Abstract
Mobility is fundamentally important in enabling people to access services, which can deliver substantial benefits to people's quality of life. This is particularly important in rural areas where the range and extent of public transport services are, in general, significantly lower than in urban areas, and, indeed, below the level required to provide a level of service that is sufficiently high to enable people in rural areas without private cars to access these services. This paper looks at the role of governments in institutional, organisational, regulatory and financial frameworks in supporting rural transport services at a level that enables this access. A cluster analysis is performed to identify distinct classes of framework types across Europe. In addition, the paper gives examples of good practice and innovation in rural transport from across Europe incorporating a variety of themes: the use of Information and Communications Technology, intermodal service coordination, demand-responsive transport, shared mobility and good governance. Key success factors for introducing, sustaining and transferring these forms of good practice are then discussed.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 100956 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Research in Transportation Economics |
Volume | 83 |
Early online date | 11 Sept 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgements:We would like to acknowledge the European Commission in funding the SMARTA project (Contract n. No MOVE/B4/SER/2017-473/S 12.780134), which has enabled this research to take place. The insight papers and good practice cases referred to in this paper have been completed by members of the SMARTA Consortium: MemEx (IT), University of Aberdeen (UK), Transport & Mobility Leuven (BE), Vectos (UK) and European Integrated Projects (RO).
Keywords
- Rural transport
- smart mobility
- shared mobility
- rural mobility
- mobility framework
- good practice