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The role of road safety in a sustainable urban mobility: An econometric assessment of the Spanish NUTS-3 case

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Abstract

There has been a structural change in mobility in major Spanish cities in recent decades, with a switch to the pattern followed in other countries in the area. A shift has taken place from a traditional Mediterranean model to a North American city stereotype, with uncontrolled motorization and major implications for public health. This article specifically analyzes negative road safety-related externalities that result from this process, given that the trend seems to show a steady decline in road safety accidents on urban roads in Spain, with major differences among NUTS-3 provinces. The objective is to evaluate the factors that empirically explain these differences for the 2003–2013 period using a panel data analysis. Results show that a key role is played by urban development variables, such as population density and improvements in health services, with advances linked to more accessible and sustainable urban transportation, such as the Smart City concept. Not only does this article close a gap in the literature, but the findings can also serve as a practical guide for the development and implementation of urban mobility and road safety plans, and reveals the special needs of the most vulnerable groups.

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... A negative binomial regression model must be employed when the dependent variable is a count variable (Noland & Zhou, 2017) and the data is overdispersed (Bellos et al., 2020). Additionally, count data models and a negative binomial model are used to analyze the road safety determinants (Castro-Nuño et al., 2018). The correlation matrix (Table 3) does not reveal any significant multicollinearity problems given the low absolute values of the correlation coefficients between variables. ...
... Most fatal accidents occur on interurban roads, where there is less traffic congestion and consequently, less dependence on population increase. As Castro-Nuño et al. (2018) state, greater concentrations of activities and populations result in a lower urban road traffic accident rate. ...
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... Road crashes have an adverse impact on the health and well-being of injury survivors and their families. Therefore, it is vital to monitor road safety progress regularly to improve road safety and sustainability within the transportation system [2,3]. Road crashes are complex and multi-faceted events that occur due to the interactions of various factors [4], such as driving behaviour [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], road and vehicle conditions [12], weather conditions [13,14], road geometry and spatial features of the road environment [15] and many others. ...
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... Fixed effect panel data models with annual dummies (to capture the common trend in all the provinces) were estimated independently for urban roads in total within a province and urban roads within the capitals of the provinces in the study by Castro-Nuño et al. (2018). A total number of urban road traffic accidents and a number of urban road traffic accident fatalities per accident were modelled using the N = 50 Spanish provinces and T = 11-year time units (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) data structure. ...
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Although the occurrence of road accidents and the number of road accident casualties in almost all Polish voivodships has decreased over the last few years, the rate of this change varies considerably from region to region. To provide a better understanding of such a tendency, panel data regression models are proposed to conduct this pilot research which evaluates the relative performance of Polish regions in terms of their road traffic safety. Panel data are multi-dimensional data which involve measurements over time. In the research, a voivodeship is a unit analysed at a group level, whereas a year is a unit analysed at a time level. A two-way error component regression model has been applied to survey the impact of regressors, the group effects, and time effects on a dependent variable. The analysis has been conducted using data acquired from the Statistics Poland Local Data Bank website, as well as from the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways. The panel data from 16 regions in Poland and the 2012-2018 period have been investigated. The examined models refer to road traffic safety indices defined based on the following characteristics: the number of road accidents, the number road fatalities, and the number of people injured. The results of all the three models indicate a negative effect as regards the GDP per capita, (car) motorisation rate, the indicator of government expenditure for current maintenance of national roads, and the road length per capita. A positive association has been found between the truck motorisation rate and the indicator of local government expenditure on roads. The impact of the region's urbanisation indicators on road safety is ambiguous as, on the one hand, its increase causes a reduction in the road accident and accident injury indices, but, on the other hand, it produces a rise in the accident fatality index. In the models, the significance of time effects has been identified; a decreasing time trend suggests a general improvement in road safety from year to year. Most of the group effects have turned out to be highly significant. However, the effects differ as regards both the road accident and the accident injury indices in magnitude and direction. K E Y W O R D S longitudinal data, road accidents, road accident casualties, fixed effects models
... 1 There are some studies in the literature that use provincial data, but they are intended to investigate the relationship between tourism and economic growth (Eleftheriou & Sambracos, 2019;Soukiazis & Proença, 2008), to explore the role of tourism in road traffic accidents in Spain (Castro-Nuño, Castillo-Manzano, & Fageda, 2018), or to construct an indicator to assess the provincial tourism competitiveness in Spain (Lopes, Muñoz, & Alarcón-Urbistondo, 2018). 2 The survey was not initially designed for a provincial level. However, it is possible to perform a provincial analysis given that it explicitly provides information on the tourism flows from the Spanish province i to the province j. ...
Article
Domestic tourism represents a large share of the total tourism volume in Spain, but it is still an under‐researched topic. This study focuses on the determinants of domestic flows in Spain at provincial level. The prior assumption is that domestic tourism demand may be affected by specific local conditions that previous studies, mostly based on more aggregate data, would hardly capture. A gravity model and various spatial econometric models are estimated assuming alternative spatial weighting matrices. Results suggest that income and relative prices affect tourism demand in Spanish provinces as well as weather, natural amenities, infrastructures, and recreational activities.
... This paper draws on our own original database of Spanish metropolitan areas, while most studies in the literature focused their analyses on specific roads (highways or road networks) or single cities (case studies), with very few papers considering several cities, and none considering all of Spain's metropolitan areas. The literature on road safety in Spain usually estimates the occurrence of accidents at a national or provincial level rather than at the local scale [14][15][16][17]. ...
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... Numerous studies of zonal CPMs have been conducted at various zone scales, ranging from states (Noland, 2003;Castro-Nuño, Castillo-Manzano, & Fageda, 2018), counties (Aguero-Valverde & Jovanis, 2006;Huang, Abdel-Aty, & Darwiche, 2010;Li et al., 2013), districts (Haynes, Jones, Kennedy, Harvey, & Jewell, 2007, census tracts/wards (Quddus, 2008;Wang & Kockelman, 2013), and postal codes (Lee, Abdel-Aty, & Choi, 2014) to traffic analysis districts (TADs) (Cai, Abdel-Aty, & Lee, 2017a;Cai, Abdel-Aty, Lee, & Eluru, 2017b), TAZs (Abdel-Aty, Siddiqui, Huang, & Wang, 2011;Guo, Pei, Yao, & Wong, 2015;Guo, Xu, Pei, Wong, & Yao, 2017;Hadayeghi et al., 2010;Huang et al., 2016;Xu & Huang, 2015), block groups (Levine, Kim, & Nitz, 1995), and local health areas (MacNab, 2004). ...
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... This leads us to confirm that urban road safety is better in places where population and services are concentrated, as the areas that top the rankings are those that are more developed in urban terms (with respect to their economies; healthcare; mobility; better available public transportation and road networks; or which have adopted new tech- nologies). These results are in line with the findings by authors such as Castillo- Manzano et al. (2013), Castro-Nuño et al., 2018, Ewing et al. (2003, Kersys (2015), Noland and Quddus (2005), Redman et al. (2013), Sukhai and Jones (2014), and Yannis et al. (2015). ...
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The paper compares the characteristics of urban freight transport in Rome, Barcelona and Santander and the logistics measures being implemented in the three cities. The analysis is based on three similar surveys carried out in recent years involving interviews with retailers and transport operators. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the similarities and differences in terms of spatial patterns and current regulations, socio-economic characteristics and commercial structures, freight demand characteristics and current distribution patterns followed by different transport and logistics operators. The study shows that there are some different patterns of urban distribution that need to be taken into account when implementing city logistics measures in order to meet desired sustainability goals.
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The technological vision of smart urbanism has been promoted as a silver bullet for urban problems and a major market opportunity. The search is on for firms and governments to find effective and transferable demonstrations of advanced urban technology. This paper examines initiatives by the UK national government to facilitate urban technological innovation through a range of strategies, particularly the TSB Future Cities Demonstrator Competition. This case study is used to explore opportunities and tensions in the practical realisation of the smart city imaginary. Tensions are shown to be partly about the conjectural nature of the smart city debate. Attention is also drawn to weakened capacity of urban governments to control their infrastructural destiny and also constraints on the ability of the public and private sectors to innovate. The paper contributes to smart city debates by providing further evidence of the difficulties in substantiating the smart city imaginary.
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Besides other non-behavioural factors, the low lighting conditions significantly influence the frequency of the traffic accidents in the urban environment. This paper intends to identify the impact of low lighting conditions on the traffic accidents in the city of Cluj-Napoca. The dependence degree between lighting and the number of traffic accidents was analyzed by the Pearson's correlation and the relation between the spatial distribution of traffic accidents and the lighting conditions was determined by the frequency ratio model. The vulnerable areas within the city were identified based on the calculation of the injured persons rate for the 0.5 km2 equally-sized areas uniformly distributed within the study area. The results have shown a strong linear dependence between the low lighting conditions and the number of traffic accidents in terms of three seasonal variations and a high probability of traffic accidents occurrence under the above-mentioned conditions, at the city entrances-exits, which represent also vulnerable areas within the study area. Knowing the linear dependence and the spatial relation between the low lighting and the number of traffic accidents, as well as the consequences induced by their occurrence enabled us to identify the high traffic accident risk areas in the city of Cluj-Napoca.
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A decade ago, compactness/sprawl indices were developed for metropolitan areas and counties which have been widely used in health and other research. In this study, we first update the original county index to 2010, then develop a refined index that accounts for more relevant factors, and finally seek to test the relationship between sprawl and traffic crash rates using structural equation modelling. Controlling for covariates, we find that sprawl is associated with significantly higher direct and indirect effects on fatal crash rates. The direct effect is likely due to the higher traffic speeds in sprawling areas, and the indirect effect is due to greater vehicle miles driven in such areas. Conversely, sprawl has negative direct relationships with total crashes and non-fatal injury crashes, and these offset (and sometimes overwhelm) the positive indirect effects of sprawl on both types of crashes through the mediating effect of increased vehicle miles driven. The most likely explanation is the greater prevalence of fender benders and other minor accidents in the low speed, high conflict traffic environments of compact areas, negating the lower vehicle miles travelled per capita in such areas.
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The new era of mobile health ushered in by the wide adoption of ubiquitous computing and mobile communications has brought opportunities for governments and companies to rethink their concept of healthcare. Simultaneously, the worldwide urbanization process represents a formidable challenge and attracts attention toward cities that are expected to gather higher populations and provide citizens with services in an efficient and human manner. These two trends have led to the appearance of mobile health and smart cities. In this article we introduce the new concept of smart health, which is the context-aware complement of mobile health within smart cities. We provide an overview of the main fields of knowledge that are involved in the process of building this new concept. Additionally, we discuss the main challenges and opportunities that s-Health would imply and provide a common ground for further research.
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Objective: Previous research suggests that urban sprawl increases auto-dependency and that excessive auto use increases the risk of traffic fatalities. This indirect effect of urban sprawl on traffic fatalities is compared to non-vehicle miles traveled (VMT)-related direct effect of sprawl on fatalities. Methods: We conducted a path analysis to examine the causal linkages among urban sprawl, VMT, traffic fatalities, income, and fuel cost. The path diagram includes 2 major linkages: the direct relationship between urban sprawl and traffic fatalities and the indirect effect on fatalities through increased VMT in sprawling urban areas. To measure the relative strength of these causal linkages, path coefficients are estimated using data collected nationally from 147 urbanized areas in the United States. Results: Through both direct and indirect paths, urban sprawl is associated with greater numbers of traffic fatalities, but the direct effect of sprawl on fatalities is more influential than the indirect effect. Conclusions: Enhancing traffic safety can be achieved by impeding urban sprawl and encouraging compact development. On the other hand, policy tools reducing VMT may be less effective than anticipated for traffic safety.
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Prosperity and environmental sustainability of cities are inextricably linked. Cities can only maintain their prosperity when environmental and social objectives are fully integrated with economic goals. Sustainability assessment helps policy-makers decide what actions they should and should not take to make our cities more sustainable. There are numerous models available for measuring and evaluating urban sustainability; they focus their analysis on a specific scale—i.e., micro, mezzo, or macro. In most cases, these results are inadequate for the other scales, though generating reliable results for that particular scale. The paper introduces a multiscalar urban sustainability approach by linking two sustainability assessment models evaluate sustainability performances in micro- and mezzo-levels and generate multiscalar results for the macro-level. The paper tests this approach in Gold Coast, Australia, and sheds light on the development of a more accurate sustainability analysis that may be interconnected with UN-Habitat's City Prosperity Index.
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This paper presents a novel and rigorous approach to the analysis of the impact of rainfall on road traffic accidents in urban areas. It is argued that previous approaches to rainfall quantification for accident analysis, primarily using a representative surface meteorological station to represent an urban area, may not give an accurate record of the conditions across the city in question. Using an innovative city-wide weather radar approach to rainfall quantification and matched-pairs analysis, road accidents in the UK cities of Manchester and Greater London are examined over a 3-year baseline period (2008–2011). A comparative study is made over the same period used a traditional station-based approach. The resulting relative accident rates demonstrate divergence between the two cities and the two approaches. Although the stricter criteria for a rain event under the weather radar approach gives an increased RAR in Manchester, the RAR observed under these conditions decreases in Greater London. Reasons for the variation in RAR are explored and include traffic volume and speed, other coincident weather conditions and driver behaviour, in accordance with Elvik’s (2006) laws of accident causation. It is argued that the approach described in this study offers significant improvements to the analysis of current weather-related accidents by giving a more representative measure of rainfall in urban areas.
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Objective To assess the evolution of the traffic accident mortality rate in Spain from 1962 to 1994, and the role played by its four theoretical components: motorization index (vehicles/ population), accidentability index (accidents/vehicles), harmfulness index (victims/accidents) and fatality index (deaths/victims). Methods Data from the National Population Census and the Bulletin of the Dirección General de Tráfico were collected to estimate the above mentioned indicators for all accidents and accidents in road and urban zones. Simple and multiple partial correlation coefficients among variables were calculated. Poisson regression models were also obtained. Rsults An increasing trend during the whole period was observed for the national traffic accident mortality rate, especially from 1982 to 1989 in the younger age groups, followed by a decrease since 1990. The aforementioned four components were significatively associated with the mortality rate. The strength of this association was especially high for the motorization index and for the harmfulness index when all accidents and road accidents were considered. For urban accidents, the fatality index rate is the component most strongly associated with mortality rate. The role played by the accidentability index in the magnitude of the mortality rate seems less important. Conclusions The growing exposure rate to traffic accidents observed in Spain (measured by the motorization index) is not directly influenciable by public heath strategies. Therefore, it seems advisable to emphasize the development of measures focused to control the other three components of traffic accident mortality rate, especially those related with harmfulness and fatality.
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European governments are increasingly committed to road safety, due to the impact of road accidents in terms of economic loss and as a public health threat. In addition to regulation, providing better road infrastructure is an essential strategy to promote road safety. This paper investigates the relationships between different types of road quality and their impact on national safety outcomes using an international (European) panel data. Since European countries have different motorway network funding strategies—free motorways funded by the budget and tolled motorways funded by users—we pay special attention to the type of funding chosen and consider whether it has any consequences for safety. Our results suggest that extending the motorway network is associated with a reduction in fatality rates, while the rest of road types do not have the same positive effects. However, this virtue is only statistically significant for free motorways; tolled motorways do not provide any significant impact, probably due to socially inefficient pricing and investment policies currently in force.
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As the number of people who reside and work in urban areas increases, so, too, do the needs and demands placed on the infrastructure. This has led to severe congestion in many European cities, a situation which affects not only the environment in terms of pollution, but most notably levels of traffic safety. In Europe, tens of thousands of people are killed in road traffic accidents, and more than 1 million are injured each year at a cost, which is estimated to exceed the total European Union budget by a factor of two. The majority of accidents involving injury occur within urban areas often at junctions, while the number of fatalities outside these areas is greater, largely as a result of higher speed. Traffic safety research has shown a biased interest in the problems associated with motorway and rural areas in the past. There are many reasons, which advocate a greater interest in urban areas, in particular, those related to the safety of unprotected road users. In urban areas the traffic system context is more complex, where a mixed road user environment prevails and greater perceptual and cognitive demands are placed on road users. In the past, many of the more successful safety countermeasures have focused on designing the roadway to meet the needs and limitations of road users. These solutions have, however, proved to be very costly. Today, new and relatively cheap technological solutions referred to as Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have been developed which have the capacity to reduce exposure, accident risk, and accident severity. While the long term effects of these systems are largely unknown, and problems associated with standardisation and legislation are in need of resolve, systems such as Intelligent Speed Adaptation and advanced traffic control systems have shown great potential with regard to the traffic safety problem in urban areas. In order to effectuate this potential, a great deal of integrated multi-disciplinary research is required. The last century of the second millennium has seen vast improvements in the living conditions and economic wealth of the industrialised nations of the world, and consequently a large growth in population, particularly in urban areas. The growth of cities and towns has also led to an increase in the need for mobility, and a consequent increase in the numbers and types of vehicles occupying the road infrastructure. The exponential increase in the number of vehicles during the twentieth century has far outweighed the projected capacities and adaptive capabilities of the existing road infrastructure systems, this has resulted in a situation of congestion and frustration among road users of all types and has had significant detrimental effects for traffic safety in terms of the unacceptable numbers of road accidents involving fatality and injury. During 1997, there were approximately 45 000 fatalities, and 1.3 million injuries reported from road traffic accidents within the European OECD countries according to statistics taken from the International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD). The costs of such accidents within the European Union are estimated to be in the region of 160 billion ECU per year, thereby exceding the total annual budget for the EU in 1997 (89 billion ECU). Statistics indicate that while approximately two-thirds of all fatalities occur outside urban areas, two-thirds of the total number of injuries occur inside urban areas. The outcomes of urban accidents are usually less severe in terms of the numbers of injuries and fatalities as a direct result of the greater limitations imposed on speed. Mainly for this reason, most of the international and national traffic safety research has focused on motorways and major roads that link towns and cities by traversing rural and suburban areas.
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Frequently, road traffic accidents are modelled as discrete and independent random and rare events, which possess a low probability of occurrence through time. Nevertheless, in order to study each accident individually it is necessary to obtain details of a number of characteristics that surround it, which may be correlated with each other. In this article, we propose to associate the probability of occurrence of an accident with a large number of features such as weather conditions, incidents caused by the start and end of a roadwork, geographical location of speed control radars, roadway infrastructure, etc. The influence of these features is significant and should be taken into account when proposing measures to help alleviate these undesirable events. The big data methods employed to extract the variables or features allow us to compose a series of vectors that will serve as a basis to study road accident distributions.
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Following a general paucity of small area research on road traffic injuries (RTIs), this study examined small area variations in RTIs for the eThekwini Metropolitan Area (comprising predominantly the City of Durban) in South Africa. Population density was used as an organising framework to examine variations in RTI outcomes, and correspondence with a range of measures relating to characteristics of the crashes and to socioeconomic deprivation. Analyses were undertaken at the suburb level, using data from 2005–2009 and employing a cross-sectional geographical design. Analyses were also undertaken for disaggregated injury, crash severity, and road user groups. The distribution of the injury outcome measures corresponded with several measures that proxied risks relating to excessive driving speeds, excessive travel exposure, and general social as well as area level deprivation. Negative binomial models, fitted for the injury outcome measures, showed population density to be a significant predictor of all injury outcomes but also that its effects was only partially explained by the explanatory measures considered. The findings on deprivation provide new insights to rural-urban variations in RTIs, at least in the South African setting. The findings also have implications for informing integrated developmental policies and strategies across a range of disciplines and departments, especially at the city level.
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Objective: In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians were killed in the U.S., representing 14 percent of total traffic fatalities. The number of pedestrians injured was higher at 76,000. Therefore, 36 out of 52 of the largest cities in the U.S. have adopted a citywide target of reducing pedestrian fatalities. The number of cities adopting the reduction goal during 2011 and 2012 increased rapidly with 8 more cities. We examined the scaling relationship of pedestrian fatality counts as a function of the population size of 115 to 161 large U.S cities during the period of 1994 to 2011. We also examined the scaling relationship of non-pedestrian and total traffic fatality counts as function of the population size as well. Methods: For the data source of fatality measures we used Traffic Safety Facts FARS/GES ANNUAL Report published each year from 1994 to 2011 by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Using the data source we conducted both annual cross-sectional and panel data bivariate and multivariate regression models. In the construction of the estimated functional relationship between traffic fatality measures and various factors, we used the simple power function for urban scaling used by Bettencourt et al. ( 2007 ; 2010) and the refined STIRPAT(STochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model used in Dietz and Rosa ( 1994 ; 1997) and York et al. (2003). Results: We found the scaling relationship display diseconomies of scale or sublinear for pedestrian fatalities. However, the relationship displays superlinear relationship in case of non-pedestrian fatality. The scaling relationship for total traffic fatality counts display a near linear pattern. When the relationship was examined by the four subgroups of cities with different population sizes, the most pronounced sublinear scaling relationships for all three types of fatality counts was discovered for the subgroup of mega cities with a population of more than 1 million. Conclusions: The scaling patterns of traffic fatalities of subgroups of cities depend on population sizes of the cities in subgroups. Especially 9 mega cities with populations of more than 1 million are significantly different from the remaining cities and should be viewed as a totally separate group. Thus, the analysis on the patterns of traffic fatalities needs to be conducted within the group of mega cities separately from the other cities with smaller population sizes for devising prevention policies to reduce traffic fatalities of both group of mega cities and the other group of smaller cities.
Article
Applying econometric techniques to EU28 panel data and controlling for explanatory variables such as road types, we find that increased truck load capacity does not necessarily aggravate road traffic safety. Specifically, heavy trucks do not seem to be linked with greater numbers of traffic fatalities/accidents, medium trucks appear to be the worst performers in terms of fatalities, and light trucks seem to be the worst for accidents. In summary, our results clarify the complex relationship between truck load capacity and road safety, pointing to the existence of a negative correlation for accidents per capita and an inverse U-shaped curve for fatalities per capita.
Article
Objective: A number of efforts have been conducted on travel behaviour and transport fatalities at the neighbourhood or street level, and they have identified different factors such as roadway characteristics, personal indicators and design indicators related to transport safety. However, only a limited number of studies have considered the relationship between travel behaviour indicators and the number of transport fatalities at the city level. Therefore, this study explores this relationship and how to fill the mentioned gap in current knowledge. Method: A generalized linear model (GLM) estimates the relationships between different travel mode indicators (e.g., length of motorway per inhabitants, number of motorcycles per inhabitants, percentage of daily trips on foot and by bicycle, percentage of daily trips by public transport) and the number of passenger transport fatalities. Because this city-level model is developed using data sets from different cities all over the world, the impacts of GDP are also included in the model. Conclusions: Overall, the results imply that the percentage of daily trips by public transport, the percentage of daily trips on foot and by bicycle and the GDP per inhabitant have negative relationships with the number of passenger transport fatalities, while the motorway's length and the number of motorcycles have positive relationships with the number of passenger transport fatalities.
Article
Objective: The objective of this study is to analyze the spatial distribution of the vehicles involved in crashes in Miami-Dade County. In addition, we also analyzed the role of time of the day, day of the week, seasonality, drivers' age have on the distribution of traffic crashes. Method: Off the system crash data acquired from the Florida Department of Transportation during 2005-2010 were divided into subcategories according to the risk factors of age, time of the day, day of the week, and by travel season. Various spatial statistics methods, including Nearest Neighbor Analysis, Getis-Ord hot spot analysis, and Kernell density analysis revealed substantial spatial variations, depending on the subcategory that was in question. Results: Downtown Miami and South Beach showed up consistently as hot spots of traffic crashes in all the of sub categories except fatal crashes. However, fatal crashes were concentrated in residential areas in inland areas. Conclusion: This understanding of patterns can help the county target high risk areas and help to reduce crash fatalities to create a safer environment for motorists and pedestrians.
Article
Freight movement is essential to the function of metropolitan areas, yet generates many externalities, including congestion, air pollution, noise, and greenhouse gas emissions. Metropolitan areas around the world are seeking ways to manage urban freight and its impacts. This paper presents the results from a comprehensive international survey of urban freight management strategies. The objective was to examine the effectiveness of alternative strategies and assess their transferability for U.S. implementation. Three categories were used to describe urban freight strategies: last-mile or first-mile deliveries and pickups, environmental mitigation, and trade node strategies. Many possibilities were found for the improved management of urban freight and its impacts; these possibilities included labeling and certification programs, incentive-based programs for voluntary emissions reduction, local land use and parking policies, and more stringent national fuel efficiency and emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks. More research is needed on intrametropolitan freight movements and on the effectiveness of existing policies and strategies.
Article
The smart city concept is often simply considered equivalent only to technology. This paper starts by introducing the necessity of a holistic, integrated, and multidisciplinary approach to the concept of smart cities. Smart cities are evolving by the creation of tools that are application specific; therefore, European classification of smart city applications will be reviewed (as authors have used these criteria to classify the analyzed applications) and the relationship between the different European smart classification standards are analyzed. Moreover, in order to see how reality aligns with the theoretical concept of smart cities, the authors analyzed 61 applications from 33 smart cities distributed in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. From these, 16 specific applications from eight cities have been selected and described in detail so they provide an overview of existing tools in different application areas, as defined by European standards. After showing actual smart cities, the concepts and steps for building future smart cities are suggested in a conclusion. Read More: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)UP.1943-5444.0000282
Conference Paper
Video streaming from cameras, closed-circuit television (CCTV), smartphones and Internet-connected objects (ICO) largely contributes to big data traffic on the Internet. Video streaming provides enormous amount of useful information for delivery of efficient and effective services in smart cities. Modern cities have large networks of surveillance cameras including CCTV, street crossings and the like. In this paper we discuss the challenges of annotating and retrieving video data streams from vehicle-mounted surveillance cameras. We also propose and evaluate the CityWatcher application – an Android application for recording video streams, annotating them with location, timestamp and additional context in order to make them discoverable and available to authorized Internet of Things applications. One of such applications is based on crowdsourced alerts to city authorities about road problems, like potholes, cracks, traffic accidents. These alerts are driver-initiated and are rewarded through an incentive mechanism. OpenIoT platform is used for infrastructure and development support.
Conference Paper
Starting from 2008, more than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas, and this number is expected to grow for the next decades. To the extent that the population of a city grows, new problems arise, which include scarcity of resources, pollution, and traffic congestion. One of the most important problems of big cities are road traffic injuries, which is the eighth leading cause of death globally, and the main cause of death for young people, mainly in middle and low income countries. Vulnerable road users (VRUs) are among the users at higher risks of traffic accidents. In order to cope with the problems of the growing urban communities, the concept of smart cities has emerged. A smart city is based on the use of smart computing technologies, such as Intelligent Transportation Systems and Vehicular Ad hoc Networks. In this paper, we propose a model to be used in smart cities, to detect if a VRU intends to cross a road in a risky zone, and to issue alerts to the vehicles nearby. The proposed model is cost effective, and is able to detect a VRU at risk in a short period of time. The evaluation of the proposed model shows that it performs correctly.
Article
Many studies have dealt with modeling crash occurrences on urban arterials. There is a dearth of research on urban arterials with mixed-traffic patterns in China, however, because of the large traffic flow volume of bicyclists and pedestrians in most Chinese cities. This study investigates the risk factors associated with severe crash occurrences on arterial roads in Beijing. Through use of the generalized estimating equations modeling technique with a negative binomial link function, statistical relationships were established to relate severe crashes to a variety of factors related to geometric design, traffic control, and other traffic-related characteristics. Crash records from 2004 to 2007 for 108 signalized intersections and 123.5 km of road segments were used to estimate the models. Results showed that arterial roads with heavier traffic volumes, more road lanes, and higher speed limits tended to have more severe crashes. Medians were helpful in reducing severe crash risk. Higher risks of severe crashes were generally associated with intersections having small angles and count-down signals and road segments having higher side-access densities and the presence of bus stops. With regard to nonmotorist protection facilities, results revealed that a combined use of crosswalks and overpasses was the most desired pedestrian-crossing facility for safety, especially at sites with heavy traffic or sites located in primarily residential areas. Barriers that separated bikeways from roadways on minor roads were found effective in significantly reducing severe crash risk at intersections.
Article
To analyse the time evolution of the rates of mortality due to motor vehicle traffic accidents (MVTA) injuries that occurred among the general population of Comunitat Valenciana between 1987 and 2011, as well as to identify trend changes by sex and age group. An observational study of annual mortality trends between 1987 and 2011. We studied all deaths due to MVTA injuries that occurred during this period of time among the non-institutionalised population residing in Comunitat Valenciana (a Spanish Mediterranean region that had a population of 5,117,190 inhabitants in 2011). The rates of mortality due to MVTA injuries were calculated for each sex and year studied. These rates were standardised by age for the total population and for specific age groups using the direct method (age-standardised rate - ASR). Joinpoint regression models were used in order to detect significant trend changes. Additionally, the annual percentage change (APC) of the ASRs was calculated for each trend segment, which is reflected in statistically significant joinpoints. For all ages, ASRs decrease greatly in both men and women (70% decrease between 1990 and 2011). In 1990 and 2011, men have rates of 36.5 and 5.2 per 100,000 men/year, respectively. In the same years, women have rates of 8.0 and 0.9 per 100,000 women/year, respectively. This decrease reaches up to 90% in the age group 15-34 years in both men and women. ASR ratios for men and women increased over time for all ages: this ratio was 3.9 in 1987; 4.6 in 1990; and 5.8 in 2011. For both men and women, there is a first significant segment (p<0.05) with an increasing trend between 1987 and 1989-1990. After 1990, there are 3 segments with a significant decreasing APC (1990-1993, 1993-2005 and 2005-2011, in the case of men; and 1989-1996, 1999-2007 and 2007-2011, in the case of women). The risk of death due to motor vehicle traffic accidents injuries has decreased significantly, especially in the case of women, for the last 25 years in Comunitat Valenciana, mainly as of 2006. This may be a consequence of the road-safety measures that have been implemented in Spain and in Comunitat Valenciana since 2004. The economic crisis that this country has undergone since 2008 may have also been a contributing factor to this decrease. Despite the decrease, ASR ratios for men and women increased over time and it is still a high-risk cause of death among young men. It is thus important that the measures that helped decrease the risk of death are maintained and improved over time. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Article
The connection between crime and road safety is a relatively recent topic in academic research, although most studies have focused on the link between criminal behavior and traffic offenses, and only a few authors discuss the possible relationship with traffic accident fatalities. Evidence worldwide shows that people who commit other offenses characteristic of antisocial attitudes are more likely to have road traffic accidents and infringe traffic laws. We examine the records of the 28 current member states of the European Union over the 1999–2010 period. Our aim is to test the hypothesis that crime rates (and specifically, motor vehicle-related crimes) can be considered as predictors of fatal road traffic accidents. If they can be, this could be prima facie justification, at least, of the trend in several countries to consider traffic offenses as crimes in their penal codes and to toughen the punishment imposed on those who commit them. The effect of the severity of the legal system applied to traffic offenses is also analyzed. From a geographical point of view, our results reveal that road traffic fatality rates are higher in countries where the behavior of the inhabitants is more aggressive, while the rates are lower in countries with more severe penal systems.
Article
Traffic safety has become a major component of European transport policies. But the road to a real Common European Road Safety Policy has been a long one. The notion of Europeanization might help to describe the European Union (EU)'s impact on national policies, although the process differs from other transport sectors. The objective of this article is to explain the effect of the EU road safety policy on domestic road mortality rates in the EU-27. Using data on European countries for the 2000–2009 period we analyse how EU traffic safety policies, institutions and networks facilitate and encourage the learning process in the individual countries. This timeframe coincides with the 2001 White Paper and the third European Road Safety Action Programme (ERSAP), both of which are crucial for constructing the Common Road Safety Policy.
Article
This article examines the trends in road traffic fatality rates in a sample of European States over the 1970–2010 period. Taking into account that previous research seems to find that the Europeanization process has had a favorable impact on national road safety performance, our main contribution is to test whether the same mechanism might lead to the convergence of Member States as a whole as a possible outcome. Based on typical convergence methodology for Economic Growth Theory, our findings reveal evidence of the full convergence of road fatality rates across a sample of EU countries during said time period. Compared to the uncertain results obtained by the literature on macroeconomic convergence, we do not find support for the convergence of sub-groups of countries, but a one-speed-convergence for all EU countries. This fact shows that convergence is achievable in certain EU areas even beyond economic convergence through successful efforts made jointly at national and community levels.
Article
The relationship between form and function in European Mediterranean cities has been widely addressed from various perspectives. A number of studies indicate that, until the 1980s, compactness was a key trait of several cities of the Northern Mediterranean. However, after the ‘compact growth’ period, these cities experienced patterns of urbanization that differed from their traditional trends. Since the 1990s, sprawl, coupled with population decline in the inner cities, has become the main pattern of urban development. This article explores the key features of exurban development in the Mediterranean region in order to provide material for a discussion based on the differences and similarities in the characteristics of sprawl processes originating in the US and Northern Europe. It concludes that any debate on policy responses to sprawl must be specifically formulated according to the scope, administrative level, housing and planning system, territorial and socioeconomic characteristics of the urban system under examination. It is our belief that sprawl requires site-specific analyses and policy strategies for the region being studied if the process is to be effectively controlled.
Article
The research germinates from the statement that the cities have to solve the impacts due to freight transport in order to improve their sustainability implementing sets of city logistics measures. But city logistics measures involve several actors and choice dimensions. It is therefore important to have methods and models able to assess the effectiveness of the measures to be implemented. The current models were mainly developed to simulate some aspects of urban freight transport, and are not able to forecast many impacts of implementing traffic and transportation measures at an urban scale. This paper presents a modelling approach that tries to point out the relations existing among city logistics measures, actors and choice dimensions. It comprises three model sub-systems to estimate the quantity O–D matrices by transport service type (e.g. retailer on own account or wholesaler on own account or by carrier), the delivery O–D matrices by delivery time period, and the vehicle O–D matrices according to delivery tour departure time and vehicle type. This modelling system is a multi-stage model and considers a discrete choice approach for each decisional level. It was first tested using some data collected in the inner area of Rome, including traffic counts and interviews with retailers and truck-drivers. The model estimations were also compared with the experimental ones, and quite satisfactory results were obtained.
Article
There are factors that impact traffic safety and the number of accident-related fatalities, such as street users, environment, road design and vehicle characteristics, but there have been limited studies that examine the relationship between street network factors and traffic-related crashes and fatalities at the city level. Therefore, this paper focused on this relationship by introducing urban street network variables, such as blocks per area, nodes per selected areas and length of roads and motorways, as independent variables and the number of fatalities as the dependent variable. This study used Open Street Maps (OSM) and International Association of Public Transport (UITP) data from 20 cities around the world. The number of blocks per area and nodes per selected areas resulted from modifying and analyzing OSM maps in ArcGIS software. The strength of the relationship in this study was found using generalized linear modeling (GLM). The findings of this research indicated that increases in fatalities are correlated with an increasing number of blocks per area, number of nodes per selected areas and length of the motorways.
Article
The City of Madrid is putting into operation Intermodal Exchange Stations (IESs) to make connections between urban and suburban transportation modes easier for users of public transportation. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the actual effects that the implementation of IESs in the City of Madrid has on the affected stakeholders: users, public transportation operators, infrastructure managers, the government, the abutters and other citizens. We develop a methodology intended to help assess the welfare gains and losses for each stakeholder. Then we apply this methodology to the case study of the Avenida de América IES in the city of Madrid. We found that it is indeed possible to arrive at win–win solutions for the funding of urban transportation infrastructure, as long as the cost-benefit ratio of the project is high enough. Commuters save travel time. Bus companies diminish their costs of operation. The abutters gain in quality of life. The private operator of the infrastructure makes a fair profit. And the government is able to promote these infrastructure facilities without spending more of its scarce budgetary resources.
Article
This article estimated a multinomial logit model to identify the factors determining the severity of pedestrian–vehicle crashes in South Korea. Our results showed that relative to minor crashes, fatal and serious crashes were associated with collisions involving heavy vehicles; drivers who were drunk, male or under the age of 65; pedestrians who were over the age of 65 or female; and pedestrians who were hit in the middle of the road, on high speed roads, in inclement weather conditions, at night, on road links, in tunnels, on bridges, or on wider roads.
Article
This paper explores the relationship between tourism and traffic congestion and hyper-congestion using the case study of Mallorca (Spain), one of the most important resort destinations in the Mediterranean. After discussing different proxies to capture the associated problems to road traffic congestion, different time series models are estimated including considering the days of the week, holidays and meteorological determinants jointly with a daily indicator of tourist population pressure. Results show how the tourist pressure variable is an important determinant in explaining the different alternative indicators of traffic congestion and hyper-congestion, for different roads. Hence it is possible to classify the roads in terms of usage by tourists in order to anticipate the levels of traffic intensity, especially during peak periods.
Article
In this paper, we use a flexible function to represent the traffic flow-accidents relationship for urban intersections, called translog function. Considering the common use of predictive models and given the complexity of the traffic movements that usually occur at intersections, this flexible function provides a richer interpretation of traffic flow-accidents relationship. Therefore, five functional forms commonly used are compared to the translog function by modeling accidents using data of four-legged signalized intersections. Better results in terms of goodness of fit are obtained for the translog model. In addition, sensitivity analysis shows that the translog function is distinct from the log-linear functions, especially at the boundary values, revealing the potential to capture the accident risk complexity usually existent at intersections as a result of several traffic movements. Moreover, to analyze if the omitted variables cause variable bias, and thus, affecting the previous model assessment and comparison, panel count data models are applied, namely, random effects models. The results obtained are consistent with those previously obtained, which proves that the translog model may be an alternative providing a richer interpretation of the accident occurrence at intersections.
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