Articles

Mega-projects are a growing phenomenon worldwide. More and more projects are started and they grow ever bigger in size. At the same time, there is overwhelming evidence that mega-projects tend to run late, overrun in terms of costs and fail to deliver the expected benefits. Paradoxically, more and more money is invested in projects that fail to deliver on their promises. This dissertation analyses how mega-projects are justified through a case study of the Swedish highspeed rail project and the National Negotiation on Housing and Infrastructure (Sverigeförhandlingen). The Swedish high-speed rail project is arguably the biggest project ever initiated in the country and fits the definition of a mega-project. It is planned to connect the three largest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö with high-speed rail tracks at an estimated investment cost of 230 billion SEK (€23.1 billion). The project is highly controversial in the public debate. It impacts a large number of people and involves substantial financial commitment. Interestingly, it is also heavily unprofitable in cost-benefit analysis calculations. Based on these calculations, the project is unprofitable and should be cancelled. Still, the project has been allowed to continue by two consecutive governments. Analysing how this project is justified makes it possible to address the wider issue of why mega-projects continue to hold such appeal among decision makers despite their track record. The dissertation finds that the Swedish high-speed rail project is being justified based on a combination of strategies: widening the scope, producing encouraging numbers, creating and mobilising stakeholders, and arguing using a policy narrative. It shows how the project leadership skilfully bypasses criticism from cost-benefit analysis and succeeds to gather support for the project despite the numbers. The research has been done at Lund University School of Economics and Management and K2 – the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport. 

The overall aim of this thesis is to gain a clearer picture of the differences in mobility among the young-old living in Sweden’s large metropolitan regions. This thesis comprises four papers. Paper I explores the inclusion of public transport as an element of mobility among the young-old living in the Stockholm region. Paper II presents an analysis of cycling among older people in the city of Malmö. The third paper explores the links between modal options and the potential to participate in everyday activities among those aged 65–79 and living in Sweden’s large metropolitan regions (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö), while Paper IV investigates differences in the potential to carry out everyday activities of value among the young-old living in these same three regions. The results from Paper I highlight that increasing residential density, being a woman and having a higher functional capacity were associated with a positive increase in the likelihood of considering it possible to use, and the use of, public transport, while most of those who included public transport as a mobility element were also users of the private car. For Paper II, cycling was found to be a facilitator of activities and was largely associated with convenience and ease. There were clear differences between cyclists and non-cyclists, with the former generally having a wider range of mobility opportunities available to them. Cycling cessation was anticipated as a distressing, yet inevitable, life event. The findings from Paper III show that there was a lower level of satisfaction with both the quantity and quality of modal options among those who do not have public transport as a modal option. The results suggest that those who do not have public transport as a modal option are less inclined to have the capability to carry out all everyday activities of value. The absence of having the possibility to carry out active physical exercise was rather apparent, with several highlighting health and/or transport-related issues as barriers. For Paper IV, clear links were identified between social resources, holding a driving license, access to public transport, income, health condition and age and the potential to carry out everyday activities of value. These results bring us closer to understanding the role different modal options can have in facilitating continued participation in society among older people. These results call for a greater focus to be placed on potential mobility and its role in facilitating activities of value in order to allow for a more detailed approach to transport equity analyses. As such, more targeted and integrated policy measures can be developed. 

This paper contributes to the understanding of spatiotemporal accessibility inequalities by exploring how the current public transport (PT) provision affects the time wealth of PT users living in two peripheral neighbourhoods in Malmo. The ¨ paper investigates time-related resources and constraints that concur in defining accessibility inequalities, identifies forms of temporal disadvantage and privilege and addresses the relevance of recognizing and meeting the multiple time-related needs of (potential) PT users. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the study integrates results from a thematic analysis of interviews and from a GIS spatiotemporal accessibility analysis of PT schedules to understand whether and how the current PT provision (a) allows users to carry out the desired or needed activities by PT in the time available to them, (b) is harmonized with their spatiotemporal access needs and (c) supports or hinders the users’ ability to control their travel time. The paper suggests that, in the observed cases, the PT provision provides unequal opportunities for faster connections and information, exposing some users to time-related transport disadvantage. Also, the current PT provision does not always seem to be harmonized with the participants’ access needs, especially during off-peak hours. The findings highlight the importance of taking into consideration the time wealth of (potential) PT users with different access needs, resources, and constraints, with the aim to both tackle transport disadvantage and support the adoption of sustainable modal choices. The study provides directions for further spatiotemporal accessibility research and for urban time and mobility policies.

The governance of public transport is experiencing growing interest as a field of research. Collaboration, contracts, ownership are among the concepts applied in the literature. Outside the specific field of public transport, the term meta-governance and meta-governors - referring to actors and activities that aim to govern and guide a network - has gained increased attention. The point of departure for this article is to study if and to what extent the concept of meta-governance can contribute additional insight to the study of public transport governance, if signs of meta-governance in public transport can be observed in two cases included in the study, and finally, what the nature is of the networks within which it takes place. The cases are the Copenhagen Region, Denmark, and the West Midlands Region, England. In both cases there are signs of meta-governance. It is not clear whether it has increased in scale or level of activity over recent years, but it is likely to increase in the future. The core meta-governor identified in both cases is the passenger transport authority, although in the Danish case there are more actors of almost similar significance and governing capability. We conclude that the meta-governance concept adds to other concepts used in analyses of public transport governance by including more instruments of governance, bringing to the fore the need of a core, nodal actor, and by stressing furthermore the autonomy but also interdependence of other actors in the network.

Despite widespread interest, empirical research on how end-users perceive and use Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is scarce. To address this knowledge gap, this article analyzes the end-user process of adopting a MaaS service entitled EC2B, which was launched in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the spring of 2019. The contribution to the MaaS literature is three-fold. Firstly, the article provides insight into potential end-users by describing the characteristics and motives of the studied group of adopters. Secondly, it improves the understanding of the potential effects of MaaS by outlining how the EC2B service was used and how it influenced travel behavior. Thirdly, the article informs strategies for facilitating MaaS adoption by outlining what types of drivers and barriers the end-users faced during different stages of the adoption process. The reported findings underscore previous assertions that MaaS is much more than just an app and a subscription plan and highlight a mutually reinforcing relationship between the introduction of MaaS and the implementation of policies aimed at reducing car use.

In search for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, insights into the characteristics of all sorts of trips and specifically trips by car are needed. This paper focuses on everyday leisure trips for social and recreational purposes. Travel behaviour for these purposes is analysed considering individual and household factors as well as properties of the trip, based on Swedish national travel survey data. The analysis reveals that everyday leisure trips are often of joint character and that the average distance travelled per person and day increases with, for example, income, cohabitation, children in the household and residence in rural areas. The result also shows that the studied characteristics vary between studied trip purposes, influencing the sustainability potential of a reduction in car use and suggested measures. For instance, the largest share of passenger mileage comes from social trips, whereas trips for exercise and outdoor life have the largest share of car trips below 5 km. Several characteristics indicate difficulties in transferring trips by car to, for example, bicycle or public transport due to convenience, economy, start times, company etc. The study indicates that there is a need to take a broader view of the effective potential.

Punctuality is a key factor in railway operations, and is affected by both primary and secondary delays to differing degrees. Being able to separate these two types of delays is very important when simulating  operations, and when conducting punctuality improvement efforts. However, it is not easy to estimate the relative proportions of primary versus secondary delays using historical data. In this paper, we demonstrate a method that uses repeated runs of a macroscopic simulation tool to estimate what share of delays have been primary or secondary. Using the Swedish region of Scania as a case study, we estimate that about 36% of delays in 2019 were primary, leaving 64% as secondary. We further show that in order for operations to reach the targeted level of punctuality, 95% instead of the observed 87%, primary delays would have had to be cut by half. Using a draft timetable for 2025, we also simulate what the punctuality would be given different assumptions of primary delays. Assuming the same level of primary delays in 2025 as in 2019, we estimate that the punctuality would drop by a further 5%-points due to increased density of operations. In order to reach the punctuality target of 95% in 2025, primary delays would instead need to be reduced by two thirds. On the request of the infrastructure manager, we also show the predicted geographical distribution of secondary delays in this future timetable. Our results demonstrate the usefulness of fast and well-calibrated simulation models, contribute methodologically to the calibration of such models, and highlight the need for drastic delay reduction measures.

Planning for car-free housing has emerged as a solution for accomplishing sustainable urban development. There has been a tendency among researchers and policy makers to understand car-free housing in terms of “lifestyle politics”, where change is advanced by fostering morally or socially inspired lifestyle choices. The aim of this article is to situate lifestyle politics in a context of broader urban development by analysing ideas of future desired states that underpin planning for car-free housing, so as to allow for a critical discussion around what long-term urban futures urban planning wants to accomplish through such housing. By drawing from Mukhtar-Landgren’s conceptual pair of planning object and subject, and examining documents and formal correspondence relating to four examples of planning car-free housing in Sweden, the study shows three different ideas of the future that underpin the planning which includes different assumptions of sustainable mobility, individuals and urban planning: Planning for (1) “an optimized system”, which includes assumptions of rational objects which travel efficiently; (2) “individual freedom”, which includes assumptions of independent consumers which travel rightly; and (3) “community and togetherness”, which includes assumptions of individuals being part of a community which travels less.

Dwell times are considered to be one of the main constraints in terms of rail capacity, and have as much of an impact on capacity as maximum running speeds of trains (Harris, 2005). Several factors which influence dwell times have been identified in the past, such as rolling stock design (Thoreau et al., 2016), friction between boarding and alighting passengers (Seriani et al., 2019), and the volume of passengers (Palmqvist et al., 2020) for example. To add to the understanding of dwell times, the study we present here focuses on the relation between the spread of passengers on a station platform before boarding a train and dwell times. The spread of passengers, also known as concentrated boarding (Oliveira et al., 2019), has been shown to have a large impact on dwell times.

Measures to help spread out passengers more evenly between the available doors during the boarding procedure have been suggested in the past, ranging from platform markings signalling that people should spread out across to the platform as mentioned by Oliveira et al. (2019), to providing realtime information on the onboard crowding levels (Zhang et al., 2017). When implementing such measures it is not only important to understand the effectiveness of the measures itself but it is also important to understand the context in which these measures can have a beneficial effect on dwell times. The study we present here focuses on the latter and aims to study the relation between the spread of passengers between the available doors and dwell times on a network-wide level to help understand where it is relevant for interventions to be made.