(New) Towns
A new town is a planned community designed to be self-sustaining, aiming to improve living and working conditions, and ensuring residents do not have to commute to their place of employment. Typically a new town is located near a large city as it was intended to alleviate the growth problems of urban areas or to decentralize population. Housing is built in neighborhoud areas, with company estates and business parks on the edge of town – good road transport (car-accessibility) is typically part of the design.
Most, especially the first generations, new towns feature a car-oriented layout. The public transit service realized often only links the city centers of the new town development and its’ ‘mother’-city; peripheral links between suburbs in the new town and with other districts (in the city) are not established. At the same time it is becoming obvious that the ideal of self-containment is not achieved: residents of new towns commute to the ‘mother’-city (and other cities) and vice versa. The main challenge of new towns is to promote sustainable transportation and reduce car dependency.
In order to reduce car usage and stimulate public transportation, people have to be provided (new) transit alternatives. However, as the spatial planning of new towns is geared towards car-accessibility and corridor transportation links with their mother-cities, it does not allow easily for new systems to be integrated. Especially systems featuring a larger unit-size will have to be flexible to allow for integration within the existing planning.
To ensure the transit system is economically feasible, an automated and light system makes sense as the transit demand will be moderate. Light transportation systems are likely to be a better fit with the environment. The spatial planning of new towns typically includes parks, greenways (or –wedges) and open spaces, whose outer edges could be used to implement the transit system – on the pre-requisite that the system is environmentally friendly and would fit perfectly with the surrounding environment.
Electronically guided people mover systems can be used to improve the transit links within new towns. The ParkShuttle Rivium is operational in the new town of Capelle aan den IJssel.
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