Tourism, Public Transport and Sustainable Mobility
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Tourism, Public Transport and Sustainable Mobility
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Overview
This book offers a comprehensive global examination of the relationship between public transport and tourism as well as exploring other sustainable transport modes. It offers a unique view by analysing tourism through the public transport lens and vice versa. The volume provides an account of how the public transport experience can be improved for tourists so that its value can be maximised and a greater number of people can be encouraged to shift modes. It features a wide range of case studies and examples showing how the tourism industry, as well as regional economies, communities and the environment, benefit when public transport is widely used by tourists. The book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of tourism and transport as well as destination marketing organisations and tourism, transport and urban planners.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781845416003 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Channel View Publications |
| Publication date: | 02/03/2017 |
| Series: | Tourism Essentials , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 234 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
C. Michael Hall is Professor in the Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His key research interests are sustainable tourism, tourism planning and policy, global environmental change and urban planning.
Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn is Postdoctoral Associate at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore. Her main research interests are travel behaviour, urban planning and tourism marketing.
Yael Ram is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Tourism Studies, Ashkelon Academic College, Israel. Her research interests are sustainable mobility, cultural eco-system services and sustainable tourism.
C. Michael Hall is a professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His recent book publications include Contemporary Tourism (with C. Cooper, 5th edn, Goodfellow, 2022) and Sense of Place and Place Attachment in Tourism (with N.C. Chen & G. Prayag, Routledge, 2023).
Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn is Postdoctoral Associate at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore. Her main research interests are travel behaviour, urban planning, and tourism marketing.
Read an Excerpt
Tourism, Public Transport and Sustainable Mobility
By C. Michael Hall, Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn, Yael Ram
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2017 C. Michael Hall, Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn and Yael RamAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-600-3
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Introduction
Transportation, in general, refers to the movement of people, goods, information and/or energy. In this book we are focused on the transportation of people and, in particular, those who are participating in tourism activities. Transport is essential for tourism as, quite clearly, unless an individual is able to move between their home environment and another destination they are unable to be a tourist. Although there is a substantial body of literature on tourism transport (see Duval, 2007; Page & Connell, 2014, for an overview), much of this has been focused on aviation, cruise ships and cars. In contrast, there is much less literature on public transport and tourism despite the important role it plays in moving tourists around and within destinations and its value in moving tourists between destinations (Kagermeier & Gronau, 2015; Le-Klahn, 2015; Le-Klahn & Hall, 2015; Orsi, 2015). This book therefore seeks to address the critical role that public transport plays in tourism with respect to movement, as well as its part in the tourist experience and its significance for destination and tourism sustainability.
Those readers from a tourism studies background will be familiar with the definitional difficulties of 'tourism'. Yet, as discussed below, the concept of public transport is also surrounded by significant definitional issues. This first chapter seeks to outline some of the different ways in which public transport is understood and how this particular volume will use the concept. It also outlines the importance of public transport for tourism and the role that tourism can play in supporting the provision of public transport services. As will be stressed throughout the book, public transport is also important not only for regional sustainability and individual accessibility, but is also increasingly recognised as being significant for developing more sustainable tourism products as well. However, before discussing the role of public transport in the provision of tourism services and products, the chapter will provide an overview of how tourism and public transport are defined.
Defining Tourism
The term 'tourist' is the concept used to describe those consumers who are engaged in voluntary temporary mobility away from their home environment (Hall, 2005). The key conceptual points here are 'voluntary', 'temporary' and mobility (Coles et al., 2004). If involuntarily movement is involved, the individual mobility may be a function of war or disaster and the individual described as a 'refugee', or if the individual is transported by force, then it may constitute a case of 'trafficking'. If an individual moves from one location to another on a permanent basis then they are usually referred to as an 'emigrant' by the country of departure and 'immigrant' by the country of arrival.
The concept of mobility in the context of tourism refers to the capacity of individuals to move from one location to another. In order to be able to do this, individuals need to be able to overcome various economic, social and technological factors that act as constraints on tourism-related mobility (Cooper & Hall, 2016), these include:
Income: sufficient disposable income is required;
Time: the amount of time available to an individual for travel is a key determinant of how far people can travel and also influences destination selection;
Political rights: individual domestic and individual mobility is subject to political and legislative jurisdictions. Under international law there is no right of automatic access to another country for example;
Health: poor health, frailty and/or disability may constrain travel options;
Information and Communication: information influences tourism destination with respect to destination, accommodation and activity selection;
Safety and security: negative perceptions of the potential impacts of criminal, health and political risks affect destination choice and decision to travel;
Legislated holidays: the availability of statutory work and school holidays is a significant influence on travel patterns, although it should be noted that the taking of holidays is also influenced by organisational and national cultures;
Location: the relative location of where someone lives on a permanent basis in relation to transport is a significant constraining factor on travel behaviour because of the relative degree of accessibility. The relative location of transport infrastructure relative to consumers therefore affects both the costs and pattern of travel;
Gender: acts as a constraint on travel because of fears over personal security or cultural issues regarding the appropriateness of travel;
Culture: tourism is understood differently within different cultures, including attitudes towards tourism, particularly when temporary movement away from home is associated with what may be regarded as 'non-essential' behaviours. The cultural context is also extremely important for the influence of family on travel decision making.
There are substantial challenges with respect to the statistical analysis of tourists, and hence tourism, with different definitions often being applied by countries even though the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the United Nations (UN) have recommended a common statistical framework (see below). Nevertheless, the principle features that need to be defined in a statistical or 'technical' approach to tourism include:
• The purpose of travel, e.g. the type of travel, such as business travel.
• The time dimension involved in travel, which frames the minimum and maximum periods of time spent away from permanent residence and time spent at the destination.
• Situations in which travellers may not be defined as tourists, e.g. the voluntary nature of their travel, whether they are military or whether people are in transit from one location to another.
With respect to the definition of tourism and tourist the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs and UNWTO (2010) recommendations on tourism statistics identify three basic forms of tourism:
Domestic tourism, which comprises the activities of a resident visitor within the country of reference either as part of a domestic tourism trip or part of an outbound tourism trip
Inbound tourism, which comprises the activities of a non-resident visitor within the country of reference on an inbound tourism trip
Outbound tourism, which comprises the activities of a resident visitor outside the country of reference, either as part of an outbound tourism trip or as part of a domestic tourism trip. (UN & UNWTO, 2010: 15)
International travel consists of both inbound and outbound travel, and refers to situations in which the country of residence of the traveller is different from the country or countries visited. From this perspective
International tourism comprises inbound tourism and outbound tourism, that is to say, the activities of resident visitors outside the country of reference, either as part of domestic or outbound tourism trips and the activities of non-resident visitors within the country of reference on inbound tourism trips. (UN & UNWTO, 2010: 15)
International visitor: An international traveller qualifies as an international visitor with respect to the country of reference if: (a) he/she is on a tourism trip and (b) he/she is a non-resident travelling in the country of reference or a resident travelling outside of it. (UN & UNWTO, 2010: 16)
From the perspective of the country of reference, a domestic traveller qualifies as a domestic visitor if: (a) s/he is on a tourism trip and (b) s/he is a resident travelling in the country of reference. A domestic trip is therefore 'one with a main destination within the country of residence of the visitor. An inbound or outbound trip is one with a main destination outside the country of residence of the visitor' (UN & UNWTO, 2010: 14). An additional category is that of a same-day visitor or excursionist, for example an international day tripper or excursionist (for example, an international visitor on a cruise ship) should be defined as a
visitor residing in a country who travels the same day to a country other than which he/she has his/her usual environment for less than 24 hours without spending the night in the country visited and whose main purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the country visited. (World Tourism Organisation, 1991)
Defining and Conceptualising Public Transport
The term 'public transport' is typically associated with conventional forms of mass transportation such as scheduled bus, train or commuter ferry services. However, most people would not associate the term with other forms of passenger transportation, such as taxis, shuttles or ride sharing. Yet all of these services share some of the key characteristics of public transport services. (Ministry of Transport, 2016: 3)
There is no widely accepted definition of public transport. Like the tourism phenomenon, the concept of public transport is approached from a variety of perspectives that reflect not only changes in transport technology and how people access them but also the changing role of the state, contemporary governance and the emergence of public-private partnerships. As Glover (2011: 2) observes, 'Understanding what constitutes public transport can assist in understanding the respective roles of public transport and private transport and resolve some of the confusion that arises from efforts to use private transport modes to address public transport problems'.
Drawing on Brändli (1984), Rüetschi and Timpf (2005) note what is likely to be commonly understood by many people when they suggest that public transport is the production of the service 'transport' for masses of people, not just individuals; this service is completely fixed in space and time by means of the timetable; there is always a chauffeur, thus eliminating the need to drive oneself; and trips involve more than one means of transport (including walking), that is, passengers have to change at designated interchanges. 'Based on these properties public transport denotes the set of services for the transportation of people according to a predefined schedule (fixing place and time) and subject to published conditions of use, employing multiple modes of transport' (Rüetschi & Timpf, 2005: 27). However, it should be noted that such conceptions of public transport are being substantially challenged by current changes in transport technology, e.g. the emergence of driverless vehicles, changes in information and communications technology (ICT), e.g. the development of applications that allow an individual to call small scale public transport vehicles to provide pick up, and transport organisation, e.g. public transport services being available on-call rather than fixed by timetable. These issues have also been recognised in a public transport futures project run by the Ministry of Transport in New Zealand
Many of the changes that are likely to influence the future development of the transport system are driven by technology. In the last few years in particular, we have seen a rapid proliferation of new transport related technologies and business models that are changing the way people travel. Further changes to the transport system are on the horizon. For example, it is now widely assumed that autonomous vehicles will play a role in our future transport system, even if the precise impact that they will have is unclear.
Many of these new transport options do not fit neatly into widely held interpretations of what the terms 'private transport' and 'public transport' mean. While the meaning of these terms has previously been obvious, neither term has been precisely defined. These terms are no longer sufficient to describe the full suite of transport options that are available today. (Ministry of Transport, 2016: 3)
Public transport by mode
Public transport usually serves to describe a group of particular modes of transport, including buses, ferries, light rail, subways, commuter rail and regional or inter-urban rail. For example, for Farag and Lyons (2012) public transport means: train, coach, bus, tram and underground (with taxi and air travel excluded). Similarly, the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) is the peak organisation for public transport authorities, operators, policy bodies and research organisations, with more than 1300 member organisations in 92 countries. The public passenger modes of members include metro/underground, bus, light rail, regional rail, suburban rail and water transport. Barter suggests
As used here, it refers to passenger transport services which are available to the general public and which are run regularly (or semi-regularly) on fixed (or semi-fixed) routes. It is equivalent in common usage to the North American term, transit.
The word 'public' in public transport need not imply state ownership, nor even public sector management or planning. With this conception of public transport, taxis are excluded but 'jitney' style services by minivans are included. In some cities, shared taxis can straddle a grey area at the boundary between taxi service and fixed-route public transport. (Barter, 2008: 104)
One issue with approaches towards public transport definition by mode is that it often tends to have a very 'Western' focus. For example, Wergeland (2012) notes that in 2009, more than two billion passengers were ferried in about 8 million trips – all ships included, a figure not far behind that of air transport. Asia dominates the ferry passenger market and is responsible for over 40% of the global market. Ferries are an important contributor to multi-modality and carried 252 million cars, 677,000 buses and 32 million trailers in 2009, with about 85% of this market being on roll-on–roll-off services in developed countries (Wergeland, 2012).
However, Glover (2011: 3) suggests that a mode-based approach has limitations, 'there is no uniform relationship between modes and the role of governments; even within one urban transport system there can be a multitude of arrangements and variations of the state's role for a single mode'. Mode-based approaches to definition are nevertheless convenient but raise difficulties when engaging with informal or semi-informal services, i.e. Uber or rickshaw drivers depending on the jurisdiction, or whether all forms of collective/mass transport should be described as public transport. Indeed, the term collective transport as applied to modes and services is widely used in the public transport literature (e.g. Banister, 2005), and often used interchangeably (e.g. McManus, 2005). Rodrigue et al. refer to collective transportation interchangeably with public transit and as one of the three broad categories of urban transportation and mobility.
The purpose of collective transportation is to provide publicly accessible mobility over specific parts of a city. Its efficiency is based upon transporting large numbers of people and achieving economies of scale. It includes modes such as tramways, buses, trains, subways and ferryboats. (Rodrigue et al., 2013: 206)
Collective transportation and shared mobility are therefore distinguished from individual transportation and freight transportation. Given its potential relevance for tourist mobility it is also informative to note how individual transportation is defined:
Includes any mode where mobility is the outcome of personal choice and means such as the automobile, walking, cycling and the motor cycle. The majority of people walk to satisfy their basic mobility, but this number varies according to the city considered. For instance, walking accounts for 88 percent of all movements inside Tokyo while this figure is only 3 percent for Los Angeles. (Rodrigue et al., 2013: 206)
Public transport by vehicle and system ownership
A widely used approach is to consider public transport as occurring when a service is owned by a government entity and private transport, being that which is privately owned (Glover, 2011). From a governmental perspective, what is defined as public transport depends on the particular jurisdiction (Kübler & Schwab, 2007). However, the notion of a clear-cut divide between government and private entities is completely misplaced given the changing nature of governance, especially in Western societies, and the growth of public-private partnerships (PPPs) as well as the corporatisation of government agencies so that they act like private businesses. PPPs are 'working arrangements based on a mutual commitment (over and above that implied in any contract) between a public sector organisation with any other organisation outside the public sector' (Bouvaird, 2004: 200). This definition highlights the importance of the concept not just referring to cross-sectoral contractual engagement, i.e. via the sometimes controversial contracting out of public services to the private sector, but to the potential for synergies and mutuality in partnership relations, often through the creation of new structures and programs. PPPs are widely used in public transport provision (Burke, 2016; Gordon et al., 2013; Osei–Kyei & Chan, 2016; Tsamboulas et al., 2013). The nature of PPPs is illustrated in Figure 1.1. PPPs can be categorised with respect to organisational form and the mutual dependence that exists in the partnership relationship. Four main categories of partnership are identified from this perspective with joint ventures and networked relationships (i.e. one mode such as train timetabled to connect with another mode such as bus even under different ownership). The PPP concept includes private-NGO partnerships as well as private business-public agency relationships (Mendel & Brudney, 2012). Given the range of mixed and hybrid models of public transport service delivery, partnerships are also possible between all three sectors, as well as intra-sectoral partnerships, i.e. between different public authorities and agencies, sometimes also in different jurisdictions. As Glover (2011) describes, 'the complexity of current transport systems defies such an easy categorization'.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
2 Tourism Demand for Public Transport
3 Local and Intra-Destination Public Transport
4 Long-Distance and Inter-Destination Public Transport
5 Tourism and Public Transport Planning, Operational Management and Marketing
6 Futures and Conclusions
References
Index