Institute of Transport Economics – Norwegian Centre for Transport Research (TØI) is leading the project. It is funded by the Research Council of Norway through The Large-scale Climate Programme (KLIMAFORSK).
Our built environment is continuously being developed in ways that increase traffic volumes and greenhouse gas emission (GHG) despite clear objectives to reduce emissions from road transport, relatively widespread agreements on how land use and transport systems ought to be developed to achieve this, and public control of important means.
URBANEFF takes as point of departure that lack of empirical documentation of how some combinations of land use and transport-system developments affect traffic volumes is an important factor (among others) explaining the gap between goals and reality. URBANEFF will contribute to change this situation by documenting effects on traffic volumes and GHG emissions of three particularly relevant and complex issues in urban planning:
1) polycentric workplace locations,
2) relocation of warehouses (for freight transport) within the urban region, and
3) urban road capacity expansions.
Projects aims
By this, URBANEFF aims at contributing to a two stage process of social transformation spurring changes towards more climate-friendly travel behaviour and transport patterns: to enable planners and decision-makers to transform the ways they steer developments of the built environment, and by that allowing, encouraging and even forcing inhabitants and businesses to transform their transport patterns towards shorter travel distances and less use of private cars.
Organisation
The research will be organised as case studies, involving various quantitative and qualitative methods. The multiple mechanisms involved when changes of the built environment affect travel behaviour, traffic volumes and GHG emissions will be empirically investigated separately and in combination.
An interdisciplinary research team from three strong research milieus within this field will cooperate in the project: TØI with all three research departments, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and Aalborg University (Denmark). TØI is leading the project.
They will be supported by international experts from Oxford University and Tampere University of Technology (Finland). Experienced practitioners will contribute to improve the research and the results.
Project period: 2014-2017.
Funding: NOK 5 040 000.
Information and results from the project will be published on this website.
Contact persons
Aud Tennøy (project manager)
