Quantification of barrier effects of transport infrastructure

Research Project, 2016 – 2022

Transport infrastructure such as motorways and railways create highly effective connections on an urban, regional and national scale. At the same time, these infrastructures can also create barriers in local mobility systems. These barriers can have a series of negative consequences on e.g. social contacts within neighbourhoods and between neighbourhoods, access to facilities and to workplaces, on health and on possibilities for urban expansion. 

Decisions concerning investment in infrastructure projects are usually based on extensive Impact Assessments. For many of the impacts, for example noise and pollution, quantitative and objective ways of measuring have been developed. However, assessments of barrier effects are usually based on qualitative and subjective estimations in the form of a few well-chosen words. This limits the possibility to include barrier effects in the overall evaluation of impacts and creates a risk that these important negative consequences of investments in transport infrastructure are undervalued or disregarded.

This research project aims to develop a GIS-based method for the quantification of barrier effects of transportation infrastructure. The objective is that the method should be able to be used in planning and evaluation of infrastructure projects.