Assessing the Performance of Modal Interchange for Ensuring Seamless and Sustainable Mobility in European Cities

In the European Union, more than 70% of the population lives in urban areas. Achieving more efficient and low-carbon mobility is crucial to ensuring urban systems are sustainable and tackling important challenges, such as reduction of CO2 emissions, air and noise pollution, and traffic congestion. Identifying effective strategies and design solutions that boost multimodal mobility and effective interchange among different sustainable means of transport can be a significant contribution in this area. This paper presents an easy-to-use methodology to assess the performance of policy measures and design solutions-oriented to foster modal interchange, with special regard to the configuration of the interchange hubs. The methodology is based on identifying key factors necessary to ensure an efficient multimodal interchange and the different types of interchanges that are frequently present in the urban realm. By grouping the key factors into nine different domains, and by weighing the key factors in relation to their importance, the methodology creates a decision support system to assess the performance of the current interchange, as well as of different planning and design scenarios. This methodology has been developed in the framework of the Interreg Europe MATCH-UP project and is conceived to support both designers and decision-makers whenever they have to reorganise existing transport hubs and policies, or design and plan new ones.