PhD projects
TITLE: The Transition to Regional Delivery of Transport Investment in ScotlandRESEARCHER: Kate Pangbourne
START DATE: October 2005
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Danny MacKinnonSUMMARY: This piece of research is funded by the Scottish Executive, and relates to a change in the governance structure for the transport sector in Scotland, following the statement of intent contained within the White Paper Scotland’s Transport (2004) and the subsequent Transport (Scotland) Act 2005, which puts the previously voluntary Regional Transport Partnerships onto a statutory basis and widens the coverage to the whole of Scotland, in acknowledgement of the strategic failure of the 1996 local government reorganisation, which had decentralised strategic transport planning to the local level, thus weakening the ability of local authorities to invest in larger transport schemes which crossed local government boundaries.
The principal aim of the research is to conduct a study of the process of change from local to regional structures in transport governance in order to make an early assessment of the effectiveness of the new organisational structures in terms of:
a) their ability to deliver significant investments in improved transport at the regional level;
b) ensuring ‘joined-up’ government between transport and other sectors with transport impacts; and
c) removing transport sector barriers to achieving national climate change and sustainability targets.The Scottish Executive expects that the outputs of this research could be used to inform the future development of the governance structures to better implement its transport policies as expressed by the Partnership Agreement and the Scottish Parliament.
PUBLICATIONS:
Hunter, C., Carmichael, K. and Pangbourne, K. (2006) Household ecological footprinting using a new diary-based data gathering approach. Local Environment 11(3), 307-327.
TITLE: Modelling satisfaction of Demand Responsive Transport services and modal choice: a Structural Equation Modelling approach
RESEARCHER: Thanawat Phonphitakchai
START DATE: April 2005
SUPERVISOR: Prof. John NelsonSUMMARY: Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is a relatively new form of public transport provision; it is an intermediate form, somewhere between bus and taxi. Over the last decade, DRT services have grown in popularity, and have shown important advantages and benefits in several European cities and regions especially to improve social inclusion. However, many existing DRT services are still not performing to their true potential and could not be viable as commercial services. The majority of them have been withdrawn when their initial funding ended. Several previous works suggest that there is still a need to understand passenger requirements and to carry out an analysis of the expected demand level of the DRT.
In order to promote DRT, this research applies discrete choice analysis with latent variables to model the usage rate of a DRT service. The model is based on the data that collected from the LinkUp DRT service in Tyne and Wear, UK.
The assumption of the model is that each passenger has an underlying utility for using the LinkUp service, and the passengers’ socio-demographics, travel characteristics, and attitudes and perceptions towards the LinkUp service affect their utility. The utility is a latent variable in the model because it cannot be directly observed, and the actual usage rate of the LinkUp service (in terms of number of trips per week) serves as its indicator. The attitudinal and perceptual data are constructed as three latent variables; awareness, satisfaction, and relative advantage. The first two latent variables are measured through the indicators that the passengers perceive towards the attributes of the LinkUp service. The latter is measured through the indicators concerning the perceived superiority of the LinkUp service over conventional bus services. Therefore, the usage rate model is represented by the utility, which is a function of passengers’ socio-demographics, travel characteristics, and the three latent variables.
The interpretation of the empirical results of the model should provide some useful information for further development and implementation of DRT services.
PUBLICATIONS:
TITLE: Transit-Oriented Development: Challenges and potential to build a sustainable Urban Transportation in Beijing, P.R. China
RESEARCHER: Deng Taotao
START DATE: January 2008
SUPERVISOR: Prof. John D. Nelson and Dr Samer Bagaeen
SPONSOR: China Scholarship CouncilSUMMARY: Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained popularity in recent decades. TOD is a smart growth management tool for cities since it can encourage public transit, walking, and bicycling in mixed-use activity nodes around rail stations. Meanwhile, China is experiencing rapid urbanization-and with it associated problems of sprawl, transportation, environmental quality, and physical decline. An essential question is raised-how far and by what means urban transportation can be planned to prevent, mitigate, and control further sprawl.
China is a fast-growing developing country with a huge population and limited land resource. Hence, China is in urgent need of a specially tailored transit urban transportation development strategy to solve the traffic congestion and coincide with more sustainable development.Aims and objectives
1) Analyse the benefits and trends of Transit-Oriented Development in Europe and North America.
2) Quantitatively evaluate measures aiming to control the urban sprawl phenomenon.
3) Provide practical recommendations and guidelines to local authorities.PUBLICATIONS:
TITLE: Accelerating the demand for low carbon vehicles: a demand-led perspective
RESEARCHER: Craig Morton
START DATE: October 2009
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Jillian Anable, Professor John Nelson and Dr Christian Brand (University of Oxford)SUMMARY: The uptake of low Emissions Vehicles are being investigated from a demand perspective. This will involve the investigation of consumer behavior in vehicle purchasing decisions in order to determine what vehicle attributes and characteristics consumers value. As this cannot be directly observed from the market, proxy techniques will be utilized where consumers will state their preferences. It is hoped that the output of the research will provide policy relevant conclusions to assist government and other relevant institutions in policy development.
Within my current research area I am developing knowledge in:
• Economic theory of value
• Consumer behavior, preferences and rationality
• Low Emission Vehicle technical design and operation
• Sustainable transport
• Functioning of the UK and international car market
• Current UK/EU legislation regarding personal vehicles
• Sustainability pathways for personal transportation
• Q methodology and stated preference modelingAcademic Interest
Outside of my current research topic I have academic interest in the following fields:
• Financial Economics
• Political Economy
• International Economics
• The Economics of Sport
• Sustainable Development
• Ecology and Ecosystem Preservation
• Human Development and Poverty Reduction
TITLE: Moving towards Sustainable Transport - is public acceptability of the required measures important, and if so how can this acceptability be increased?
RESEARCHER: Alison Pridmore
START DATE: January 2010
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Jillian Anable and Dr Appollonia Miola (JRC)SUMMARY: The transport sector makes a significant contribution to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions - 28% . It is the third largest, and the fastest growing source of emissions in the EU . To date, other sectors of the economy have borne the brunt of GHG emission reduction, in part, because it is more cost effective to do so. However, in the future, given the stringent reductions required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the transport sector is expected to play an increasing role in reducing emissions.
This PhD will explore key issues relating to this role. Firstly, existing and emerging research on GHG mitigation measures for the transport sector will be reviewed. This will inform a position on the key policy measures required to achieve emission reductions in this sector. Then, public attitudes and acceptance of these measures will be considered. The impact of this acceptability on the likely adoption of measures, by members of the public and policy makers, will be assessed in the short and longer term. Following on from this, the role that community based initiatives could play in increasing acceptability and adoption will be explored. This existing evidence base will be complemented by interviews relating to public acceptance and adoption of measures in a community context. As a result, the project will, hopefully, help identify steps which could be taken to ensure that the measures required for carbon reduction in transport sector are successfully implemented and adopted.
The PhD student is a European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Grantholder.
