Change in departure time for a train trip to avoid crowding during the COVID-19 pandemic: A latent class study in the Netherlands.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, crowding has been highlighted as a risk factor for contracting acute respiratory infections (ARIs) such as COVID-19, which has affected the demand for public transport. Although several countries, including the Netherlands, have implemented differential fare systems for peak and off-peak travel to reduce crowding during the rush hours, the problem of overcrowding on trains has remained prevalent and is expected to cause more disutility than even before the pandemic. A stated choice experiment in the Netherlands is conducted to understand the extent to which people can be motivated to change their departure time to avoid crowded trains during rush hours by offering them real-time information on on-board crowding levels and a discount on the train fare. To gain further insights into how travelers respond to crowding and capture unobserved heterogeneity in the data, latent class models have been estimated. Unlike the previous studies, the respondents were segregated into two groups before the start of the choice experiment based on their indicated preference to schedule a delay earlier or later than their desired departure. To study the change in travel behavior during the pandemic, the context of different vaccination stages was also provided in the choice experiment. Background information collected in the experiment was broadly categorized as socio-demographic, travel and work-related factors, and attitudes towards health and COVID-19. It was found that the coefficients obtained for the main attributes which were presented in the choice experiment (on-board crowd levels, scheduled delay and discount offered on full fare) were found statistically significant, and in line with previous research. It was concluded that when most of the people are vaccinated in the Netherlands, the travelers become less averse to on-board crowding. The research also indicates that certain groups of respondents, such as those who are highly crowd averse, and are not students, can be motivated to change their departure time if real-time crowding information was provided. Other groups of respondents who were found to value fare discounts can also be motivated to change their departure by similar incentives.

COVID-19 and its long-term effects on activity participation and travel behaviour: A multiperspective view.

This paper discusses possible long-term effects of COVID-19 on activity-travel behaviour. Making use of theories and concepts from economics, psychology, sociology, and geography, this work argues that lasting effects can be expected, and specifically that peak demand among car and public transport users may be lower than if the pandemic would never have happened. The magnitude of such effects at the aggregate level in terms of the total travel time of all inhabitants of a country or state is likely limited. Such lasting effects imply that additional infrastructure extensions to reduce congestion on roads and crowding in public transport might have a lower benefit-cost ratio than would be the case without these impacts. The paper discusses avenues for future research, including work on the role of attitude changes, the formation of new habitual behaviour, new social norms and practices, well-being effects, and the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The Need for a Code of Conduct for Research Funders : Commentary on Values in University-Industry Collaborations: The Case of Academics Working at Universities of Technology.

In addition to a code of conduct for researchers, it is desirable to implement a code of conduct for funders of research. This is because researchers often behave unethically as a result of direct and/or indirect pressure from funders. The paper provides an expansion of the first proposal for such a code of conduct and includes several elements such as "policy relevant research should not be contracted and supervised by a client with an interest in the outcomes", and "policy relevant research should always be examined by an independent institute".

Measuring subjective response to aircraft noise: the effects of survey context.

In applied research, noise annoyance is often used as indicator of subjective reaction to aircraft noise in residential areas. The present study aims to show that the meaning which respondents attach to the concept of aircraft noise annoyance is partly a function of survey context. To this purpose a survey is conducted among residents living near Schiphol Airport, the largest airport in the Netherlands. In line with the formulated hypotheses it is shown that different sets of preceding questionnaire items influence the response distribution of aircraft noise annoyance as well as the correlational patterns between aircraft noise annoyance and other relevant scales.

Defining pathways to healthy sustainable urban development.

Goals and pathways to achieve sustainable urban development have multiple interlinkages with human health and wellbeing. However, these interlinkages have not been examined in depth in recent discussions on urban sustainability and global urban science. This paper fills that gap by elaborating in detail the multiple links between urban sustainability and human health and by mapping research gaps at the interface of health and urban sustainability sciences. As researchers from a broad range of disciplines, we aimed to: 1) define the process of urbanization, highlighting distinctions from related concepts to support improved conceptual rigour in health research; 2) review the evidence linking health with urbanization, urbanicity, and cities and identify cross-cutting issues; and 3) highlight new research approaches needed to study complex urban systems and their links with health. This novel, comprehensive knowledge synthesis addresses issue of interest across multiple disciplines. Our review of concepts of urban development should be of particular value to researchers and practitioners in the health sciences, while our review of the links between urban environments and health should be of particular interest to those outside of public health. We identify specific actions to promote health through sustainable urban development that leaves no one behind, including: integrated planning; evidence-informed policy-making; and monitoring the implementation of policies. We also highlight the critical role of effective governance and equity-driven planning in progress towards sustainable, healthy, and just urban development.

Determining the direction of causality between psychological factors and aircraft noise annoyance.

In this paper, an attempt is made to establish the direction of causality between a range of psychological factors and aircraft noise annoyance. For this purpose, a panel model was estimated within a structural equation modeling approach. Data were gathered from two surveys conducted in April 2006 and April 2008, respectively, among the same residents living within the 45 Level day-evening-night contour of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the largest airport in the Netherlands (n=250). A surprising result is that none of the paths from the psychological factors to aircraft noise annoyance were found to be significant. Yet 2 effects were significant the other way around: (1) from 'aircraft noise annoyance' to 'concern about the negative health effects of noise' and (2) from 'aircraft noise annoyance' to 'belief that noise can be prevented.' Hence aircraft noise annoyance measured at time 1 contained information that can effectively explain changes in these 2 variables at time 2, while controlling for their previous values. Secondary results show that (1) aircraft noise annoyance is very stable through time and (2) that changes in aircraft noise annoyance and the identified psychological factors are correlated.

Testing a theory of aircraft noise annoyance: a structural equation analysis.

Previous research has stressed the relevance of nonacoustical factors in the perception of aircraft noise. However, it is largely empirically driven and lacks a sound theoretical basis. In this paper, a theoretical model which explains noise annoyance based on the psychological stress theory is empirically tested. The model is estimated by applying structural equation modeling based on data from residents living in the vicinity of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in The Netherlands. The model provides a good model fit and indicates that concern about the negative health effects of noise and pollution, perceived disturbance, and perceived control and coping capacity are the most important variables that explain noise annoyance. Furthermore, the model provides evidence for the existence of two reciprocal relationships between (1) perceived disturbance and noise annoyance and (2) perceived control and coping capacity and noise annoyance. Lastly, the model yielded two unexpected results. Firstly, the variables noise sensitivity and fear related to the noise source were unable to explain additional variance in the endogenous variables of the model and were therefore excluded from the model. And secondly, the size of the total effect of noise exposure on noise annoyance was relatively small. The paper concludes with some recommended directions for further research.

The consumer-citizen duality: Ten reasons why citizens prefer safety and drivers desire speed.

Cost-benefit analyses for transportation projects usually value impacts on safety and travel time through experiments in which consumers of mobility ('drivers') choose between routes which differ in safety and travel time. This approach has been criticized for failing to consider that private choices may not fully reflect citizens' preferences over public goods and means, a concept known as the consumer-citizen duality. Recent empirical evidence has established that individuals do indeed assign comparatively more value to safety in their role as citizens than in their role as drivers. Our study aims to provide explanations for this finding by presenting four stated choice experiments in which respondents were asked to make choices, both as citizens and as drivers, between routes that differed in travel time and safety. Subsequently, respondents were asked to provide reasons for their choices. We identify five cognitive and five normative explanations. The cognitive explanations suggest that individuals make diverging choices because their perceptions of accident risk differ between the two roles. Drivers will assign a relatively low value to mitigating accident risk because they believe that: (1) such risks are trivial on an individual level; (2) their personal risk is lower than the average risk; (3) their personal risk is controllable; (4) they would not be able to distinguish relative safety levels in real life; and (5) their choices for others are more risk-averse than choices for themselves and, unlike citizens, they are not explicitly evaluating risky choices for others. The normative explanations involve that individuals believe that the government should assign more value to safety compared to individual drivers because: (6) as citizen they are more prone to base their choices on social norms which prescribe risk-averse behaviour in this context; (7) governments have a duty of care concerning the safety of the transportation network; (8) drivers have a relatively high degree of responsibility to reduce their own travel times; (9) governments should account for drivers' tendencies to choose faster routes by building safer ones; and (10) governments should ensure the safety of the road network because this allows drivers to choose the fastest route without being concerned about the impact of their route choice on accident risk.

The influence of sensitivity for road traffic noise on residential location: does it trigger a process of spatial selection?

People move to another house for different reasons. It is sometimes presumed that a process of self-selection might take place on the basis of noise sensitivity, i.e., sensitive people would either leave high noise areas or not move into these areas in the first place. Thus, a "survivor population" would remain in the high noise areas. This research aims to investigate whether such a process can be observed in the Netherlands. The study does not show evidence of a process of self-selection based on noise sensitivity. Nevertheless, the results suggest that noise-sensitive people are less satisfied with their living environment and are more willing to move than those who are not noise sensitive. Due to the limited sample size, external validity is limited.

A conceptual framework for road safety and mobility applied to cycling safety.

Scientific literature lacks a model which combines exposure to risk, risk, and the relationship between them. This paper presents a conceptual road safety framework comprising mutually interacting factors for exposure to risk resulting from travel behaviour (volumes, modal split, and distribution of traffic over time and space) and for risk (crash and injury risk). The framework's three determinants for travel behaviour are locations of activities; resistances (generalized transport costs); needs, opportunities, and abilities. Crash and injury risks are modelled by the three 'safety pillars': infrastructure, road users and the vehicles they use. Creating a link in the framework between risk and exposure is important because of the 'non-linear relationship' between them, i.e. risk tends to decrease as exposure increases. Furthermore, 'perceived' risk (a type of travel resistance) plays a role in mode choice, i.e. the perception that a certain type of vehicle is unsafe can be a deterrent to its use. This paper uses theories to explain how the elements in the model interact. Cycling is an area where governments typically have goals for both mobility and safety. To exemplify application of the model, the paper uses the framework to link research on cycling (safety) to land use and infrastructure. The model's value lies in its ability to identify potential consequences of measures and policies for both exposure and risk. This is important from a scientific perspective and for policy makers who often have objectives for both mobility and safety.