TRACC - TRansport ACCessibility at regional/local scale and patterns in Europe

Main research areas

• The current status and characteristic patterns of regional accessibility, i.e. accessibility on a daily basis, for road, rail and air
• The current status of potential accessibility for road, rail (including high-speed rail), air and water at European level
• The regional similarity and mismatch between potential accessibility at European level and regional accessibility
• The current status of potential accessibility for air and water at the global level
• Identifying the bottlenecks for the four transport modes be identified at the regional and the European scale
• Improving the methodology to calculate accessibility at regional and European level by including intermodal transport, i.e. combining the various ways of transport
• Feasible and relevant ways to distinguish between the transport of people and goods for air, rail, road or waterways
• Define the present and future role of freight transport over rail and inland waterways and compare its significance to transport over road, rail and air
• The relation between accessibility and regional development, growth, travel costs, carbon levels and employment
• Long term scenario’s for the transport sector in the EU and their impact on climate change, accessibility patterns and economic development
   

Main results envisaged

• Data on potential accessibility and various infrastructure networks
• Indicators on the different types of transport modes and accessibility and indicators revealing the impacts of new infrastructural networks
• A multimodal accessibility potential typology including all four transport modes
• Separate studies on different types of regions showing accessibility within the region, different types of accessibility patterns and the added value of including multimodal transport in the methodology to calculate accessibility
• European maps revealing (1) the accessibility patterns of the various transport modes (road, rail, waterways and air) and types (transport of people and freight) on various scales (global, European, regional, local, the study areas), (2) the multimodal accessibility potential typology, covering the full ESPON territory, (3) the present and future role of transport over inland waterways.