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ESF Exploratory Workshop „How to Measure Access” ESF Exploratory Workshop EW06-170 - SCSS How To Measure Access: Definition, Measurement And Consequences Of A Changed Set Of Objectives In Transportation Designed To Meet The Needs Of People Dates and location: 26-28 September 2007, Dresden, Germany Convened by: Udo J. Becker (DE), Juliane Friedrich (DE), Regine Gerike (DE) There’s no question that transport is important for our society. Administrations invest a lot of money and resources into this sector of society in order to ease travelling. In the past, most measures and actions in transportation were meant to make traffic easier, cheaper and faster - resulting in more attractive travel. Consequently, urban sprawl was promoted, travel distances increased, more resources were consumed and environmental pollution increased. Motorized individual modes of travel grew constantly even as the felt “benefits” of travelling became smaller and smaller. Today, there is a feeling that people do not really reach more goals or accomplish more activities but instead simply drive longer distances and use more resources to satisfy the same needs as before. To satisfy the same level of “output” with higher levels of “input”, however, is inefficient. In order to measure both input and output efficiency, both “ends” and “means” have to be defined and measured. While this does not seem to be a problem with the means (resources, costs, instruments of transport), it is widely unclear how to measure the “ends,” meaning the objectives of transportation. The starting point for the workshop was the following question: What is the overriding objective in transport planning if “cost reductions” are no longer suitable? The answer to this question was found quite quickly even during preparations for the workshop: We must focus on human needs. The main benefits of transport are found in enabling people to satisfy their needs. There is increasingly consensus on this fact as it corresponds to the goal of sustainable transport development with its focus on human needs. The difficulty is in making this qualitative goal measurable, making it really usable for concrete transport planning. The following central questions resulted for the workshop from this line of argument: • How can we define and substantiate the concept of “needs” as goal of transport planning? • What kind of data should be collected to describe existing and satisfied needs for certain situations? One way to solve this problem is to use the term “access.” The Vancouver Principles defined at the OECD-Conference on “Sustainable Transport” in Vancouver 1996 state it clearly: “People are entitled to reasonable access to other people, places, goods and services.” However, consensus on how to measure “access“ under real world conditions does not seem to exist. The concept of accessibility seems to be central for describing options people have for satisfying their needs. Surveys are another vital means for determining human needs and thus to measure access. Thus, the workshop focused on these two instruments and aimed at finding out their potential for making the goal of satisfying human needs measurable for concrete planning and at figuring out open questions for research. Experts were invited from all over Europe and the United States covering the fields of accessibility and survey techniques/travel behaviour research. The concept was to invite a small number of high-level experts in order to be able to discuss intensively. The results of the workshop provide a valuable input for further work in this field. The complexity of the topic quickly became obvious and we concluded as a result that there is no simple superficial solution for making the goal of human needs usable for concrete transport planning that can be found in a two-day workshop and implemented in a short time. However, many approaches were discussed and future networking activities were agreed upon.
Keywords: Access, Accessibility Funding Institution: European Science Foundation Time Frame: 01/2007 – 12/2007 Contact Person: Regine Gerike More Information: http://www.esf.org/activities/exploratory-workshops/ |
