How many are too many?
Project description
Duration
01.2015-12.2018
Sponsor
ETH Research Grants
Staff
Prof. Dr. K.W. Axhausen and A. Loder
Summary
Since decades, most of our great cities suffer from congestion and further urban and economic growth will most likely lead to a further growing car fleet. Cars usually provide in normal traffic conditions a fast, flexible and convenient mode of transport. Therefore, it cannot be a transport policy to ban all cars from urban transportation, but, contrary, identify that amount of car traffic that maximizes welfare for the entire city. In this project, we work on answering the question of how many cars are too many in a city using novel macroscopic economic and traffic models.
In detail, this project has three parts. In the first part, we provide quantitative understanding of how the accessibility and distribution of work places as well as the availability of alternative modes influence the choices of mobility tools (cars, season ticket, bicycle etc.) and mode of transportation. In the second part, we analyse for the first time at large scale the relationship between the capacity of urban traffic networks and the design of bus and road networks. In the last part, we bring the demand and supply side together in macroscopic economic models to then finally answer the question of how many cars are too many.