Abstract Summary
A restructuring of the urban mobility system is essential to achieve the climate targets for transportation and sustainable transportation systems. A good mobility transition requires changes in all areas, such as the built environment, prices and regulations, mobility behaviour, and propulsion systems. Nevertheless, there is a limited understanding of the policy measures that residents endorse or oppose prior to their implementation. We draw on the construct of public acceptability to investigate this phenomenon. The term refers to measures that haven't been implemented yet, and includes all the issues that need to be considered to make a policy measure publicly acceptable. This is why we pose the following research question: What is the public acceptability of policy measures to restructure urban mobility systems? Four policy measures are included, which cover three domains: the built environment, regulation, and pricing mechanisms. For the built environment, we select bicycle expressways and investments into public transport infrastructure. For regulation, we use speed limits. For pricing mechanisms, we focus on parking fees and a reform of the public transport ticket pricing system. For the evaluation of the proposed policy measures, we draw on a survey among respondents living in the 25 largest German cities (n=2500) and use fixed quotas for age and gender. The survey was open to all residents over the age of 18 years old. To gain insight into the public acceptability of these potential measures, four dimensions are considered: attitudes regarding mobility, mobility behaviour in terms of mode choice and general travel frequencies, mobility tools, particularly the number of private cars, and socio-demographics. To measure the impact of these four dimensions on the public acceptability of the respective policy measures, factor analysis, clustering, and logistic regression analysis are conducted. The survey revealed that the city of residence plays a significant role in determining support for the policy initiatives. The respondents who reside in cities with high cycling rates, such as Bremen, Karlsruhe, Münster, and Hannover, are more favorable towards the implementation of parking fees, the construction of bicycle expressways, and the establishment of speed limits compared to those who reside in cities with high car usage, such as Bochum, Duisburg, and Mönchengladbach. The subsequent phase of the analysis scrutinizes the fundamental structural configurations of these cities. What is the relationship between the infrastructure configurations of these cities and the public acceptability of policy measures to restructure the urban mobility system? Adding this extra step to the analysis can help us uncover the crucial elements that affect the acceptability of policy actions, going beyond merely individual preferences.
