Urban form, vehicle emissions and energy use of commuters in the Netherlands

Dr Yusak O. Susilo and Dr Dominic Stead, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Keywords

commuting, CO2 emissions, energy consumption, urban form, temporal trends, The Netherlands

Abstract

The influence of urban form on the travel behaviour of commuters has been of interest to geographers, transportation and urban researchers for some time. Many studies have examined the influence of urban form on commuting distance, travel time and mode choice. For example, previous studies have shown that the denser urban areas are associated with shorter commuting distances but longer commuting times and lower commuting speeds. Trip-chaining is often more prevalent amongst commuters from denser urban areas. On the other hand, commuters from less dense areas have longer journey distances but higher commuting speeds and shorter travel times. Less attention however has been paid to the influence of urban form on vehicle emissions and transport energy use. Using the Dutch National Travel survey data, this paper examines the influence of different types of urban form on transport emissions and energy consumption due to commuters’ daily travel behaviour in the Netherlands over the last decade.

The results show that the commuters’ daily CO2 emissions and energy consumption have significantly increased in the last decade. Moreover, although more urbanised area has higher traffic density and lower travel speed, the commuters who reside in this area produced lower CO2 emissions and consumed less energy compared to the commuters who reside in less urbanised area. However this does not mean that dense/compact city policy would automatically reduce the transportation emissions and energy consumption. As shown in the models, there are more important factors that influence the amount of CO2 emissions and energy consumption of the commuters than urban form and built environment variables.

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