Track 1.2: Mobility, Accessibility, and Transit-Oriented Transformation

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is revolutionizing urban transportation and raising difficult questions about access fairness, infrastructure design, and energy management. As cities strive to decarbonize mobility networks without compromising resilience and inclusion, current planning philosophies do not adequately translate the dynamic, data-driven, and cross-sectoral requirements of integrating EVs. This research explores the nascent concept of Digital Twin (DT) technology—real-time, virtual replicas of physical systems—as a means of understanding and harmonizing EV charging stations' spatial, technical, and operational aspects within developing cities. By exploring DT application in sectors like mobility systems, energy grids, and city planning, the paper explains their ability to assist with spatial optimization, simulate infrastructure performance under different conditions, and facilitate decision-making in sectors like mobility systems, energy grids, and city planning. The method includes an exploratory strategy integrating learning from inter-disciplinary case studies, applications of urban technologies, and planning models alongside comparative observation of DT-facilitated mobility interventions in target cities. The argument identifies DTs' ability to facilitate more integrated planning coordination between energy and transport sectors, better forecasting capacity, and increased stakeholder participation. The argument further identifies main challenges, such as data interoperability, technology readiness, and institutional readiness. In response to these observations, the paper constructs a conceptual base for making suggestions regarding future planning methodologies.

The "last-mile" problem poses a significant challenge to accessing public transportation. It undermines both the efficiency and equity of rail transit systems. This issue is especially pronounced in rapidly growing suburban areas, such as those in Nanjing, China. Transportation-vulnerable groups face difficulty in bridging the gap from home to transit stations. This difficulty can affect their access to employment, education, and essential services. This study explores the crucial need to understand how income levels and diverse transportation modes influence the last-mile experience in these suburban settings. We study the impact of income disparity on travel in suburban Nanjing, aiming to address the key issue of promoting equitable development. It ensures that rapid urbanization does not leave vulnerable populations behind. By examining how different income groups navigate the last-mile challenge, we provide a community-centered perspective on urban development. This perspective is essential for structuring the daily life circle and improving the quality of life. Our findings highlight the different needs of inner and outer suburbs and underscore the importance of balancing the needs of residents at different income levels. This underscores the need for comprehensive spatial development plans that take into account the diverse mobility needs of metropolitan areas. When planning infrastructure, more inclusive and targeted plans should be made to meet the needs of various groups of people. Our use of a hierarchical regression model demonstrates that high-income resident leverage car access while low-income residents depend more on walking and biking infrastructure—exposes a clear equity divide. For policymakers, this means that car-oriented solutions like "park and ride" facilities may primarily benefit affluent residents in outer suburbs, while investments in safe, continuous, and accessible pedestrian and biking networks are critical for enhancing mobility for low-income groups in inner suburbs. Crucially, our sensitivity analysis reveals that improving bus services is a universally effective strategy for reducing last-mile travel times for low-income residents, regardless of their location within the suburban landscape. Based on the findings of this study, we propose a series of policies to promote last-mile access. First, establish a community-station-community circular bus route and configure customized buses, using the universal effectiveness of bus services for low-income residents to improve residents' transfer time. Second, focus on safe, continuous non-motorized vehicle facilities in the suburbs while optimizing P+R parking in the car-dependent outer suburbs. Finally, the development of suburban TODs should be enhanced by considering mixed-use projects around stations, aiming to make suburban TODs inclusive multimodal hubs rather than mere parking lots.

Modern cities critically depend on resilient infrastructure like underground rail networks to withstand disruptions, drawing on Holling's ecological concept of resilience as a system's capacity to absorb disturbances while maintaining functionality. This study addresses the vulnerability of the London Underground network by investigating how targeted node failures impact its structural integrity and passenger flows, particularly considering the mismatch between perceived and actual travel distances. The primary objective is to quantify network resilience under strategic attacks, simulate disruption impacts on commuter patterns using spatial interaction models, and identify critical vulnerabilities by comparing node removal strategies based on centrality measures (Weighted Betweenness, Weighted Closeness, Degree Centrality) against random failures. The research employed a two-phase methodology. First, the network was modelled as an undirected weighted graph (edge weights = station distances). Nodes were removed either sequentially (recalculating centrality after each removal) or non-sequentially based on initial centrality rankings. Network resilience was quantified using Global Efficiency (Eff) and the Average Local Clustering Coefficient (ALCC). Second, an Origin-Constrained Spatial Interaction (gravity) model, calibrated using London Travel Demand Data (morning peak) via Poisson regression (yielding β = 0.537 for distance friction and γ = 0.868 for destination attractiveness), simulated passenger flow redistribution under scenarios: a 50% job reduction in Canary Wharf (CBD in London) and increased travel friction (β doubled/tripled). Our findings reveal the network exhibits a "strong yet fragile" nature. Sequential removal based on Weighted Betweenness Centrality (SBR) caused the most severe fragmentation, drastically reducing Global Efficiency (Eff) by 68% (distance-weighted) and 83% (flow-weighted) after removing just 10 critical "bridge" nodes near hubs (not the hubs themselves), impacting an estimated 3.8 million passengers (42.3% of London's population). In contrast, random removal and strategies based on Degree Centrality had minimal impact due to the network's uniform, low-degree structure. Weighted Closeness strategies fragmented the network, but more slowly than SBR. ALCC proved insensitive to most strategies until large-scale node loss. Scenario simulations showed a 50% job loss in Canary Wharf significantly diverted flows, while increased travel friction (simulating higher costs/times) caused even more extensive and disruptive flow redistribution across the network. This study validates complex network dynamics in real-world infrastructure, highlighting the importance of betweenness centrality over degree or closeness in identifying critical vulnerabilities, especially under sequential attack, and questions ALCC's utility as an early resilience indicator for metro networks. Practically, it provides transport planners and spatial planners with actionable intelligence: protecting high-betweenness stations is crucial for enhancing resilience. The intensity of land development around the stations of key transportation nodes should be appropriately shifted towards the adjacent stations. This practice will substantially increase the resilience of the overall network.

With the increase of urban transport nodes, many multi-station aggregation hubs emerged. These hubs are usually intensively developed and provide opportunities for significant restructuring of their surrounding districts. Furthermore, as a direction of sustainable urban development of cities, multi-station aggregation hubs are highly emphasized by many public-transportation-oriented cities. However, the current researches often focus on one station (usually as TOD) in the station-city integration study, and seldom involve the systematic study of multiple stations and their integrated surrounding areas. This research first selects some typical multi-station aggregation hubs from top global cities, including Shinjuku and Shibuya, Tokyo, King’s Cross, Paddington, and Stratford, London, and Canal Street, St. Union Square, New York. Then, it studies their transport infrastructure aggregation history and delimits its affected surrounding areas. Finally, it attempts to creatively apply a future land use simulation (FLUS) model at a finer scale to simulate and predict the influence of multi-station aggregation hub development on surrounding areas. Nowadays, geographic simulation models are useful for a better understanding of the mechanisms of urban expansion and land-use changes. Cellular automata (CA) is a dynamic model for simulating and predicting land-use changes increasingly. The Geographical Simulation and Optimization System (GeoSOS) platform integrates a top-down system dynamic (SD) model and bottom-up CA (Li, 2021), to present the FLUS model processing the complex competitions and interactions among the different land use types. The research uses FLUS model, and already has geographic data for Tokyo, London, and New York from the governments. This research addresses the critical gap in modeling multi-station hub impacts by developing a novel simulation framework. It uses the typology geospatial data from various databases to create a new land-use system mainly based on FAR (floor area ration) at a finer scale (50m x 50m), instead of land types in large-scale land-use prediction. The available building height and footprint data were converted to floor area based on the assumption of 4m per floor, which was used to better reflect the approximate FAR for each unit. At the same time, other spatial variables, such as permanent transport and green lands, landmark viewing corridor and distribution of population, are set as limiting and driving factors to the simulation. Lastly, it employs the FLUS model for all the cases to discover the common development patterns of the surrounding areas of these hubs. After comparing the simulation results with realistic data, the best control parameters were obtained through adaption. Our preliminary research of the simulation of King's Cross, London between 2011 and 2023 demonstrates an overall accuracy of 97.08%, compared with the real data. In order to verify this research approach in different socio-economic and developing settings, this research plans to test it for the areas of multi-station aggregation hubs in large cities on urban redevelopment. This can also lead to summarize common principles for urban (re)development in this type of intensely developed areas. For intense developed urban area, every new development need carefully considering its fitness for the region. This finer FAR simulation and prediction can provide evidences to support development decisions and principles about how to organize volumes for spatial goals commonly subscribed by all stakeholders.

In the VUCA era characterized by multiple crises, safeguarding the resilience of critical urban infrastructure represents a core challenge for sustainable development. Public health emergencies, in particular, pose significant threats to global public health. As vital urban infrastructure, rail transit systems provide crucial resilience safeguards during crises. Enhancing station resilience necessitates a profound understanding of passenger flow mechanisms during public health emergencies. However, there remains a significant research gap regarding the influence of station-area built environments on the resilience of passenger flows. To achieve sustainable growth in cities amidst multiple crises, it is urgent to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure and promote the equitable distribution of development outcomes. This study examines the resilience mechanisms of rail transit passenger flows under public health emergencies, as a representative form of urban crisis. By analyzing the impact of station-area built environments—particularly the role of spatial heterogeneity in facilitating equitable access to essential services and mobility equity—this study provides an empirical foundation for formulating balanced spatial development strategies across diverse urban regions. This research directly addresses core concerns regarding balanced urban development, resilient community foundations, and fostering urban-rural prosperity through smart, inclusive regional planning. Using Beijing, China—a representative megacity—as a case study, this research analyzes passenger flow data from 268 rail transit stations during the COVID-19 pandemic (June 11-17, 2020). By integrating multi-source geospatial big data, it develops a station-area built environment evaluation framework encompassing four dimensions: station attributes, environmental diversity, transportation connectivity, and destination accessibility. The Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) model was applied to analyze the spatially heterogeneous impacts of built environment factors on passenger flows. Key findings include: (1) The densities of business-residential, healthcare, sports-fitness, daily-service, catering, and corporate facilities, as well as parking capacity, serve as key facilitators of passenger flow resilience. Among them, healthcare and daily-service facilities are especially critical in ensuring equitable access to essential services during crises; (2) Distance to parks, parking capacity, and the densities of shopping, corporate, and catering facilities exhibit spatially stable impacts, functioning as global-scale variables; (3) Passenger flows show significant positive correlations with transfer stations, catering and corporate facility density, parking capacity, and distance to parks, while shopping facility density shows a negative correlation. Importantly, distance to the city center, the number of station access points, and functional mix exhibit marked spatial heterogeneity, requiring context-specific planning interventions. The analysis demonstrates that optimizing the station-area built environment—particularly by increasing the densities of healthcare and daily-service facilities—offers an effective pathway to enhance transit system resilience and promote sustainable urban growth. Consequently, future planning must leverage spatial heterogeneity patterns to implement differentiated facility allocation and development intensity strategies across distinct urban zones, especially between urban cores and peripheries, thereby balancing passenger flows and strengthening systemic resilience.

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a key tool to deliver sustainable growth, affordable housing and health and wellbeing outcomes, often associated with metro and light rail infrastructure investment. The implementation of TOD varies significantly across regions due to differences in planning, governance and funding systems, whilst sharing similar goals and challenges. TOD has been chosen as a particular case in planning which is associated with intensification of development, affordable housing delivery and sustainable transport, but also a challenging subject due to long-term disruption, high risk and funding challenges, coordination of multiple stakeholders and often local resistance to change. The paper will present different, approaches, issues and successes through three case studies of TOD of existing TOD projects, which are at different stages of implementation: Melbourne Metro – nearing completion, Crossrail London - operational, Scarborough Extension Toronto – in planning. Through first-hand experience from senior architects and planners from these projects as authors and contributors to the paper, it will include a deep dive into practical challenges, such as funding and risk allocation, gathering political support and how to maintain design quality, benefit realisation and equitable outcomes. The discussion will highlight trade-offs between competing objectives typically alive in real-world situations, such as fostering low car ownership and character change through intensification of new homes crucially linked to the business cases of the transport projects. The presentation will provide a brief introduction on the theoretical concept of TOD based on The World Bank definition and how this relates to current day challenges of sustainable growth, political uncertainty and democratic governance processes. The core presentation will discuss what this means in practice and how planning for TOD is implemented and adapted for regional differences, expanding on the planning tools available, but also challenges and issues of the planning, governance, stakeholder engagement and funding structures. With focus on localised approaches, it will cover in detail the Ministerial Zoning Order process in Toronto associated with the metro, where the regional planning body has taken planning powers away at local level and is driving change, but at the same time is funding significant upfront design development work to ensure optimal design integration. It will explain how this planning model is closely linked with the strategic funding model, as well as critically examine how local authorities, land-owners and other stakeholders are engaged in this top down planning process. The London case study will discuss how the use of a light touch Memorandum of Understanding (MoU’s) between London Boroughs, City Government and Crossrail Limited enabled the complementary measures program. Opposite to Toronto’s example, this approach retained the existing highly localised planning systems. It agreed, at a late stage of delivery, an ‘informal’ collaboration and funding governance through existing channels to deliver wider, localised benefits in terms of public realm upgrades and enabling the economic benefits which, in turn, provided funding clawback for the project. The Melbourne project will focus on design governance, which delivered both ahead of schedule and high-quality design outcomes. It will further consider what level of detail of planning and policy at different project stages, mechanisms of control to ensure deliverability without the loss of design quality. This will be considered particularly in the context of democratic accountability, public engagement and environmental protection policies.

The Greater Muscat Structure Plan (GMSP) is a comprehensive, city-wide, long-term strategic plan that determines the main projects and policy modifications required for a more sustainable development of the capital of Oman, Muscat, until 2040. The GMSP looked ahead to 2040 to determine the visions and goals of the city, then strategically worked backwards to the present, determining the necessary steps to take the city closer and closer to its goals. The MIC-HUB team participated in a consortium which developed the Plan from a multi-disciplinary perfective; MIC-HUB being responsible for the transport and mobility strategies. MIC-HUB proposes to present the process of plan-making and the final Plan with the intention of demonstrating how sustainable transport decisions have the power to reshape the city. Even further, in a car-dominated environment, how specific analysis and changes in speech and thought processes can aid the buy-in from stakeholders that historically support vehicular speed and capacity over all other measures. We believe the presentation fits well in Track 1 or 4 due to the sustainable approach to transportation that was applied during the progress of the GMSP. The transport planning strategies for the GMSP were very closely aligned with other disciplines, resulting in a Plan that seeks to densify the areas that support such a density while preserving the areas that cannot do the same. A strong public transport system was the first step to achieve such objectives, but the public transport system also allowed our team to propose smaller streets that are more conducive for walking, increase the sense of belonging, open the door of the community to enjoy the public realm, and better adapt to the local weather. Due to these characteristics, the GMSP could contribute to both Sustainable Urban Growth & Culture, Identity, and Inclusive Urban Transformation. Getting the buy-in from stakeholders is a common challenge for transport planning professionals that try to combat the car culture in countries that are car dominated. While opening a new road usually only takes a couple of meetings, reducing the vehicular capacity of a road to fit other modes of transport can take months of engagement, several studies, recurring project modifications, and it might still fail to pass. The GMSP faced similar challenges when related to transport. A constant feedback received from stakeholders in the beginning of the project was that congestion was one of the biggest issues of the city and that only significant increase in the capacity of the main roads could solve it. When our team proposed a different solution – public transport and higher connectivity of the road network – we were faced with scepticism. The debate of connectivity versus speed, and the one about accessibility versus driveability were our constant companions during the engagements with the different stakeholders. The techniques and analysis used in this project to tell the story behind the transport strategy and get the buy-in of different stakeholders can be applicable to many other projects that are trying to achieve similar sustainable transport planning goals. Even though the presentation will be given through the lenses of the GMSP, the topics of densification through public transport incentives, stakeholders engagement, and transport-demand management measures as a way of addressing car-dominant cities are globally applied.