The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Urban transport decides who can reach jobs, schools, care and safety, how much time and money that costs, and how much it pollutes. Networks are shaped by land use, investment and the needs of people who walk, cycle, ride public transport or drive. This page sets out how urban mobility works and fails, how access and safety are measured, and what evidence serves the city and transport authorities that plan it.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Urban mobility is the movement of people and goods within cities by walking, cycling, public transport and vehicles. It decides who can reach jobs, schools and care, at what cost in time, money and pollution. Land use, network design and investment shape it, and accessibility measures show who is left out.
For transport and mobility, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and true-colour imagery, framed on India; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For transport and mobility, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and true-colour imagery, framed on India; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
Urban journeys, transit and infrastructure. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Where homes, jobs and services are located sets how far people must travel. Separating them across a sprawling city lengthens trips and favours cars.
Road space, signal timing and investment priorities decide whether walking, cycling and public transport are safe and practical, or whether driving is the only option.
People without cars, with disabilities, or living on the urban edge spend more time and money to reach opportunities. Informal transport often fills gaps that formal networks leave.
Road deaths and injuries depend on speeds, street design, vehicle standards and enforcement. Pedestrians and cyclists bear a large share of urban road deaths.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | The ease of reaching destinations such as jobs and services, measured by those reachable within a time or cost. |
| Mode share | The proportion of trips made by each mode of transport. |
| Sustainable urban mobility plan | A strategic plan to meet a city's mobility needs while improving quality of life. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population with convenient access to public transport | percent of population | per assessment | SDG indicator 11.2.1 methods | ESTIMATED |
| Jobs reachable within a stated travel time | count by mode | per assessment | Accessibility analysis | MODELLED |
| Road traffic deaths | deaths per hundred thousand population | annual | Police and health records | OFFICIAL |
| Mode share | percent of trips by mode | per survey | Household travel surveys | REPORTED |
| Household spending on transport | share of household budget | per survey | Household budget surveys | ESTIMATED |
| Transport emissions | tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent | annual | City emissions inventories | ESTIMATED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| GTFS public transport feeds | Schedules, routes and stops published by agencies | Open, licence per agency |
| OpenStreetMap | Street, path and transit networks | Open, ODbL |
| WHO Global status report on road safety | Road traffic deaths and safety legislation by country | Public, WHO terms of use |
| UN-Habitat SDG 11.2.1 data | Access to public transport in cities | Public, UN-Habitat terms (to check) |
| Household travel surveys | Trips by purpose, mode and time | Licence per survey |
Cities and Built Environment prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| City transport authorities | Which corridors and modes to invest in | Accessibility maps; mode share; safety analyses |
| Road safety agencies | Where to change speeds and street design | Crash analyses by location and user |
| Land use planners | How to place housing and jobs to shorten trips | Accessibility evidence |
How access to jobs and services varies by neighbourhood, income, gender, age and disability.
Which bridges, tunnels, interchanges and corridors, if lost, would cut access for many people.
Flooding of underpasses and underground lines, heat damage to rails and roads, and power loss to signals and electric transit.
Whether networks can move people out and responders in during emergencies.
Transport networks have hubs and bottlenecks. Network theory shows that removing a few highly connected links can fragment access far more than random damage. Many cities depend on a small number of river crossings or central interchanges.
Transport shapes land use and land use shapes transport. Car-oriented growth spreads destinations and increases exposure to congestion and fuel shocks; transit-oriented growth concentrates demand along corridors.
Electrification couples transport to the grid. Electric rail, buses and vehicles reduce emissions and local pollution but make mobility depend on power supply during heatwaves and storms.
| Method or data | What it shows | Its limit |
|---|---|---|
| Travel surveys and smart-card data | Who travels where and when | Miss informal transport and non-users |
| Network models | Critical links and redundancy | Simplify behaviour under stress |
| Accessibility analysis | Reach to jobs and services | Depends on time thresholds chosen |
| Incident records | Disruption causes and duration | Inconsistent reporting |
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.