Bridging the Urban-Rural gap: Towards evaluating the impacts of regionally integrated transport strategies

Current challenges in the transport system are further aggravated when moving from urban to rural settings, requiring regionally integrated multimodal transport strategies like MaaS. To help overcome planning and implementation challenges, this research introduces iTRIPP, a GIS-supported methodology designed to (1) forecast the impacts of current and forward-looking regional transport strategies, and (2) map their regional spatial distribution to identify their benefits and disparities. Additionally, it will showcase iTRIPP's capabilities in simulating the regional impacts of implementing MaaS in two scenarios: (1) covering the entire West of England Combined Authority (WECA) region, and (2) focusing on its urban areas. The overall regional results highlight an urban-only MaaS scenario as less beneficial, leaving non-urban areas lacking in access to sustainable transport alternatives and, consequently, the associated environmental, social and economic benefits. On the other hand, even though a few urban-rural disparities were identified, the regional MaaS scenario could facilitate a more equitable distribution of these impacts, resulting in benefits across the region. iTRIPP articulates various building blocks associated with the impacts of transport strategies. The innovation in iTRIPP lies in the flexibility of the code and its compatibility with open-source platforms, ensuring its role in reproducible transport research. This will facilitate the further enhancement of iTRIPP's interoperability and updates to the developed code to incorporate more dimensions of the transport sector. It will facilitate stakeholders in analysing and communicating the benefits of regional transport strategies, ultimately allowing for adaptation of these strategies according to need and encouraging a deeper understanding and increased citizen engagement.