This thesis unravels the long-term relationships between transport networks, land use and travel behaviour at a regional scale. It investigates these relationships by applying various methods to an extensive long-term geo-referenced database, in the case of the Greater Randstad Area in the Netherlands. Its findings shed light on the roles of rail and road networks, land use and spatial policies on the development of cities and the travel behaviour of their inhabitants over time.@en

Transport accessibility is assumed to be a main driver of urbanisation. Like many other metropolitan regions, the Randstad, the population and economic core of the Netherlands has experienced significant urbanisation, transport network expansion and spatial policies aimed to channel urban growth. This paper investigates the long-term relationships between the development of railway and motorway networks, urbanisation, and spatial policies, by using a panel dataset consisting of grid cells measured at six time points from 1960 to 2010. Generalised Estimating Equations analysis was applied to model the built-up area. Predictors include proximity to and accessibility by transport infrastructure, vicinity of urban areas, and spatial policies. Results indicate that road and rail accessibility alike, stably influenced urbanisation, but less than proximity to urban areas. Spatial policies played a significant role in channelling new urbanisation, while preserving the centrally located green and mainly rural area. Remarkably, the legacy of earlier policies is still significant despite shifts in predominant Dutch spatial policies. The findings are expected to be relevant for comparable poly-nuclear areas.@en

Long-term, large-scale empirical studies on the simultaneous development of transport infrastructure and the built environment are scarce. This paper provides a long-term study of the development of the railway network and its impact on the built-up area—and vice versa—using the case study of the Randstad in the Netherlands between 1850 and 2010. The analysis is both qualitative and quantitative. We describe the shares of the built-up area in concentric buffers of 1-kilometer intervals from railway stations and estimate binomial logit models to predict the likelihood of new stations being built based on the amount of the preceding and subsequent built-up area and the likelihood that a new station might have encouraged further growth. Results show that during the early days stations followed existing urbanization patterns. But as time went by, new stations were more likely to be located in undeveloped areas and less likely to be located within the established built-up areas, which were already serviced by existing stations. Moreover, they prompted further growth, increasing the likelihood of more urbanization in their vicinity.@en

Improvements in geographical information systems, the wider availability of high-resolution digital data and more sophisticated econometric techniques have all contributed to increasing academic interest and activity in long-term impacts of transport infrastructure networks (TINs) on land use (LU). This paper provides a systematic review of recent empirical evidence from the USA, Europe and East Asia, classified regarding the type of transport infrastructure (road or rail), LU indicator (land cover, population or employment density, development type) and outcome (significance, relationship’s direction) as well as influential exogenous factors. Proximity to the rail network is generally associated with population growth (particularly soon after the development of railway infrastructure), conversion to residential uses and the development of higher residential densities. Meanwhile, proximity to the road network is frequently associated with increases in employment densities as well as the conversion of land to a variety of urban uses including commercial and industrial development. Compared with road infrastructure, the impact of rail infrastructure is often less significant for land cover or population and employment density change. The extent of TINs’ impact on LU over time can be explained by the saturation in TIN-related accessibility and LU development.

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