Purpose-The most sustainable forms of urban mobility are walking and cycling. These modes of transportation are the most environmental friendly, the most economically viable and the most socially inclusive and engaging modes of urban transportation. To measure and compare the effectiveness of alternative pedestrianization or cycling infrastructure plans, the authors need to measure the potential flows of pedestrians and cyclists. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach-The authors have developed a computational methodology to predict walking and cycling flows and local centrality of streets, given a road centerline network and occupancy or population density data attributed to building plots. Findings-The authors show the functionality of this model in a hypothetical grid network and a simulated setting in a real town. In addition, the authors show how this model can be validated using crowd-sensed data on human mobility trails. This methodology can be used in assessing sustainable urban mobility plans. Originality/value-The main contribution of this paper is the generalization and adaptation of two network centrality models and a trip-distribution model for studying walking and cycling mobility.

Commuters who travel by train often feel annoyed due to misunderstanding the causes of delays in train traffic. They oftentimes are unaware of the necessity of performing maintenance to stations, tracks, and trains. Main-Train is a serious game developed to teach commuters about rail-maintenance while simulating the difficulty of keeping passengers happy. It is a fast-paced strategy game with a top-down view in which a player can perform maintenance actions on stations, tracks, and trains. By using commuter happiness as a base metric, MainTrain attempts to elicit empathy from players dissatisfied with scheduled maintenance so that they gain a better appreciation of the need for scheduled maintenance. This is coupled with the need to schedule maintenance for several components of a rail network, encumbering a player while teaching them about different aspects of rail maintenance. To examine the effectiveness of the game, the results of a user study are presented.

No abstract