Sustainable Transport
Several interesting elective courses can be followed that support this topic, e.g.
Land Use and Transport interaction (Elective between ITC and Civil Engineering, UT, offered in quartile 4
Sustainable Transport (Elective at Civil Engineering UT, offered in quartile 2
The goal of sustainable transport is to promote better and healthier ways for individuals and communities to meet their travel needs while reducing the negative social, environmental and economic impacts of current mobility practices. Making transport systems sustainable is a societal rather than a strictly technical process which depends upon policy, planning, citizen involvement, engineering and economics . This MSc theme welcomes any topic related to sustainable transportation, e.g.: urban design for sustainable and active transportation and healthier communities; citizen participation and spatial planning and decision support, integrated urban and regional land use and (public) transport planning, carbon emissions of transport, automobile dependency, transport equity; mobility as a service, etc. etc.
The MSc student will need to make use of available literature to discuss relevant theories and develop an appropriate conceptual framework and methodology. Typically, research will involve primary data collection and spatial and non-spatial analysis. Often a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods is used. Depending on the interest of the student connection to ongoing research projects could be made, but also projects that students develop themselves, e.g. in the students own country, are possible.
Examples of relevant literature (not exhaustive):
• Schiller, P.L. and Kenworthy, J.R. (2018). An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation. Policy, Planning and Implementation. Second Edition. Routledge. London, United Kingdom.
• Pojani, D. and Stead. D. (2017). The Urban Transport Crisis in Emerging Economies. Springer Nature. Switzerland.
• Martens, K. (2016). Transport Justice. Designing Fair Transport Systems. Routledge. London, United Kingdom.
• Banister. D. (2005). Unsustainable Transport. City Transport in the New Century. Routledge. London, United Kingdom.
Typically, topics in sustainable transport are societally relevant and policy-related. There is always a policy angle related to the contribution to sustainability goals and a planning angle related to the implementation pathways of sustainable transport solutions. In fact, the wickedness of sustainable transport systems most often lies in the development of solutions that are acceptable to the most important stakeholders. In the ITC-related research in transportation, spatial analysis is probably the key methodology, and given that all transport problems are spatial in nature, we welcome people who are strong in spatial analysis. There may or may not be a modelling component in which the transport or other systems are modelled to aid in understanding, developing and evaluating scenarios for interventions.