Field work: Human (Park & Ride scheme in York )

• Hypothesis: The park & Ride scheme in York is an effective transport strategy
• Why location chosen?

  York is a very busy historic city, popular tourist destination, has a population of 200,00 and many people commute into the city each day.

  This means that transport management is needed to avoid congestion across the city.

  York is within easily travelling distance from our school in Leeds.
• Relevant Geographical Theory

  Sustainable urban areas need management of transport to reduce congestion.

  congestion leads to long commute times, stress for commuters, reduced road safety and poor air quality from emission.

  They are designed to reduce congestion in city centre where people use public transport instead of their own vehicles
• Method: Travel survey


  How was it done?

  • Using Tally Chart, We counted traffic & type of vehicle for 15 min & x4 to estimate the no. Vehicles that would pass in an hour.

  Why was it done?

  • To asses how many vehicles were driving to city centre without using p&R site.
  • recorded each type of vehicle->people travelling in cars were likely to be ones who can use the P&R site.
• Method :Travel survey


  Sampling Method:

  • Random sampling the P&R site: chosen because of ease of access. 50% of sites being sampled seemed reasonable to asses.

  Links to Hypothesis:

  • Traffic survey would help us to see how well used the P&R site is used.
• Reasons for presenting methods:

  Plotted bar graph: Travel survey

  • easy to read
  • easy to compare across 3 sites
  • easy to compare with different types of vehicles

  Pie charts: Questionnaires

  • easy to identify small/ large respones
  • clearly shows proportions
• Evaluating methods: Traffic survey


  Problems:

  • only recorded Traffic for 15 minutes at each site on one day.

  Impact on results and conclusions:

  • no accurate understanding of how congested the roads leading to the city centre are at different times of the day.

  Solutions:

  • Return to the P&R at diff. At times & days to gain more accurate results about how well the scheme is used.

  improvements to results and conclusions:

  • Reduces the chance that our results and conclusions that P&R sites aren’t well used. sites might be busier at diff. Time/days
• Evaluating Methods: Questionnaires


  Problems:

  • Small sample size due to small number of people to interview. this meant random sampling used instead of stratified.

  Impact on results and conclusion:

  • using random sampling may mean the views of all groups of the population that use the P&R sites are represented (women/men/ age/etc)

  solutions:

  • Stay at the P&R fires for longer periods of time to achieve bigger stratified sampling

  Improvements results and conclusions:

  • Our results and conclusions would be reliable based on the views of the while population of people that use the P&R
• conclusion: the P&R scheme in York is having limited success. Therefore we are rejecting the hypothesis that it is a successful urban transport scheme. This is because our traffic counts show that many of the roads leading into York city centre are still congested.
• What were the potential risks?

  • Road safety
  • speaking to strangers for questionnaires

  How could the risks be reduced?

  • Only use pedestrian crossing
  • be polite. Stay working in groups of 3