Sustainable mobility: “exchange poles” between transport networks and urban structure

An intermodal hub can be defined as a place where transportation networks areorganized to facilitate intermodality between different modes. Intermodal hubsshould intrinsically have an urban dimension and be globally designed as “plugflows”, being interfaces between transport networks and territory, being anelement to create “urbanity”. Intermodal hubs focus technical, social, urban,transport, service aspects and they play a multi-modal, multi-service, multioperatorrole. Several studies highlight the need to “measure theinterdependence” among the various aspects of urban problems, avoiding toospecific methodologies. The increasing congestion in urban centres and urbanparking problems encourage mobility managers to increase “exchange poles” forthe interconnection between private and public transport to out of city centres.Several authors consider the “exchange poles” as planned around three roles:“transport”, “urban” and “service” function. The first is considered for thearticulation of networks, the second through the integration of its closeenvironment and the “service” for association with the movement of travellersand the information. These poles are located in large open areas, away fromdowntowns, easing the separation of city spaces and the concentration of desirelines, but it limits the urban inclusion of these important poles. Primarily, thesenodes are scheduled to organize and ease the matching between bus lines,helping the expansion of the transport networks, to become a preferred entrypoint for the users. In addition, they must be places that fit the urban context witharchitectural quality and design, taking into account the surroundingenvironment. Finally, the improvement of information and users' comfort shouldbe considered developing commercial actions to integrate urban entertainment.