ITS Monday: Edition 19, 2025

Strategic Transport Models are relevant but need to be better understood

A discussion between Dr Supun Perera and Professor David Hensher on the evolving role of Strategic Transport Models (STMs) in transport planning, highlighting their value in understanding complex behaviours and testing policies.

Related iMOVE projects:

• Integrating transport planning with road network optimisation
• Transport investment planning, tools, and frameworks
• Big data for strategic transport planning

Public transport and the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative analysis of trends and policies in Great Britain, Germany, the USA, Canada, and Australia

A new academic paper, co-authored by Ralph Buehler, John Pucher, Peter White, and Graham Currie. The abstract:

Profiling future passenger transport initiatives that garner community support as a guide to identify the growing role of active and micro-mobility modes: a MDCEV model

This academic paper is from academics at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, co-authored by Camila Balbontin, David Hensher, Edward Wei, and Wen Liu. The abstract:

This paper examines the factors influencing the adoption and frequency of use of sustainable transport modes including walking, cycling, electric bicycles, electric vehicles, and public transport, for different trip purposes. Using a two-stage stated preference experiment in metropolitan Australia, we use a mixed multinomial logit model (MML) model to estimate the probability of adopting door-to-door travel alternatives, followed by a multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model to capture the number of weekly trips taken by mode and purpose.

Results show that trip purpose plays a significant role in mode selection, with commuting trips associated with greater willingness to shift to active and electric modes, especially when infrastructure quality is high. In contrast, shopping and personal business trips are more sensitive to access mode and mode experience. E-bikes emerge as a flexible option for both commuting and recreational trips, while walking is mainly preferred for short, non-commute travel.

The findings underscore the importance of purpose-specific strategies and high-quality infrastructure in promoting sustainable and integrated mobility futures.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Active Transport: Info, Projects & Resources
• Micromobility: Info, Projects & Resources
  

Smart Roads, Smart Trucks trial

Background and learning from Transurban’s Smart Roads, Smart Trucks trial in Victoria. “This trial explored the suitability of a 50km hub-to-hub route for future adoption of autonomous trucks, and investigated the potential role of smart road solutions to assist autonomous truck operations and performance across a range of scenarios and operating conditions.”

Related iMOVE articles:

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

Why cycling to work is better for your brain than walking

This article interviews a few Australian commuter cyclists, with the article building on a recently published study, The Active Travel Mode and Incident Dementia and Brain Structure study, conducted by an international team at the University of Sydney and Huazhong University of Science and Technology,

Related iMOVE projects:

• Safer cycling infrastructure: Design and policy
• Modelling cycling investments in regional areas
• Webinar: Encouraging active transport in regional areas

Why there is a need for a national resilience framework

“Changing climate and weather patterns in recent years have highlighted the importance of a resilient rail network, not only for the benefit of the industries that rail supports but for the communities across Australia that rely on rail for access to essential goods and services.”

Are users ready to accept fully flexible walking in on-demand mobility?

ITLS has had a busy week, with another academic paper released, this one co-authored by Andrea Pellegrini and Andres Fielbaum. The abstract:

On-demand ride pooling benefits from updating its routing decisions in real-time as new information becomes available, as well as from optimising the pickup and drop off (PUDO) points to avoid long detours. Both features indicate that it could be plausible to implement flexible walking, i.e., deciding the PUDO points dynamically, as opposed to informing users upfront.

However, this could reduce the reliability of ride pooling thereby influencing the user experience. In this paper, we analyse data extracted from a labelled discrete choice experiment, consisting of three distinct ride pooling alternatives: door-to-door, fixed walking where walking time is informed upfront, and flexible walking where walking time is expressed as a time interval. Each alternative is further described by the following battery of attributes: price, in vehicle and waiting times, and emission savings compared to conventional petrol vehicles.

The empirical analysis is performed via the density de-compositional version of the non parametric random effects Logit Mixed Logit model. Our main findings are as follows: i) There is a discontinuous zero-walk effect: passengers strongly prefer door-to-door services to walking even a minimal distance; ii) Users prefer to know their walking direction, as the willingness to pay to reduce walking time is significantly higher when the PUDO point is not fixed in advance; iii)

The so-called reliability ratio, which compares the value of reliability to the value of time, is approximately 0.68 for walking time — significantly greater than previous values obtained for either waiting or in-vehicle time indicating that reliability is relatively more important for walking. All of this implies that flexible walking would be desirable only if the operational benefits are very large.

On the other hand, those three findings reflect the average, but we do identify a percentage of the population willing to embrace flexible walking, suggesting that offering both fixed and flexible times to the users can be the best option.

Adults on e-bikes: The good, the bad, and the regulated

An article published on LinkedIn, by Zipidi’s Stephen Coulter. “From school drop-offs to grocery runs, local social visits to beach rides, Australians are discovering that e-bikes (and increasingly e-trikes) offer a freedom and flexibility that’s hard to beat—especially in congested cities and car-dependent suburbs.

But just like with children, the conversation about e-bikes and adults needs more nuance, structure, and safety.”

Auckland’s new electric ferries set to make waves worldwide

“Auckland Transport’s first electric ferry has touched water for the first time. Workers began the slow process of bringing the vessel from the McMullen & Wing shipyard factory floor into the nearby Tamaki River in Mt Wellington early Wednesday morning.

The first of two fully electric ferries will undergo technical tests here over the coming weeks, before trialling its seaworthiness inside the Hauraki Gulf.”