Urban mobility is a critical service that shapes the city’s spatial structure and influences access to opportunities equitably, thus contributing to economic productivity, social inclusion, and minimising environmental impacts.
Individual movements include business and leisure trips, tourism activities, major events and the distribution of freight. Berkeley Lab studies the effects of these travel patterns to identify ways to ease congestion and decrease energy use.
Transportation
Urban mobility refers to the movement of both people and goods through transportation services. The choice of mode is dictated by cost, technology, availability, preference and travel time (distance). According to Eltis, a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan serves as a framework that assists cities in managing movement to align with policy goals such as sustainability, inclusion and resilience.
As automobile ownership and urban sprawl spreads rapidly, public transit’s modal share declines steadily. To address this challenge, Transit-Oriented Development can be employed, which clusters development around public transport hubs. High quality public transport services that offer broad coverage with reduced emissions and affordable fares also can transform urban mobility – walking and cycling remain popular forms of transport for city dwellers while car sharing services like Chauffeur a la Demande or Padam Mobility’s Committed Car-Sharing also contribute towards inclusive urban mobility solutions.
Performance of urban transportation systems relies on millions of individual decisions and interactions made every day, which Berkeley Lab models in order to find ways to ease congestion, decrease energy use and enhance mobility in urban environments.
Suburbs
Given their central place in American mythology and dreamscape, it’s remarkable that there has been so little serious urban research about them. Most scholarly urban research focuses on cities and metropolitan areas; while there may be one category for principal cities (i.e. cities with population >1,000,000), none specifically addresses suburbs.
Suburbs encompass everything from residential neighborhoods that appear part of an established city to isolated outer districts and gated communities catering specifically to upper classes. Many times they were originally small towns or villages which have since been integrated into urban centers through growth.
Suburbs’ proximity to city centers makes them ideal for business, entertainment and recreation activities. Residents in suburban areas enjoy more space, less congestion and improved environments than those living in city areas; additionally, their disposable income tends to allow for higher maintenance costs than living within cities themselves.
Employment
As populations expand globally, job access becomes an ever more vital component of human well-being. WRI’s focus on mitigating transport pollution – which contributes to climate emissions and poor air quality – while simultaneously ensuring cities offer diverse jobs within an hour’s travel time for most residents is critical to ensuring quality life for everyone. We help cities create cleaner public transportation vehicles, encourage walking and cycling as forms of transportation, develop micromobility services such as sharing e-scooters/bikes.
Our work extends beyond conventional travel demand models that focus exclusively on privately owned vehicles to include ride-hailing services and future technologies such as autonomous and battery electric vehicles. This workstream of the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities also intersects with our United States and Energy programs.
Environment
Transport within cities has an enormous environmental impact in terms of mode shift, energy efficiency and long-term climate resilience. This research cluster explores how cities are responding to these challenges through urban planning, policymaking, engineering and atmospheric chemistry.
Berkeley Lab researchers utilize high-performance computing technology to uncover ways of relieving congestion, reducing energy use, and optimizing travel patterns. They do so by modeling all of the decisions travelers make when traversing complex transportation systems.
People are becoming more aware of their mobility choices and are choosing alternative modes of transport more often, particularly in megacities with heavy air pollution levels. On-demand ride apps have encouraged more people to choose public transit instead of private vehicles in many cases, and cities can leverage new services, technologies and policy interventions to decouple travel demand from economic growth while simultaneously creating low-carbon mobility trajectories. Integrating electromobility into city planning can further help decrease emissions by prioritizing cleaner modes and cutting co-pollutant use within transport systems as well as energy efficiency measures and co-pollutant reduction efforts.