Vetenskapliga artiklar

Local actors are to an increasing extent engaging in national and European Union (EU)–based development and sustainability agendas. These ventures often materialize in the form of temporary organizations such as pilots and projects. This article contributes to debates on project-based, experimental and temporary organizations by unpacking the organizational architecture of pilots and analyzing how the democratic autonomy of local public actors is formed. Through the example of smart city pilots, the study shows how a range of intersecting relations and hierarchies enable and circumscribe public-sector autonomy—from local actors’ attempts to align pilots with political goals to the limitations of standardized and scalable knowledge and strict funding requirements.

The concept of motility, mobility capital, has been put forward to understand mobility from a more holistic perspective through incorporating subjective and objective as well as material and non-material aspects in the examination of individuals' mobility potentials. In this paper, building on a survey study in the two municipalities of Malmö and Gothenburg in Sweden, I developed a quantitative operationalization of motility in relation to cycling and employed GIS-based and statistical analyses to identify a set of appropriate indicators to measure the three dimensions of cycling motility namely access, competence, and appropriation. The analyses reveal three operational dimensions underlying the process of appropriating cycling to carry out daily trips. More specifically, individuals' perceptions of the functional and social suitability of cycling and its compatibility with their principles and values seem to be significant for the appropriation of a bike as a daily travel mode. Altogether, the findings support that the quantitative operationalization of cycling motility can deepen our understanding of the factors shaping individuals' cycling potentials and practices, hence offering valuable insights into the development of successful cycling interventions that create material and nonmaterial infrastructure, competences, and positive representations necessary for the appropriation of cycling.

Sweden's strategy to manage the spread of Covid-19 has not included any form of lockdown, in contrast to the approaches adopted by most other countries. Instead, the strategy has been largely based on strong recommendations for society. Even though Sweden has not had any form of lockdown, the Covid-19 pandemic has during a relatively short period of time brought changes for society, significantly disrupting everyday life. The pandemic poses both challenges and opportunities for sustainable future transport, not least public transport provision, supply and use. The purpose of this study is to investigate how changes for society have translated into changes for mobility as an element of everyday life during the early stages of a pandemic. This study draws on a map-based online survey (public participatory GIS) which was purposefully designed to allow people to contribute with their experiences in order to capture how the current situation has affected several different facets of people's everyday life. Results suggest that effects on mobility, such as the possibility to telework, affect different groups differently and may exacerbate existing differences in terms of gender, geography and mobility. In order to mitigate negative effects, transport policy needs to be tailored in order to take these heterogeneities into account. Both spatio-temporal adjustment and modal adjustment were dominant themes for most activities, although the dominance of these themes varied among the activities. Our findings give an indication of both the short and long-term impacts on everyday mobility in the Swedish context, for groups of inhabitants in the city of Malmö. Through deepening our understanding of the processes at play, we suggest eight possible policy responses that can be carefully tailored, both in the interim and into the future.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the type of mobilities and subjects that are being promoted and constituted through bike-sharing systems. This is done through an analysis of the bike-sharing system in the city of Lund in Sweden. The analysis utilises Bacchi's What is the Problem Represented to be? framework and develops it through adding a spatial perspective. Departing from a critical velomobilities perspective, we argue that urban transport policies cannot merely be regarded as one specific and delimited reaction to well-defined policy problems. Instead, the ways that BSSs are, described, motivated – but also spatially organised – constitute which mobilities are produced. The analysis is based in an analysis of relevant policy documents, maps and observations. It is concluded that bike sharing is not seen as cycling and is rarely linked to cycling as such, but rather is seen as part of the public transport system. Further, it is concluded that the motivation behind the location of the stations is to facilitate the flow of workers to public transport, and promote attractiveness and tourism, thus constituting a strong belief in a win-win situation between sustainability and growth. Here prioritisation between different values, and the possible tensions between different social and environmental dimensions of sustainability is down-played.

This paper focuses on the efficiency evaluation of bike-sharing systems (BSSs) and develops an approach based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to support the decisions regarding the performance evaluation of BSS stations. The proposed methodology is applied and tested for the Malmöbybike BSS in Malmö, Sweden. This was done by employing spatial analyses and data about the BSS usage trends as well as taking into account transport, land use, and socioeconomic context of the case study. The results of the application demonstrate consistency with the literature and highlight meaningful associations between the station relative efficiency and the urban context. More specifically, the paper provides in-depth knowledge about the preprocessing data, selection of input and output variables, and the underlying analytical approach to be potentially applied to other cases and urban contexts. Overall, the DEA-based methodology presented in this study could assist decision-makers and planners with developing operational strategies for planning and management of BSS stations and networks.

Dwell time delays, although small in nature, can accumulate to a large delay over the entire journey of a train. It is, however, difficult to precisely know the amount of time which is required at stations due to the inherent variance in human behaviour. Furthermore, planning practices do not seem to capture the dynamic nature of the dwell time process. The current literature review focusses on the influence that passengers have on the length and variance of dwell times at stations. More specifically, this study focusses on the underlying causes for the distribution of passengers along a platform while waiting for the train to arrive at the station and their behaviour during the boarding and alighting process. As part of this review, two databases were systematically searched, and backwards snowballing techniques were applied. To ensure the quality of the included literature, a systematic quality appraisal was carried out. The findings show that measures related to platform management and changes to train operations have the potential to play a substantial role in reducing the variance in dwell times, as well as improvements in the provision of information to travellers. Such measures also allow for a more solution-oriented approach. However, the actual benefits of such measures need further studying. The findings also show that the distribution of passengers and the behaviour of passengers during the boarding and alighting process are connected and should thus be addressed as a whole rather than separate aspects. The majority of the studies included in this review did, however, not focus on both elements in conjunction. There is thus a need for future studies into the effect of platform management measures where efforts must be made to better understand the impact of measures on both the behaviour and distribution of passengers.

Based on an understanding of automation as various technological and organisational configurations in the making, this article aims to deepen insights into the governance arrangements shaping how automation is being introduced in public transport. Using a qualitative case study, we analyse the introduction of automated shuttle buses in Barkarbystaden, in the north-west of the Stockholm region, Sweden. Participant observation and qualitative interviews have been used to explore the governance arrangement forming automation in this case. We use planning literature on ‘soft spaces’ to discuss how automation emerges in connection to established processes and actors. Our findings show how the governance arrangement in this case transferred existing roles and responsibilities to the collaboration involving driverless shuttles, something which gives the bus operator a new and influential role in smart mobility in public transport. The article concludes with a discussion about the need to think critically about the ways in which roles, relations and responsibilities may be shaped and reshaped in collaborative governance arrangements around smart mobility, and to develop a more clearly articulated policy and planning agenda which clarifies the long-term public vision for automation in infrastructure and transport planning.

This paper studies penalty design for cancellations and delays for bus contracts in two Swedish regions, Stockholm and Skåne. In these regions regional public transport authorities are responsible for the procurement. The paper reports findings on how the designs of the incentives are motivated, how the performance monitoring is managed, and the consistency in charging of penalties and how outcomes have evolved. Two design forms are found, either charges for individual deviations or deviations from an aggregate target level. Little motivation is found in form of narrated or documented intended effects, experience of penalty design or the outcomes of penalties. Outcomes are monitored regularly by contract managers, based on computerized data capture. There appears to be no detailed records of charging making it possible to compare to outcomes. There are indications of non-negligible exemptions from charging attributed to factors beyond the control of operators. The current level of delivered departures is high in both regions but shows no clear trend. The aggregate level punctuality appears to be decreasing at both the RPTAs, but only statistically significant for one. The picture is complicated by the fact that punctuality develops differently in different parts of the regions. The paper reflects the uneven availability of data and documentation of mangagement procedures.

This paper evaluates the welfare effects of optimizing bus service fares and frequencies in small cities by modeling street congestion and crowding in public transport vehicles. The model is calibrated to the Swedish city of Uppsala. A simple demand model is used. Sensitivity analyses suggest that this is sufficient for representing important welfare effects. The results indicate that there would be large, robust welfare gains from reducing public transport supply in Uppsala, especially in the outer zone of the city where reductions of supply would be large compared to the current situation. The welfare gains from adjusting fares would be smaller.

Recently several papers have analyzed optimal supply of public transport in the sense of optimal prices, frequencies, bus sizes, spacing of bus stops for a public transport authority facing a certain static demand for trips. This paper is motivated by the observation that demand for bus services varies between weekdays even for the same departure analyzes the magnitude of this variation and its implications for optimal supply. This analysis was enabled by the relatively recent adaption of technologies for counting passengers boarding and alighting and motivated by the relatively few published studies of such data. This paper therefore uses calculated rates between bus stops in the Swedish city Uppsala, and analyses the average variation in geography, between directions and between the same departure times and directions. The central results are that; there are parts of lines with systematically higher and lower occupancy rate than average without corresponding supply adaptions, there is substantial variance in the occupancy on buses leaving the same bus stop at the same time on week days, and welfare optimization indicates that providing capacity to cover maximum observed demand with seats in buses is not necessarily optimal.