Abstract

eer-reviewed Limerick was designated as Ireland’s National Smarter Travel demonstration area in 2012. Limerick Smarter Travel, which aims to promote sustainable travel in the City and suburbs, is a partnership between the Limerick Councils and the University of Limerick (UL). Within UL, final-year projects and other research is on-going in the smarter travel subject area. This paper is based on Limerick City’s Bike Sharing Scheme and a final-year project thesis which is a study of the feasibility of a stand-alone bike sharing scheme in the suburb of Castletroy adjacent to the University of Limerick. This paper also focused on discovering if it would be feasible to merge a Castletroy scheme with the existing Limerick city scheme or extend the existing city scheme to the Castletroy area. The paper details the use of a smartphone application to collect rich trip and mode share data and proposes this methodology as a significant improvement on current feasibility study methods for bike sharing scheme feasibility studies. The smartphone application is capable of collecting numerous persons travel data for the entire period of the day. Data such as distance travelled, mode of travel, time taken to travel and trip destination and origin are all collected within the application. From this data, heat maps were produced for each of the survey participants. An example of a heat map for one candidate can be seen in Figure 3.6. In these heat maps, dark purple lines highlight routes of low activity, where bright orange lines highlight routes of high activity for that user for the specified study period. A number of precedent studies were also investigated as well as generating, collecting, analysing and investigating a number of quantitative datasets. The quantitative datasets explored include: travel survey results for University of Limerick students and staff; Places of Work – Census of Anonymised Records data for Castletroy residents; secondary data gathered through an online survey and primary data gathered using the implementation of the GPS smartphone application to monitor the travel patterns of eighteen candidates. Recommendations for further research are also outlined in the paper.

Abstract

eer-reviewed Almost 7 out of 10 people in Limerick drove to work, school, or college in 2006 with 65% of residents commuting a distance of 1 to 9km Successful change has been implemented in European and, more recently, in UK and Australian cities, to reverse the effects of unsustainable travel. For example in Groningen in the Netherlands, an average of 1.4 urban bicycle trips per person per day were made, making up more than 50% of the total trips in 2008 .This shows the potential that exists for achieving a Smarter Travel Limerick with the associated benefits which are well documented. This research aims to create a rational basis for designing and implementing a plan for Smarter Travel Limerick with particular reference to a community engagement strategy. The objective of the study is to develop a local culture of Smarter Travel in Limerick communities using best international practice and thereby achieve behavioural change in travel mode choice. As part of this research census and survey travel data for Limerick and data from the Limerick focus groups together with the data from the chosen international exemplar city precedent studies is analysed. This data is complex and is of both quantitative and qualitative type. The analysis provides a rationale to allow proposals for an appropriate Community Engagement strategy to be formulated. Literature on Smarter Travel is also reviewed including results from a comprehensive study of six international exemplar Smarter Travel Cities. Current travel modes and travellers' mode choice criteria in Limerick city are investigated considering the literature review and the findings of the data analysis. Finally, a design and implementation plan with particular emphasis on community engagement for Limerick Smarter Travel is discussed.

Abstract

eer-reviewed Limerick was designated as Ireland’s National Smarter Travel demonstration area in 2012. Limerick Smarter Travel (LST), which aims to promote sustainable travel in the City and suburbs, is a partnership between the Limerick Councils and the University of Limerick (UL). Within UL, final year projects and other research is on-going in the smarter travel subject area. Although cycling participation in Ireland is on the rise both nationally and locally within the Limerick community, travel survey data conducted by the LST team has demonstrated a significant gender gap exists among cyclists with far less women cycling than men. This paper is based on a final year project thesis: The Ladies’ 4-Week Cycle Challenge: An active research study of females investigating the barriers and motivators regarding cycling participation in Ireland. The research involved a group of females taking up cycling over a period of 4 weeks as a means of commuting to work/college. Following pre- and post-challenge interviews with the female participants a number of measures to encourage cycling participation among women are outlined along with recommendations for further research.

Abstract

eer-reviewed As 'Ireland's Smarter Travel Demonstration City' Limerick is charged with piloting ways to convince its citizens to move around their city in a more sustainable way, in particular to walk, cycle and use public transport more. The Limerick Smarter Travel (LST) project is funded by the Department of Transport with EU support and implemented by a multidisciplinary team of University of Limerick (UL) researchers and Limerick Local Authority staff [Cullinane and Cosgrove 2013]. Travel is an integral part of everyday life, which allows people to meet their needs by providing access to work, services and social gatherings. Commuting to work by car makes up a large proportion of all car traffic, particularly during the morning and evening peak periods in Limerick City. Consequently, workplace travel planning forms an integral part of the LST project. Workplace travel plans are behaviour change packages that are a tried and tested means of achieving mode shift away from the single-occupancy car. In the early 1990s, the idea of workplace travel planning began to gain ground in Britain, based on successful experience in the Netherlands and the US. Research shows that workplace travel plans can reduce car use by between 10-24% [Cairns et al 2004]. However, achieving behaviour change, in relation to travel in particular, and coming to an understanding of how best to achieve it, is an extremely difficult task considering the vast range of factors that can influence behaviour. LST collaborates with the National Transport Authority (NTA) through their already well established Smarter Travel Workplace programme, to implement the LST Workplace and Campus Travel Planning Programme. Limerick’s Local Authority is also involved in both developing their own travel plan, and encouraging other employers to develop their own, site-specific travel plans. Policy makers should consider localised measures to encourage sustainable transport, in particular walking and cycling in urban areas. However, the intrinsic, psychological motivations of car use are not well understood by policy makers. Therefore, non-deliberate choices by motorists make it extremely difficult to influence travel behaviour change. Policy strategies aimed at reducing car use should take these intrinsic motives for car use into account. This paper describes the development and implementation of a comprehensive Workplace and Campus Travel Planning Programme in Limerick City. This paper highlights the importance of integrating transport and planning objectives. This paper describes how the LST project is supporting the development of a travel planning culture by leveraging the planning system at both the level of the Local Authority and the applicant, in order to meet social, environmental and economic objectives for Limerick City.

Abstract

eer-reviewed As 'Ireland's Smarter Travel Demonstration City' Limerick is charged with piloting ways to convince its citizens to move around their city in a more sustainable way, in particular to walk, cycle and use public transport more. The project is funded by the Department of Transport with EU support and implemented by a multi-disciplinary team of University of Limerick (UL) researchers and Limerick Local Authority staff. Behaviour change programs tend to focus on a few behavioural change theories which gained ground in the 1980s. Many theories explain the behaviour change process in terms of several cyclical stages. Limerick Smarter Travel (LST) is adopting the ‘Seven Doors Social Marketing Approach,’ which defines each stage in terms of the type of obstacle to be overcome. This model for behaviour change assigns different types of intervention according to the stage of readiness of the individual or community. The LST team works with the community in the design of infrastructure principally walking and cycling routes. This facilitates a new type of participatory planning to meet the felt needs of the community. This generates goodwill and trust that further benefits the project. LST collaborates with the National Transport Authority (NTA) and works closely with An Taisce and with relevant disciplines within UL. LST is working with the Graduate Entry Medical School (GEMS) to link health and wellbeing initiatives with the project. LST has recruited 30 local champions to take on a ‘20 Weeks of Change’ challenge to incorporate Smarter Travel into their daily routine and to measure the impact on their health and well-being. This element of the LST project offers huge potential to link with national health and education policy and broaden the vision for Smarter Travel. This paper describes the development and implementation of community engagement, design, and education in Smarter Travel. LST is laying the foundations for long term change whose implications for local government practice, the built environment and the health and well-being of local communities will only become apparent over decades.

Abstract

Under EU Directive 2009/28/EC on Renewable Energy each Member State is mandated to ensure that 10% of transport energy (excluding aviation and marine transport) comes from renewable sources by 2020. The Irish Government intends to achieve this target with a number of policies including an increase in the use of biofuels in transport by 3% by 2010 and ensuring that 10% of all vehicles in the transport fleet are powered by electricity by 2020. Electric vehicles (EVs) do not emit exhaust fumes in the same manner as traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. The optimal benefits of EVs can only be truly achieved if EVs are deployed effectively, so that exhaust pipe gaseous emissions are not fully displaced to the electricity sector. This paper examines the potential contributions that Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles can make in reducing carbon dioxide. The paper presents the results of the generation expansion model for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland built using the dynamic programming based long term generation expansion planning tool called the Wien Automatic System Planning IV tool. The model optimizes power dispatch using hourly electricity demand curves for each year up to 2020, while incorporating generator characteristics and certain operational requirements such as energy not served and loss of load probability while satisfying constraints on environmental emissions, fuel availability and generator operational and maintenance costs. In order to simulate the effect of PHEV, two distinct charging scenarios are applied based on a peak tariff and an off peak tariff. The importance and influence of the charging regime on the amount of energy used and gaseous emissions displaced is determined and briefly discussed.