Ph.D. project spark the way for attractive mobility hubs in Denmark
Imagine a daily transport in Denmark, where we all take the bike, the train, the bus, or other shared vehicles, and can shift from one to the other in a convenient and yet attractive way. This is the goal when looking into the future of mobility hubs within the transportation sector.
This article is a deep dive into the grid of mobility hubs, and NIRAS Ph.D. student, Eva Paola Kvist Campus, is the expert and researcher of how it’s possible to create sustainable mobility hubs through holistic and systems approaches.
“My goal upon completing the Ph.D. is to generate valuable knowledge, insights, and tools for our work at NIRAS. My hope is that the developed work will inspire sustainable change, benefiting multimodal transport users, clients, and society. That it assists clients in developing effective strategies for creating and enhancing their mobility hubs, encouraging more people to choose sustainable travel options and enjoy a better experience in their multimodal journeys,” says Eva Paola Kvist Campos, Ph.D. student at NIRAS.
Diving into innovative futures for sustainable mobility hubs
The Ph.D. project “Interdisciplinary and Systemic Methods to Develop Mobility Hubs” is an R&D project nested within NIRAS. The project explores best practices of mobility hub development, focusing on collaboration schemes and business models that ensure value creation for users and stakeholders alike. Mobility Hubs are places where people can interchange means of transport, such as public, collective, shared, and private (train, bus, car, bicycle) and they provide a great scenario fostering sustainable behaviours in the city and in rural areas.
The objective is to leverage this knowledge into robust frameworks or tools that can identify innovative and sustainable solutions and collaboration strategies, to improve the user experience and travel behaviour and additionally, improve the attractiveness of mobility hubs, consequently contributing to the decarbonisation of the transportation sector.
An international outlook
In the spring 2024, Eva had the privilege of being a visiting researcher at the University of Bergen within the System Dynamics Group. An academic journey that broadened Eva’s know-how.
“It was unique to collaborate closely with experts in system dynamics and to shape together its application into my research on mobility hubs. Additionally, I actively engaged in academic courses, where I together with students, worked on a case challenge focusing on devising strategies to encourage greater adoption of multimodal travel over car reliance,” says Eva.
According to Eva, it’s important to think globally and act locally as many regions globally face similar challenges and therefore, it’s relevant to identify best practices and innovative approaches adaptable to the Danish context.
Shifting our choices and a need for positive user experience
Eva highlights two primary factors when diving into challenges and opportunities of creating sustainable mobility hubs in Denmark:
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The car use preference vs. convenient sustainable transport integration
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The holistic understanding of the impact in a positive user experience
1. The sustainable transport integration
Individuals seek convenience, encompassing aspects such as time, distance, comfort, cost, safety, reliability, attractiveness, among others. Convenience can be reinforced in mobility hubs by offering a good integration of infrastructure in the place, seamless connection between public transport and shared mobility services, and strategic collaborations that enhance the overall user experience in the multimodal journey.
2. The holistic understanding
Developing mobility hubs is inherently complex as these are physical locations, such as a train station, where one can see the integration among various transportation modes and parking facilities for different vehicles, timetables, waiting areas, etc.
However, the unseen complexity lies in the myriad of stakeholder functions necessary to ensure a positive user experience and the importance of how these functions need to be recognised as interconnected and complementing each other to the overall impact on supporting a positive user experience or hindering it.
“A significant part of my research involves engaging with international experts to exchange experiences and to discuss both challenges and opportunities. The expected outcome of my Ph.D. aims to establish key principles for creating sustainable mobility hubs, that benefits the users and the local communities, contribute positively to environmental and climate objectives and ensure financial viability,”
Eva Paola Kvist Campus
It's time to rethink mobility hubs as systems
For future development within mobility hubs, it’s pivotal to re-think the existing interconnectedness of its subsystems.
To attract more users to a mobility hub, we must consider all factors impacting the user journey and their needs. Key elements include the hub's design and infrastructure, such as station services, waiting areas, parking facilities, and other amenities. Effective integration of transport services is essential, ensuring coordinated timetables and seamless journey planning and payments. Additionally, societal, cultural, economic, and contextual factors influence user choices and experiences. All these factors collectively affect the user journey.
Here's an example,
Imagine Sarah, a young professional, relying on multimodal transport for her daily commute. Her journey starts with riding her bike and then interchanging at a thoughtfully designed mobility hub. Upon arrival, Sarah finds a clean station with easy wayfinding, clear signage, a coffee shop, comfortable seating, and secure bike parking. While waiting, she enjoys a small library where she borrows a book for her ride.
Multiple transport services are integrated at the hub, with coordinated timetables for buses, trains, and shared mobility. Sarah's experience is seamless as she can plan and pay for all the transport services she needs in her journey in just one app. The hub also considers societal and cultural factors, offering multilingual signage, universal access, and community creation through its public space. Affordable ticket prices and discounts for frequent travelers address economic concerns too.
Sarah’s positive experience shows the importance of integrating all these factors.
A well-designed hub alone is insufficient without reliable transport services. Conversely, even the best transport services wouldn't attract users if they weren't effectively connected at a convenient place. This story highlights the need to view these elements holistically.
“Thinking of mobility hubs as interconnected systems, allows us to strategise for sustainability effectively by setting goals to contribute to decarbonisation by e.g. reducing emissions on-site, prioritising greener transport alternatives, generating vibrant public spaces, and fostering sustainable lifestyles. Recognising these interconnections can enable viable collaborations where all stakeholders, including the users can benefit, creating win-win scenarios,” says Eva.
The Ph.D. timeline:
More about the Ph.D. project:
Partnerships and Funding Sources: The project is made in collaboration with Aalborg University and sponsored by Innovation Fund Denmark.
Project status: Active.
5 main keywords about the project: Mobility hubs, sustainability, stakeholders, systems thinking.
Educational background: BSc Architecture, MSc. Engineering Management & MEng. City planning.
Hopes for the future works of the project: To help municipalities and private companies to integrate better transport alternatives and create lively urban and rural areas.
The importance of cooperating with NIRAS: NIRAS is one of the leading engineering consulting companies enabling all the infrastructure we all use in our daily life and that is the ideal standing point to link research to practice by enabling the development of innovative solutions for sustainable mobility.
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