Railway stations as spaces for the new mobility. A case study to analyse correlations between urbanisation processes, accessibility of public transport infrastructures and modal shift

Within transport systems, interchanges cover a primary role as places where accessibility to different modes of transport must be realised effectively. Among interchanges, railway stations are poles within the urban heritage, increasingly the subject of renovation projects, and represent a great opportunity to make rail services, public transport, and soft mobility more attractive. This research aims at understanding how Italian travellers perceive the quality of railway stations, trying to identify the priorities among certain design, constructional and functional interventions capable of revitalising their attractiveness. The methodology involved the design of a questionnaire capable of identifying significant correlations between attitudinal and behavioural variables through an exploratory factor analysis. The survey reached out around 400 respondents through a snowball sampling plan. The factor "sociality and daily life" showed the importance that people attribute to the vitality of urban places. However, the other factors revealed that, to change or maintain people habits in favour of intermodal mobility, travellers consider the overall quality of public transport, the cleanliness and safety of the railway stations, the walkability of connections within the node, and the possibility of reaching the station by bicycle. The profiling of respondents using a cluster analysis, based on latent factors, allowed to define tailor-made policies. The results showed how interventions on interchanges can have positive effects on the use of rail transport and on the propensity towards intermodality and sustainable mobility, because a “living” and safe place can mitigate the risk of social degradation, while promoting walking and cycling.