Transport nodes and the city: designing the interchange for boosting a seamless mobility

As in the EU more than 70% of inhabitants live in urban areas, acting for achieving more efficient and low-carbon mobility is crucial to ensure sustainable urban systems and to tackle important challenges such as reduction of CO2 emissions, air and noise pollution and traffic congestion. Identifying effective strategies and designing solutions that boost multimodal mobility and effective interchange among different sustainable means of transport can be a relevant contribution in this sense. This thesis has been developed in the framework of the Interreg Europe MATCH-UP project and aims to give a contribution for achieving this goal. After a general overview about the concepts of intermodality and initiatives undertaken at European and Italian levels for boosting a more efficient and sustainable mobility, the research identified different transport nodes that occur in urban environments and the features that lead to successful experiences. Consequently, a set of key factors that ensure the efficiency and urban integration of the nodes within the urban environment has been identified. This identification of the key factors has been the starting point for defining an articulated evaluation system that has the aim of identifying the main shortcomings of existing transport nodes and supporting their redevelopment and reorganization. The evaluation system was designed by rating the weight of the different key factors according with the importance of the different interchange nodes (rank) and the services to be provided, in order to establish which are the most appropriate in each situation. Therefore the thesis proposes a methodology for the evaluation of new projects, making evident their enhanced effectiveness in the different domains that affect a transport node. Finally, the methodology has been applied to the case study of Rimini’s railway station, where a new redevelopment of the station and its surroundings is foreseen.