Articles

The cost of public transport has increased more than the supply in recent years in Sweden. One of the main cost drivers identified is peak-hour traffic. The major operating cost factors are the need for a large bus fleet for short periods during mornings and afternoons and the scheduling of drivers for shorter periods than the minimum working hour restriction. The objective of this paper is to study the effect of the number of buses needed (and hence the operating cost) during peak hours when adjusting the bus departure times. The study also analyses the increase in public transport supply and the number of boarding passengers if the cost reduction is re-invested. The analysis is based on case studies and simulated scenarios of possible adjustments in departure times for buses. The results show that by marginally adjusting the departure times, fewer buses are needed which leads to decreased operating costs. Further, the results show that the reduction in costs can be used to improve public transport in the area by expanding the supply of public transport in the long run.

Transport policies in Western Europe are increasingly framed in terms of sustainable mobility. This is a response to an urgent need to tackle adverse consequences of the transport system and implies changes in discourses related to transport. Exploring sustainable mobility is a fruitful way of studying discursive development in a policy field historically connected to priorities radically different from sustainability. More precisely, what reasons are provided in favour of sustainable mobility in contemporary transport policies? What underlying norms and assumptions does the notion of sustainable mobility rely upon? And what subjects are emphasised in the discourse? The thesis argues that these questions can be answered by studying the social construction of sustainable mobility in the transport policy field. The thesis contributes to the emerging field of critical transport studies by empirically investigating a concrete sustainable mobility discourse. This is done through an in-depth case study of a Swedish national sustainable transport policy, the Urban Environment Agreement. The case allows for a study of how power and conflicts permeate planning and policy for sustainability. The thesis advances a discourse-analytical perspective that is hitherto lacking in transport research and develops a novel framework building on critical discourse analysis and critical realism. This framework is subsequently deployed to empirically map discursive patterns of statements related to sustainable mobility, to determine how these patterns interrelate, and to interpret the broader implications of the findings. The central claim of the thesis is that sustainable mobility needs to be understood as a product of naturalised representations of growth. Arguably, societal norms and assumptions about forms of growth govern how sustainable mobility is conceived and acted upon through policies. This constructs the continuous increase of mobility as a naturally occurring phenomenon and excludes alternatives to high-mobility society. Two dominant constructions of sustainable mobility are identified in the discourse: ‘sustainable mobility as a necessity’, building on ideas of managing growth, and ‘sustainable mobility as progress’, connected to ideas of promoting growth. The author proposes that a third way of constructing sustainable mobility, ‘as restriction’, in the sense of limiting growth, is silenced in the discourse. Although there are differences among these constructions, the discourse contains several naturalised representations that characterise the discourse overall. While growth is constructed as inevitable, sustainability is constructed as an imperative. As a result, a transition to sustainable mobility is constructed as a salvation, justified by several logics of sustainable mobility. These logics discursively link contradictory notions of growth and sustainability. The thesis develops a wheel of growth metaphor to capture such key elements and linkages of the discourse. Finally, the discourse in focus is contrasted against central features of the more ‘traditional’ transport policy discourse. This shows that the sustainable mobility discourse of the Urban Environment Agreement policy partly challenges the traditional focus on automobility. At the same time, the present discourse reproduces assumptions of ‘predict and provide’, travel time minimisation, and the emphasis on economic growth. The conclusions of the thesis contribute to the ongoing discussion among policy makers, academics, and social movements about how to respond to the societal challenge of a transition towards a more sustainable and just transport system

The aim of this paper is to improve the knowledge of collaborative challenges when planning and implementing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Collaborative challenges are here understood as the barriers that may arise in BRT planning and implementation as a consequence of several formally independent actors, occasionally with different interests, participating in the planning. The results are based on an analysis of actor interactions in Swedish BRT projects. These projects are analysed in relation to the state of the art in the research field of collaborative approaches. The results show two main and interrelated collaborative challenges. The first category of challenges concerns difficulties for actors in creating a common understanding of what a BRT system is, the second category concerns details of bus priority measures, e.g. busways, priority at intersections, and how to handle and deal with conflicting interests when removing speed bumps or pedestrian and cycle crossings. In terms of policy is in the early stages of the planning processes. This can be generated by working practices and tools that facilitate agreements on how to handle different interests and trade-offs. BRT guidelines adapted to national transport policy, legal and organisational conditions could function as tools in assisting actor dialogue.

The transport sector is currently undergoing rapid development, which is to a large extent driven by innovation and technological changes initiated by various market actors. At the same time, public transport operations are largely framed by extensive procurement processes and a mature market where a few large companies compete for market share. In Europe, there is tension between rapid innovative development in the sector, on one hand, and stability given by regulation practices shaping procurement processes, on the other. This paper presents results from a study in which opportunities for innovation in procurement processes were examined. The findings are based on public transport authorities' and transport companies’ experiences from tendering bus transport in the three largest cities in Sweden. By using a theoretical perspective of innovation and institutional logics, the paper explains the restrictive role innovation has in procurement processes and discusses the conflicting views transport authorities and transport companies put forward. The paper is of general value since it raises questions related to the complexity of existing tendering regimes and the possibilities of facilitating innovation.

A fair distribution of accessibility to key activities is a central concern for distributive justice in transport planning. This implies that disparities in accessibility and the negative effects associated with a lack of accessibility should be mitigated. However, even though accessibility is not purely spatial or static, it is conventionally treated as if it were. Several studies have significantly advanced the spatio-temporal representation of accessibility. However, there is still a lack of focus on how these dynamics affect different groups of people with differing socio-economic and demographic characteristics and how these dynamics might influence their travel mode choice. The aim of this paper is to analyse how differences in accessibility to the workplace by public transport during multiple times of the day are associated with the time period in which different groups of people commute to work, and how the flexibility of individuals' time constraints might influence whether they can and do commute using public transport. Using a transport justice-focused time geography perspective, this study draws on the spatio-temporal aspects of people's real activities based on travel survey data for the Stockholm Region. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the differences in accessibility to the workplace by public transport across multiple departure time periods; showing how these results compare with mode choice (if there is a choice); and revealing which socio-economic, demographic and geographical factors characterise these differences. This study also illustrates how a transport justice-focused time geography approach could help researchers have a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the relationship between accessibility and sustainable travel behaviour, and how this relationship might change at different times of the day.

Despite an increase in Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) initiatives that aim to pave the way for both public and private MaaS Operators, such MaaS models have received limited scholarly attention. Uncertainties therefore remain in terms of how public-private MaaS can be realized and governed. This paper addresses this problem through an exploratory case study of an attempt to reform the business ecosystem for mobility services in Sweden, which is conceptualized as a move towards public-private MaaS. Inspired by the What-is-the-Problem-Represented-to-Be approach, the paper analyzes what problem representations and assumptions underpin the proposed reform and outlines issues of conflict across the involved actors. Drawing on these findings, the paper highlights disagreements on problems, centralization, and responsibilities as challenges to public-private MaaS developments and proposes that an inclusive and pragmatic governance strategy is key for effective and democratic governance of MaaS. Additionally, three avenues for future research are identified: development of analytical tools that better represent the complexity of MaaS governance choices, studies of how the prevailing narrative around MaaS influences developments, and analyses of governance strategies’ effectiveness in relation to political objectives for MaaS developments.

Cars are nowadays being programmed to learn how to drivethemselves. While autonomous cars are often portrayed as thenext step in the auto-motive industry, they have already begunroaming the streets in some US cities. Building on a growingbody of critical scholarship on the development of autonomouscars, we explore what machine learning is in open environmentslike cities by juxtaposing this to thefield of mobilities studies. Wedo  so  by  revisiting  core  concepts  in  mobilities  studies:movement,  representation  and  embodied  experience.  Ouranalysis of machine learning is centred around the transition fromhuman senses to sensors mounted on cars, and what this impliesin terms of autonomy. While much of the discussions related tothis transition are already foregrounded in mobilities studies, dueto thisfield’s emphasis on complexities and the understanding ofautomobility as a socio-technological system, questions aboutautonomy still emerge in a slightly new light with the advent ofmachine learning. We conclude by suggesting that in mobilitiesstudies, autonomy has always been seen as intertwined withtechnology,  yet  we  argue  that  machine  learning  unfoldsautonomy as intrinsic to technology, as the space between thecar, the driver and the context is collapsing with autonomous cars.

Self-driving cars enable dynamic shared mobility, where customers are independent of schedules and fixed stops. This study aims to investigate the potential effects shared mobility can have on future transportation. We simulate multiple scenarios to analyze the effects different service designs might have on vehicle kilometers, on the required number of shared vehicles, on the potential replacement of private cars, and on service metrics such as waiting times, travel times, and detour levels. To demonstrate how simulation can be used to analyze future mobility, we present a case study of the city of Gothenburg in Sweden, where we model travel demand in the morning hours of a workday. The results show that a significant decrease of vehicle kilometers can be achieved if all private car trips are replaced by rideshare and that shared vehicles can potentially replace at least 5 private cars during the morning peak.

Only well-maintained railway systems can function without severe interruptions. However, maintenance activities can themselves cause train delays if they conflict with train movements. Trackwork refers to maintenance performed on a railway track. This study aims to investigate the effect of trackwork on train delays in Sweden. It presents a logistic regression analysis based on more than 225,000 planned trackwork and 25,600,000 train movements during 2017. The results show that trains that pass through trackwork on single-track segments were on average 44% more likely to be delayed than those that do not. The corresponding value for double-track segments was 25%, and the weighted average was an increased risk of 31%. With the number of trackwork set to increase over the coming years, these results highlight the importance of improved scheduling and performance of trackwork to reduce the conflicts between trackwork and train movements.