Few studies have explored how the primary determinants of commuting mode choice change following metro network expansion. This research uses Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDT) and travel survey data from Suzhou in 2018 and 2023 to investigate the nonlinear relationships of metro travel with demographic, transportation, and location characteristics, emphasizing stagedependent changes in their impacts. The results show that as the network expands, the importance of transportation characteristics, namely commute distance and proximity to metro stations, increases substantially, while the relative contribution of location characteristics declines. In 2023, commute distance emerges as the most important predictor of metro travel, indicating the enhanced capability of the metro system to accommodate long-distance commuting. Furthermore, workplace-side accessibility to metro stations became more important, highlighting a growing demand for last-mile connectivity at destinations. To promote sustainable mobility, planners should expand mid-line park-and-ride facilities for long-distance commuters, improve metro-bus integration for seamless transfers, and strengthen last-mile connections in major employment areas through shuttles and shared mobility.
This study examines the causal effect of direct purchase subsidies on electric vehicle market share in 30 European countries from 2014 to 2024. Employing a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach, the research reveals a significant heterogeneity in the effectiveness of these public finance instruments. On a Europe-wide average, subsidies act as a positive stimulus, increasing new registrations by 112.5%, with the impact progressively strengthening over a three-year horizon. Aggregately, this support expands both battery electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle sales. Crucially, distinct regional differences exist. Subsidies exhibit no statistically distinguishable average effect in original member states (EU-15), a pattern consistent with the possibility of lower additionality in more mature markets. Conversely, they serve as a primary driving factor in the new member states (EU-13), triggering an average registration increase of 244.1%. Furthermore, analysis by recipient type shows that subsidies expand total registrations by 235.3% for private and 129.4% for corporate buyers. Specifically, the impact on battery electric vehicles peaks in the second year, reaching a 339.3% increase for private and a 235.8% increase for corporate buyers, while private incentives drive a 250.6% surge in plug-in hybrids by the third year. Sub-analyses based on policy design frameworks reveal that the split into capped and uncapped subsidy regimes yields statistically inconclusive results within regional sub-samples. These findings suggest that future policy designs should consider geographical differentiation and the role of recipient eligibility and price ceilings; however, the evidence on cap-related heterogeneity remains statistically inconclusive within regional sub-samples.
The transition from mileage-based to scenario-based validation is emerging as a critical requirement for the regulatory certification of automated driving systems. However, establishing a standardized testing framework is hindered by the scarcity of safety-critical scenarios in naturalistic data and the tendency of existing methods to sacrifice physical plausibility for high collision rates. To address this gap, this study proposes TraSafeDiff, a conditional diffusion-based framework designed to generate safety-critical traffic scenarios that are both adversarially challenging and physically consistent. The framework integrates multimodal scene information through a deep encoder, while differentiable kinematic, boundary, and angular-motion energy penalties guide generated trajectories toward greater physical plausibility. In an open-loop evaluation on nuScenes, TraSafeDiff achieves a higher collision rate and a lower off-road rate than the evaluated scenario-generation baselines, while its acceleration and jerk distributions show closer alignment with naturalistic data. By balancing adversarial severity with kinematic plausibility, this study provides a candidate-scenario generation approach that may complement broader evidence-based safety evaluation and regulatory-assurance workflows.
Despite the key role of parking policy in sustainable transport, there is surprisingly limited research on how people view and experience parking policies. This study investigates changes in public acceptability of a real-world parking transformation. Approximately 50% of existing parking spaces were removed from the streets of the city center of Copenhagen with the purpose of being reused as space for street life, bicycle infrastructure, and greenery. Longitudinal survey data (N = 1378) were collected immediately before and one year after policy implementation, as part of a before-after panel study. Results show that acceptability of on-street parking transformation was generally high, with the majority of respondents supporting the policy both before and after implementation. However, acceptability declined after implementation, indicating a possible gap between expected and experienced outcomes. Furthermore, panel data analysis shows that travel satisfaction, intentions to reduce car use, younger age, higher education, and cohabitation status are linked to higher acceptability across the study period. Conversely, residence in the intervention area, preference for car-based mobility, car dependence, and car availability are associated with lower acceptability. Analysis of residents' evaluations reveals differing attitudes towards the policy. Positive attitudes include support for car-free zones and for expected improvements in walkability, bikeability, livability, and sustainability, while negative attitudes revolve around perceived inconvenience for residents of the city center, anticipated negative impacts to local businesses, and exclusion of car drivers from the city center.
This paper introduces the Capabilities Imprint, a novel conceptual and quantitative Capability Approach (CA) to assess how spatially embedded infrastructure enables individual human capabilities. The framework models dependencies on essential infrastructure and amenities using transport networks and allows for graph-theoretic metrics to quantify individual capabilities through their imprints. The premise of this approach is that, from a CA perspective, each person is at the centre of a network of infrastructure and amenities that has a role in the potential of that person to achieve the life they value, and this is their Capabilities Imprint. This imprint can then be quantified using network theory through metrics such as Connectivity Scores (CS) and Betweenness Centrality (BC), enabling an understanding of the transport infrastructure context for individuals. CS quantify access to key amenities, while BC identifies critical nodes within the imprint, whose disruption would disproportionately affect multiple capabilities. In this work, capabilities are conceptualized as locational, focusing on domain-specific infrastructural and spatial conditions that shape opportunities through transport network connectivity and integrity. A case study in Swords, Ireland, demonstrates the methodological implementation of the Capabilities Imprint framework and its ability to generate actionable insights for planning and policy. Clustering analysis of connectivity profiles reveals distinct community archetypes, highlighting areas facing systemic infrastructure exclusion. Simultaneously, high-betweenness nodes pinpoint network bottlenecks, informing prioritization for planning or further action. The approach also captures overlapping dependencies across capabilities, showing how failures at a few critical junctures can cascade through multiple facets of urban life. The framework relies on open-source data and a two-metric approach combining accessibility and network vulnerability, enabling a spatially disaggregated and network-aware assessment of infrastructure-enabled capabilities. In doing so, the Capabilities Imprint supports equity-oriented spatial analysis and accessibilityinformed urban planning, offering policymakers a practical tool for human well-being-centred decision-making and more just prioritization in urban transport planning.
