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This thesis justifies, designs and tests a new transport appraisal technique – the Transport Quality of Life (TQoL) model. In the United Kingdom the New Approach to Transport Appraisal (NATA) is presently used to appraise the economic, environmental and social impacts of transport projects. Although recently updated, NATA still does not include the assessment of individual’s travel experience – and yet, to make fully informed decisions on the impact of future schemes, it is important to understand more about passenger’s current journey quality. This thesis thus explores the potential of Quality of life (QoL) techniques as one means of addressing this gap in appraisal methods and scope. For the purposes of this thesis, TQoL is defined as the passenger experience of travel. Through the thesis a TQoL model was progressively refined and developed –from an initial Mark I model to a more evolved and developed Mark III model - to produce an appraisal tool that highlights differences in journey experience. To develop the model and to determine whether a TQoL approach was a valuable addition to transport appraisal, QoL techniques were applied to the transport networks of Glasgow and Manchester. In each city three modes of public transport were analysed to identify the mode providing the highest TQoL. A two-part household survey was used to gather data. The first survey was city-wide to gain the weightings for the TQoL indicators. The second was collected from selected transport corridors to evaluate TQoL. The results were quantified and presented in spider diagrams. T-tests were then used to identify the significant differences in TQoL. Factor analysis on the data from both Glasgow and Manchester showed that a TQoL model can be based on five factors - access and availability, sustainable transit, environment, personal safety and transport costs. Applying the final TQoL model showed that in both locations fixed modes - particularly Light Rapid Transport - provide a significantly higher TQoL compared to bus TQoL. By evaluating transport from the passenger’s viewpoint, the TQoL model can make transport appraisal more comprehensive. The thesis therefore concludes that the TQoL model should be used to supplement existing techniques to enable policy makers and practitioners make better informed decisions about improving the quality of transport. |
