13.8 Future Directions of Travel

Abstract

Transport systems operate at multiple interacting levels, meaning that geocomputational methods have great potential to generate insights into how they work, and the likely impacts of different interventions. There is much more that could be done in this area: it would be possible to build on the foundations presented in this chapter in many directions. Transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in many countries, and is set to become “the largest GHG emitting sector, especially in developed countries” (see EURACTIV.com). Transport-related emissions are unequally distributed across society but (unlike food and heating) are not essential for well-being. There is great potential for the sector to rapidly decarbonize through demand reduction, electrification of the vehicle fleet and the uptake of active travel modes such as walking and cycling. New technologies can reduce car dependency by enabling more car sharing. ‘Micro-mobility’ systems such as dockless bike and e-scooter schemes are also emerging, creating valuable datasets in the General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) format, which can be imported and processed with the gbfs package. These and other changes will have large impacts on accessibility, the ability of people to reach employment and service locations that they need, something that can be quantified currently and under scenarios of change with packages such as accessibility packages. Further exploration of such ‘transport futures’ at local, regional and national levels could yield important new insights.

Methodologically, the foundations presented in this chapter could be extended by including more variables. Characteristics of the route such as speed limits, business and the provision of protected cycling and walking paths could be linked.

This type of analysis underlies the Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT), a publicly accessible (see www.pct.bike) mapping tool developed in R that is being used to prioritize investment in cycling across England.