ITS Monday: Edition 4, 2026

Identifying circumstances in which the introduction of distance-based, cordon-based, and congestion-free lane road user charge regimes garner support

A new working paper from the Institute of Transport and Logistics co-authired by David Hensher, Edward Wei, Camila Balbontin, and John Nelson. The abstract:

The most challenging transport reform has always been associated with re-pricing of car use. Despite the growing levels of congestion on our roads, there is general reluctance to support a package of pricing reforms designed to make each and every car user potentially better off financially and/or in saving time. There exist a number of systemwide charging reforms such as the Oregon kilometre-based charging regime, but they are in the main opt-in models, which offer an appealing way for politicians to support the ideals of giving everyone a choice.

The cordon-based congestion charging schemes in London, Milan, Stockholm, Gothenburg, New York, and Singapore, while applying to all users who enter a specific location, are limited to one location as is the idea of a congestion-free priced lane. This paper focuses on re-pricing options (with varying charges) to identify how residents are likely to respond to peak period distance-based charging throughout an entire city, cordon-based charges in a defined geographical area, and congestion-free priced lanes on major roads.

A series of road pricing initiatives were offered to over 4,000 individuals in seven countries, seeking advice on whether a particular initiative is likely to have a positive or negative impact (or none at all) on how they travel, revealing support or otherwise for a specific re-pricing regime. For each road pricing initiative, we ran a generalised ordered logit model to identify what contextual variables influence the probability of an initiative being associated with a positive impact, a negative impact, or no impact.

We are especially interested in understanding how prior “windows of change” associated with lifestyle, mobility, work, commuting, and environmental preferences condition support or otherwise for each road pricing reform initiative. The findings provide suggestions on the extent to which each of the eight initiatives assessed can deliver support or otherwise for road pricing reforms from individuals whose recent past is associated with one or more of the 70 windows of change investigated.

Related iMOVE article:

• Traffic Congestion: Info, Projects & Resources

Trip chaining: 2024

“The National Travel Survey is a household survey of personal travel by residents of England travelling within Great Britain. Data is collected via interviews and a seven-day travel diary, which enables analysis of patterns and trends in travel behaviours. This factsheet presents new analysis on trip chaining using NTS data, by looking at how people link trips for different purposes together into a single chain and is a different methodology to previous work published by the Department for Transport on this topic. This approach helps reveal the complexity of daily routines and how people combine activities within their travel.”

Related iMOVE projects:

• Assessing Brisbane’s key suburban transport corridors
• A new model for insights into Adelaide household travel patterns

That e-bike you bought your teen might be an illegal electric motorbike – and the risks are real

This article is from The Conversation, and is co-authored by Dorina Pojani and Richard J. Buning. “The vehicles authorities are concerned about aren’t really e-bikes at all. They’re effectively illegal electric motorbikes, able to accelerate rapidly — some to more than 100 kilometres per hour — and often without the safety standards of a legal motorbike. For years, these vehicles were imported through a loophole allowing them to be used on private land. But once in Australia, most end up on roads, bike paths and public space.”

Bus leads the way in Queensland PT patronage boost

“New patronage data has revealed bus is leading the way in driving public transport passenger trip increases in Queensland since the introduction of permanent 50 cent fares.”

Related iMOVE project:

• Implications of large-scale price reductions in public transport fares

Update on Australian transport trends – February 2026

The latest from Chris Loader’s Charting Transport blog. “I’ve recently completed my big annual refresh of the Trends pages on Charting Transport (accessible from the Trends menu above). Here is a quick scan of some headline trends, plus a few new interesting charts.”

Environmental and social influences on cycling adoption: A socio-ecological mode choice analysis in Greater Melbourne

A new academic paper, co-authored by Sapan Tiwari, Afshin Jafari, Nikhil Chand, and Billie Giles-Corti. The abstract:

Cycling is widely recognised as a sustainable and health-enhancing mode of transport; however, its adoption remains low in many urban areas due to safety concerns and infrastructure limitations. This study considers the multiple levels of influence on individual behaviour. Adopting a social ecological framework, it examines how traffic stress, social norms, and family influences shape cycling uptake in Greater Melbourne. It focuses on the impact of lowering residential speed limits to 30 km/h and expanding low-stress cycling networks. The study uses the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity, a household travel survey data and a multinomial logit model to evaluate how reducing the Level of Traffic Stress (LTS), combined with social and family reinforcement, influences mode choice behaviour.

The results indicate that speed reductions significantly lower the proportion of high-LTS road segments from 45% to 30%, leading to a 49.6% increase in cycling adoption in the model with LTS alone and from 27.85% to 88.37% in models incorporating social and family influences. The findings highlight that infrastructure improvements alone are insufficient; family and social support are crucial in reinforcing cycling behaviour and mitigating infrastructure constraints.

These insights highlight the need for an integrated ecological approach combining infrastructure, behavioural strategies, and policy interventions to promote cycling.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Active Transport: Info, Projects & Resources

Related iMOVE projects:

• Impacts & community benefits of a regional active travel network
• Evaluation and implementation of shared spaces in NSW
• Optimising multimodal transport networks: Sharing road space

Full Self-Driving: Feature or Game Changer?

“Let’s dive into how robotaxis might reshape the possibility space of personal transportation, not just as a feature, but as a potential reframing of what cars mean to us; mobility, adventure, and identity.”

Related iMOVE articles:

• Autonomous Driving: Info, Projects & Resources
• Autonomous Driving Technology: Info, Projects & Resources

Related iMOVE projects:

• CAVs and the environment: A cleaner future?
• CAVs and Australians: Attitudes, perceptions, preferences
• Safely deploying automated vehicles on Australian roads

EV boom hits the brakes

“For a while there, electric vehicles felt inevitable in New Zealand, attracting a growing number of Kiwi drivers. The future, humming quietly along city and rural roads, was silent, clean, and cheaper to run. Then the brakes went on. The Detail looks at why.”

Related iMOVE article:

• Electric Vehicles: Info, Projects & Resources
• The Conductor Series: The electrification of transport

Related iMOVE projects:

• An afterlife ecosystem for electric vehicle batteries
• Leading the charge in bi-directional charging
• Utrecht to Australia: Unlocking scalable, low-cost V2G
• Being a V2G trailblazer: Lessons for mass market adoption