MCDA.

Le phenomene de « peak-car », la croissance de l’usage des modes actifs et collectifs et un regain d’interet pour des amenagements urbains plus denses, mixtes et a echelle humaine, soulevent la question du declin des mobilites automobiles. Un cadre d’analyse en trois perspectives est utilise pour evaluer d’une part, si ce declin est reel et d’autre part, si celui-ci s’accompagne d’un changement de paradigme dans la planification des transports et de l’amenagement urbain qui indiquerait la fin de l’automobilite. La question est appliquee specifiquement pour la province de Quebec et ses deux regions metropolitaines, Montreal et Quebec. Comme premiere perspective, l’analyse des indicateurs de motorisation et d’utilisation de l’automobile indique un accroissement soutenu des mobilites automobiles au cours des deux dernieres decennies. Comme seconde perspective, l’analyse des documents officiels de planification et de politiques-cadres de la mobilite revele des constats justes des enjeux de mobilite, mais une reconnaissance inegale de la dependance a l’automobile. De plus, aucun des documents municipaux et metropolitains ne presente d’objectifs precis de reduction de l’usage de l’automobile et de la motorisation. Finalement, dans une troisieme perspective, les projets d’infrastructures priorises ne sont pas tous coherents avec les objectifs et visions des documents de planification. En effet, les benefices attendus d’ambitieux projets de transport collectif sont compromis par des projets de developpement autoroutiers autant a Montreal qu’a Quebec. Les justifications de ces projets routiers sont issues d’un paradigme de planification classique largement demontre comme depasse et inadequat. La priorite qui leur est donnee semble relever d’une resistance politique au changement de paradigme. Prises ensemble, ces trois perspectives tendent a demontrer qu’en depit de certains signes positifs, le declin des mobilites automobiles qui s’appuie sur un changement reel de paradigme de mobilite ne semble pas etre amorce au Quebec.

The desire to use public transport, or use it more frequently, can be an important indicator of people’s intention to travel by public transport. However, the desired and relative desired travel amount (wanting to travel less or more) in the context of public transport use has not yet been analyzed. In this paper, we examine the relationship between actual and desired public transport frequency of 986 students of Laval University, Canada. Results indicate that most respondents have a desired public transport frequency close to their actual frequency. In line with the model of goal-directed behavior we found that – based on ordered logit models – the desire for frequently using public transport is positively affected by attitudes towards – and satisfaction with – public transport, while the desired public transport frequency positively influences actual public transport frequency. Besides positive effects of attitudes and satisfaction, we also found that the desire to travel more frequently by public transport is positively affected by easy car access and living in rural areas. This suggests that rural residents are potential public transport users who are perhaps restricted by their living context and that moving into urban areas may present an opportunity for them to increase public transport use. Finally, we also found that the intention to use public transport in later life (i.e., after university) is positively affected by respondents’ desired public transport frequency.

COVID-19 had a devastating impact on people's work, travel, and well-being worldwide. As one of the first countries to be affected by the virus and develop relatively well-executed pandemic control, China has witnessed a significant shift in people's well-being and habits, related to both commuting and social interaction. In this context, what factors and the extent to which they contribute to well-being are worth exploring.Through a questionnaire survey within mainland China, 688 valid sheets were collected, capturing various aspects of individuals' life, including travel, and social status. Focusing on commuting and other factors, a Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) model was developed based on 300 sheets reporting working trips, to analyze the effects on well-being. Two indicators, i.e., the Relative Importance (RI) and Partial Dependency Plot (PDP), were used to quantify and visualize the effects of the explanatory factors and the synergy among them.Commuting characteristics are the most critical ingredients, followed by social interactions to explain subjective well-being. Commuting stress poses the most substantial effect. Less stressful commuting trips can solidly improve overall well-being. Better life satisfaction is linked with shorter confinement periods and increased restriction levels. Meanwhile, the switch from in-person to online social interactions had less impact on young people's life satisfaction. Older people were unsatisfied with this change, which had a significant negative impact on their life satisfaction.From the synergy of commuting stress and commuting time on well-being, the effect of commuting time on well-being is mediated by commuting stress in the case of China. Even if one is satisfied with online communication, the extent of enhancement on well-being is minimal, for it still cannot replace face-to-face interaction. The findings can be beneficial in improving the overall well-being of society during the pandemic and after the virus has been eradicated.

Transport decision processes have traditionally applied cost–benefit analysis (CBA) with benefits mainly relating to time-savings, and costs relating to infrastructure and maintenance costs. However, a shift toward more sustainable practices was initiated over the last decades to remedy the many negative impacts of automobility. As a result, decision processes related to transport projects have become more complex due to the multidimensional aspects and to the variety of stakeholders involved, often with conflicting points of view. To support rigourous decision-making, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is, in addition to CBA, often used by governments and cities. However, there is still no consensus in the transport field regarding a preferred method that can integrate sustainability principles. This paper presents a descriptive literature review related to MCDA and CBA in the field of transport. Among the 66 considered papers, we identified the perceived strengths and weaknesses of CBA and MCDA, the different ways to combine them and the ability of each method to support sustainable transport decision processes. We further analysed the results based on four types of rationality (objectivist, conformist, adjustive, and reflexive). Our results show that both methods can help improve the decision processes and that, depending on the rationality adopted, the perceived strengths and weaknesses of MCDA and CBA can vary. Nonetheless, we observe that by adopting a more global and holistic perspective and by facilitating the inclusion of a participative process, MCDA, or a combination of both methods, emerge as the more promising appraisal methods for sustainable transport.

Social interaction with friends is an important contributor to children’s well-being, but how transport affects this is rarely studied. For two or more children (not of the same household) to have ...

In order to increase the sustainability of transportation in cities, streets must provide infrastructures that favor active and public transportation modes. However, the current decision-making processes in transportation projects do not always explicitly take into account sustainable transportation requirements and often ignore concerns that may arise in other fields such as environmental protection, health, or urban design. The proposed framework in this paper aims at integrating sustainability in a decision-making process by creating better collaboration and communication between professionals of such disparate fields. The framework is based on group workshops, problem structuring, multi-criteria decision aiding and geographic information systems. It was applied in Quebec City, Canada. The objective of the workshops was to identify higher priority streets that should be redesigned as Complete Streets, a popular movement that advocates “streets for everyone” in North America. To facilitate communication and use for future decisions, the results of the analysis were integrated and presented in a geographic information system. As a result, this user-friendly tool is currently used to support decision-making by Quebec City officials who must choose the streets to be redesigned as Complete Streets while ensuring transparency and traceability. Such an approach may better support policies to make the transport system more sustainable by integrating various considerations, being transparent and improving communication of the outcome.

A new concept, termed transport sufficiency is introduced based on the concept of energy sufficiency, which argues that in addition to efficiency, limits to usage must be applied to achieve environmental sustainability. How that concept translates to transport and its implications are discussed. One key assumption of increased mobility (the usage) is an increase in quality of life through less time spent travelling. Supported by time-use data surveys one might propose that a decrease in travel time and greater mobility would increase activities that better contribute to quality of life such as leisure activities. Based on data from Osaka, Japan, this paper examines how a range of factors influences the number of trips, the average duration of those trips, and whether rates of leisure activities vary. As mobility options and distances vary by built form, the built environment is proposed as a key variable. It is found that the number and type of activities varies by household lifecycles (having children, etc.), thus that is the second key variable analysed here. The paper then connects activities with energy emissions and argues that those being “transport sufficient” can remain below accepted CO2 consumption while maintaining activities such as leisure travel that likely support quality of life.

Children’s independent mobility (CIM) on school days (weekdays) and on the weekend are examined in this study. Previous studies have focused primarily on weekday trips, with a vast majority only examining trips to school. However, the types of trips and the available time differ between weekdays and weekends. Weekday trips are more regular and possibly more local, whereas on the weekend the children may have more free time (i.e., no school) to engage in activities. Parents (as a group) are also less likely to have work obligations, and thus potentially more time, on the weekend. Theoretically, each context for the weekend could facilitate more independent or active mode trips. Nonetheless, this may be linked to whether destinations are local, which is linked to the built environment. Using origin–destination data (2011) for the City of Québec, this paper will expand knowledge in the field of children’s travel by examining all trips during a weekday ( n = 979) and weekend ( n = 315) for children aged 9 to 11 across five built environment types. The findings show that weekend trips are rarely independent, and that the key explanatory factors for greater CIM are shorter distances, having an older sibling, and more urban environments. Other sociodemographic variables were not significant or were inconsistent between the two types of weekday.

Car sharing has become a new mode of transport during the past two decades in the world. Its rapid growth in China has attracted a wide range of users and posed some problems. The main focus is on service efficiency and user satisfaction. To explore possible service enhancement and management intervention, this study aims at capturing the user characteristics according to different user types and scrutinizing their satisfaction with station-based one-way car sharing service. The study firstly illustrates descriptive statistics of user profile. This is followed by a study of user satisfaction influenced by user rates on staffs, the efficiency of rental process, vehicle situation, the use of credit card and their familiarity towards rental station. Furthermore, by clustering users according to the total travel time and distance during one rent, two different types of users are identified and defined as User Group A (UGA) and User Group B (UGB). To examine how fully do users utilize the shared cars, ANOVA was conducted implying family car ownership, total travel distance and main travel purpose have strong impact on total rental time for UGB, while for UGA, travel purpose and age have strong impact. Finally, ordinal logistic regression was introduced to find that for UGB, “shopping” is the main travel purpose with longer rental time, whereas for UGA, “out for business”, “shopping”, “visit friends” or “pick up others” are the main travel purposes with longer total travel time. Based on the findings, advices for operators on how to improve service quality and suggestions for government management strategy are discussed, respectively.

Lack of access to safe drinking water on premises remains widespread in low- and middle-income countries. Interventions to improve access to safe water at the point of collection are essential, but water safety at the point of consumption is also an important consideration. This research aimed to 1) improve understanding of household practices in collecting water with respect to seasonality, and 2) to further assess risk associated with post-collection contamination from the point of collection to the point of consumption. A seasonal cohort study, including 115 households, was conducted in Malawi. Along with household surveys and observations, samples of water were tested for microbial water quality at four different stages of water collection: water source, collection container, storage container, cup of drinking water. Using E. coli as an indicator of contamination (cfu/100 ml), the risk of post-collection contamination was assessed. The results indicate that most water sources were free from contamination; contamination was proportionally lower in the dry season when more sources were found to be classified as having a very low risk of contamination. However, the level of risk of contamination was more likely to increase following collection in water sources that were initially free from contamination. Results show that the degradation in water quality from the point of collection to the point of consumption was more important in the rainy season, which is likely to be driven by the effect of seasonality on the household environment. Filling the collection container at the point of collection and storage at the point of consumption were found to be critical stages for an increased risk of E. coli contamination. Understanding household practices in accessing and handling water during both rainy and dry season is necessary to target appropriate interventions to reduce post-collection contamination.

Monitoring access to drinking water is complex, especially in settings where on premises water supply is not available. Although self-reported data are generally used to estimate coverage of access to drinking water, the relationship between self-reported time travelled and true time travelled is not well known in the context of water fetching. Further, water fetching is likely to impact the quantity and quality of water a household uses, but data and measures supporting this relationship are not well documented. The objective of this study was to appraise the validity and reliability of self-reported measurements used to estimate access coverage. A case study was conducted in Malawi to enhance understanding of the self-reported measures and alternatives available to assess and monitor access to drinking water in view of generating global estimates. Self-reported data were compared with objective observations and direct measurements of water quantity, quality and accessibility. Findings from this study highlight the variations between different measures such as self-reported and recorded collection time and raise awareness with regard to the use of self-reported data in the context of fetching water. Alternatives to self-reported indicators such as GPS-based or direct observations could be considered in surveys in view of improving data accuracy and global estimates.

The paper takes station-based bikesharing system (SBS) with docks and dockless free-floating bikesharing system (FBS) as two targets to dig out the relationship between users and use frequency of the services for each scheme, and how the relationship varies from scheme to scheme. To achieve this, studies are carried out focusing on three questions: “who are using these two bicycle services?”; “what are the factors influencing the use frequency of both bicycle systems?”; and “which specific level of the factors influencing the use frequency of both bicycle schemes?” To collect data from users, a survey was designed containing questions for user attributes and service experience and conducted jointly on-line and on-site at four locations with mixed land use in Hangzhou, China. Analysis results show that SBS and FBS have similar user structure but different factors influence use frequency. Based on analysis results, from the user perspective, SBS’s strength is to have good quality with low cost while FBS is more flexible and free to use. Finally, recommendations for SBS are to involve more technology to expand its range to aided bikes for senior citizens and open the access for a mobile renting system, whereas for FBS, it is critical to get government cooperation and for operators to add parking area restrictions into the cellphone application, and create an on-line platform where users can find all the free-floating bike information.

Previous experiments have shown that negative valence framing in comparison to positive framing augments the perceived differences between CO2 emission amounts. This means that, in order to increase the chance that an individual will perceive a difference between two CO2 amounts, it is better to highlight the amount by which the other choice is larger. However, a number of questions remain with respect to such findings. First, those experiments did not test whether such framing results in differences as compared to just presenting the amounts. Choice experiments and travel behavior change programs often simply use the attribute values (e.g. 300 g/km versus 250 g/km), thus it is important to know whether valence framing would result in differences as compared to this valence-free or “neutral” framing. Second, some research suggests that loss-framing may be less effective in Asian as opposed to Western contexts. Further, as CO2 emissions information is relatively new, and an individual will not always be presented with a second value (i.e. no context), how might that affect responses? Thus, in this research we describe the results of an experiment with four treatments and four key measures. The four treatments being: “no context”, “neutral”, “positive-framing”, and “negative-framing”. Lastly, when attempting to motivate support or change from the general population, aggregate information rather than individual information is often used. Is it possible that such general information would influence an individual?

In the province of Quebec, Canada where the electricity is nearly carbon-free, the road transport sector represents 35.6% of all emissions. As such, electric vehicles (EVs) have been proposed as a means to reduce such emissions. However, it is not clear how many conventional vehicles (CVs) would need to change to electric in order to meet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of reducing 1990 CO2 emissions by 37.5% by 2030 in the province. In fact, various considerations exist such as which vehicles will change and how those vehicles are used. This articleaddresses this issue in the case of Montreal, Canada. First, to create a baseline, direct emissions by all personal vehicles in Montreal in 2018 are calculated using data from the 2018 origin-destination (OD) survey and provincial vehicle registration. Next, five scenarios are studied to calculate the variations in the number of EVs needed in the fleet in order to achieve provincial targets. The most optimistic scenario shows that roughly 49% of the fleet would need to change. The most pessimistic scenario estimates that almost 73% of the fleet would need to be converted to EVs. It can be concluded that the strategy used can have a great impact on how many vehicles need to be replaced in the fleet. However, all simulations show that the necessary replacements are far from negligible. It must surely be coupled with other actions such as reducing veh.km travelled (vkmt) or increasing public transport use.

The choices that children and adults make with regards to travel behavior (mode, frequency, distance) are a function of a vast array of physical, social, and cultural factors. Although transport infrastructure options such as bike lanes and transit lines being of primary importance, individual and household factors also play an important role. For instance, an individual child may have preferences, fears, and formative experiences that impact their travel patterns. Parents and care-givers may have fears and preferences that affect the boundaries and rules they establish about available modes and activity spaces. This chapter focuses on the modes that are accessible to children (e.g. walking, cycling, public transport) and in particular, the factors that are associated with children’s independent mobility (CIM) at the individual and household levels. This chapter illustrates the evidence from a variety of disciplines that support a number of key points. The first point is that children (of both sexes) are capable of independent travel from a young age. The main deterrents of CIM mentioned by parents relate to distance and traffic. Some social contexts are also mentioned by parents as a deterrent. However, addressing the (mis)perceptions of the safety and danger imposed by traffic and related to children walking can lead to higher levels of CIM. This ability is vital for the health, well-being, and social connection of children (and future adults), and there are many pathways that can lead to the increase of CIM at individual, household, and societal levels. Finally, interventions that take place at the school and neighborhood levels can impact the decisions made by households and individuals, as well as affect behavior.

In this chapter, we discuss the importance of different measures related to a child’s social wellbeing and how they relate to transport. These measures include social connections, interactions and support. Transport can facilitate access to friends, social interactions can occur during travel, and transport, as traffic, can also create a barrier to social connections. Using evidence from existing literature, the links between measures of social wellbeing with travel behavior, the built environment and social environment, and the opportunities or barriers that transport creates are discussed. The available literature on transport and social wellbeing will be organized as such: intrinsic influences (e.g., what happens during a trip), transport as access (e.g., reaching a destination where social interactions may occur), and transport as an external impact (e.g., traffic making independent trips less likely).

This chapter will examine how transport interacts with children’s physical wellbeing. The discussion is organized by intrinsic, access, and extrinsic influences. Intrinsic influences primarily focus on gains from active travel, though other impacts are evident. Access influences discuss how transport can facilitate children reaching locations and the tension between the high mobility of cars to reach disparate locations, and local destinations that children can reach independently on their own time. Literature on extrinsic influences primarily focus on collisions, emissions, and noise. However, other extrinsic impacts include the barrier effect which prevents children from reaching a destination, and the effect of occupying a space that could otherwise be used for physical activity such as local streets. Studies from sociology and urbanism have researched the idea of streets as playgrounds, but the notion is less well studied in transport. Finally, although grouped together as active travel, the chapter distinguishes differences between walking and cycling with their impacts on physical well-being.

Japan has had considerable success in maintaining high levels of children walking to school compared to other wealthy nations. To begin, this chapter will use national travel data to paint a general picture of children’s (aged 5–17) travel in Japan. Evidence related to the high levels of independent travel are then summarized. Results from a recent study will discuss the relationships between what children do during their trips and their satisfaction with their travel as a measure of psychological wellbeing. Finally, there will be discussion on previous research that has highlighted the importance of walking and independent travel for incidental social interactions as a measure of social well-being, which are occurrences that are particularly frequent in Japan. Having set the scene, the chapter will then discuss a number of reasons to help explain children’s travel in Japan. This includes planning, regulations, and community solutions to support walking to school. A number of social practices that help maintain high levels of children’s autonomy are discussed.

Background The aim of this study was to explore the population-wide distribution in the practice of leisure-time physical activity among Canadian youth and how physical activity level is influenced by contextual features of the environment. Methods We studied the self-reported leisure-time physical activity of 54 832 Canadians aged 12 to 17 years. Observations were structured according to a 4-level geographic hierarchy. The outcome studied was a dichotomous indicator that referred to achieving (or not) the recommended daily level of leisure-time physical activity. To investigate the influence of the contextual features, we conducted multilevel logistic regressions. Results For both girls and boys, significant variations were observed between health regions and between neighbourhoods within the provinces. Girls who lived in an urban setting showed lower odds of achieving the recommended physical activity level, as did those surveyed during the winter. Boys surveyed during the winter also showed lower odds of achieving the recommended level, but living in an urban setting had no effect on activity levels. Analysis of province-level residuals showed that girls living in Quebec were less likely to achieve the recommended activity level as compared with the national mean, and girls living in Ontario and British Columbia were more likely to achieve that threshold. Boys living in Ontario were more likely to achieve the recommended activity level as compared with the national mean. Youth had up to a 17% increased chance of achieving the recommended physical activity level if they lived in a context with a higher activity achievement level. Interpretation Leisure-time physical activity was associated with environmental factors at multiple geographic scales among Canadian youth. The variation was more important at the neighbourhood level. The results provide rationale for further investigation into how leisure-time physical activity is promoted in different contexts.

The social and economic growth as result of promoting the rapid development of tourism in China has brought tremendous pressure on the urban transportation systems. Research of travel behavior concerning the characteristics of tourists has provided effective information for transportation planning. Due to different city plans, public transportation system design, car parking design and management, etc., the local situation in developed countries differs from the counterpart in China. However, little research has studied the factors influencing the choice of travel destinations in tourism. The research aims to study the tourism destination and mode choice behavior of tourists and provides suggestions to improve tourism transportation service system. An online questionnaire survey is used to collect data including the travel characteristics and personal attributes of local tourists in different holidays in Hangzhou, China. A multinomial logit model is constructed with the trip destination set as the dependent variable. Results show that age, residential type, car ownership, companion type and holiday length have a significant impact on destination choice. To determine what influences modal choice for such trips, a second logit model is established with travel mode set as the dependent variable with the explanatory variables of age, gender, companion type, car ownership, holiday length and travel destination found to be significant. The results demonstrated that people aged 26 to 44 prefer suburban areas, and they are the main group driving to their travel destination. Public transport use frequency decreases when the destination is located outside of the main tourist area. Finally, suggestions have been proposed to mitigate the congestion and parking problem based on model analysis from the perspective of the bus line setting, transfer improvements, and the policy to limit cars, respectively.

Background Increasing the quantity of water available for consumption and hygiene is recognized to be among the most efficient interventions to reduce the risk of water-related infectious diseases in low and middle-income countries. Such impacts are often associated with water supply accessibility (e.g. distance or collection time) and used to justify investment in improving access. Objective To assess the relationship between the water source location and the quantity of water available in households from low and middle-income countries by identifying the effects of interventions aiming to improve access, and to compare the indicators and measures used to collect information. Methods We systematically searched seven databases (i.e. Cairn, Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, Women's Studies International) along with grey literature for articles reporting indicators and measures of accessibility and quantity. We found 6492 records, of which 20 studies were retained that met the review's inclusion criteria. Results Most studies were conducted in rural settings and provided suggestive findings to describe an inverse relationship between accessibility and quantity. Overall, a wide range of indicators and measures were used to assess water accessibility and quantity in the selected studies along with their association. The lack of consistency raised concerns regarding comparability and reliability of these methods. Conclusions The review findings support the hypothesis that the quantity of water available in households is a function of the source location, but the inconsistency in study outcomes highlights the need to further investigate the strength and effects of the relationship.

The world is currently witnessing its largest urban growth in human history. Over 50% of people worldwide live in cities and this figure is estimated to increase to up to 70% over the next 20 years. Cities have long been known to be society’s predominant engine of innovation and wealth creation, but they are also a main source of pollution, crime and disease. Well-designed and efficient urban and transport systems are essential for cities and their citizens to thrive. Yet, the reality is that current urban and transport development have been less than optimal, creating and exacerbating human exposures to motor vehicle crashes, air pollution, noise, heat islands, lack of green space and sedentary behaviour, to name a few. These trends are associated with a large global burden of disease that has the potential to cripple even the best health care systems. This chapter provides an introduction to the many environmental and health issues that cities face as a result of urban and transport planning and policies. Some examples assessing the health impacts of urban and transport policies are overviewed. Different paradigms for cities and different city initiatives are overviewed. Finally, an introduction to the following chapters is provided.

Using large cross-sectional datasets that were collected in the Osaka metropolitan area (OMA), Japan, this study systematically analyzes the structural changes in car ownership and usage in the OMA from 1970 to 2000. A simultaneous equations model system is developed for individuals that considers age, household lifecycle stage, built environment of the household location, car ownership levels, proportion of car trips on a given day, and total car travel duration. The estimation results show that private car ownership and car usage for the residents in OMA have expanded over time. Each residential area, each lifecycle stage, and each age group has their own unique characteristics of car ownership and car usage. The results further indicate that this expansion is largely due to changes in their structural relationships, while the changes in demographic factors play a relatively small and contradictory role.

The provision of information about transport-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the traveler can be seen as an instrument to increase the likelihood of more sustainable choices being made by individuals. However, as transport-related CO2 emissions are largely seen as a ‘social’ cost rather than a ‘private’ cost to the individual, the behavioral engagement with and response to information on environmental effects of travel choices may be limited. It is argued that framing, studied in a range of contexts, can be used to enhance the evaluation of choice attributes and promote more sustainable choices. An experiment is reported that examines the effect of valence framing of amounts of CO2 emissions on the perceived differences between alternative amounts. Through the use of positive and negative terms, the information is framed to focus attention either on the potential of a travel mode to provide environmental benefit (positive frame) or on its potential to reduce environmental loss (negative frame). Survey participants’ estimates of CO2 amounts were compared for positive and negative framing of the same information using an ordered logit model. The findings imply that negative framing is more effective than positive framing in highlighting differences between CO2 amounts of alternative travel modes and therefore is likely to influence travel-related choices.

This paper uses the results of household travel surveys from the Osaka metropolitan area in Japan from 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 to explore how automobility progression was influenced by the characteristics of automobility cohorts, the age of individuals, the time period, and the residential area. In this paper, three measures are used to examine automobility: household car ownership, automobile modal share, and auto travel time. An age–period–cohort–residential area model is also developed to describe which effects significantly explain automobility characteristics. The results of a statistical analysis offer ample evidence that automobility cohorts do exist and, along with residential area and age, have a great impact on household car ownership and auto use.

This paper examines measures of travel behavior and exercise for children in four different levels of population density in the Osaka metropolitan areas of Japan. This area's built environment reflects principles of transit-oriented development with neighborhoods that have grown around an initial train station, where shops intermix with housing and often cluster around the station. Local trips by adults are often by nonmotorized modes. For children's travel behavior, this study looked at measures of social cohesion, independent travel, mode splits, and average travel times. The study found positive correlations of population density with both the social cohesion measure and the percentage of independent trips over a day. Negative correlation was observed for travel time. The measures for exercise were the number of times a child participated in running-level activities over a day and how much exercise was gained through nonmotorized travel. Mixed results occurred, with only Sundays having a negative correlation for the running-level activity participation and the correlation for the amount of exercise gained through nonmotorized travel flip-flopping between weekdays and Sundays.

Sustainable travel is a goal deserving of research and implementation, but how such a goal can be reached is debated. Fueling this debate are the many different factors involved in individual travel, ranging from values and beliefs to the impact of the built environment. The amount of impact that the built environment may have can be clouded by a person's personal preference for a certain lifestyle, and different life-cycle stages have different levels of travel. Although low levels of automobile use have been observed in city centers, the question remains whether the demographics of the distinct developed areas can explain the differences. This paper investigated the fraction of automobile trips across different developed areas for households of distinct life-cycle stages to determine which explained the differences best. The results suggest that it is the built environment that has a greater ability to explain the differences in the fraction of automobile trips and that households of the same life-cycle stage retain the same basic number of trips.

As typical shopping behavior changed from foot-based visits to neighborhood shopping streets or corner grocery stores to auto-based visits to large-scale retail stores, shopping trip energy consumption increased substantially in the Osaka metropolitan area between 1970 and 2000. Underlying this phenomenon are, among others, progress of motorization, declining household size, and diminishing households with a homemaker. The effects of these and other factors are examined through an analysis of variance of large-scale household travel survey data from 1970 and 2000. It is shown that changes in demographics and socioeconomics alone would not have produced the observed magnitude of increase in shopping trip energy consumption. The more substantial contributor has been structural change, which has presumably been caused by the urban system adjusting its elements—land use, transportation networks, facility location, retail systems, and so forth—to adapt to increased ownership and use of the automobile.

Using a series of conventional large-scale household travel surveys conducted in the Osaka metropolitan area of Japan in 1980, 1990 and 2000 this study examines the mechanisms underlying children's activity and travel engagements and how these mechanisms have changed over time. The results from a structural equation model show that, in the last two decades, children's trip patterns in the Osaka metropolitan area have become more efficient through greater trip chaining. At the same time, the results also show that boys have become less mobile and their non-school activities tend to be in fewer locations than those of girls. Further, Japanese boys are the ones who travelled by car more frequently than girls. Denser built environments, accessibility by rail transport, and a higher number of school trips have constantly reduced the amount of children's private car trips in the last three decades. Moreover, private car availability did not significantly increase the amount of children trip chaining in any observed year. This finding goes against the commonly held belief that public transport is less suitable for trip chaining. This is presumably due to the travel environment created by the well developed transit networks and dense land use in the study area.