An Integrated Approach to Transportation and Land-Use Planning for the Analysis of Former Railway Nodes in Sustainable Transport Development: The Case of the Vasco-Navarro Railway

Abstract

The disappearance of kilometers of railways that once structured their surrounding territory has become an alarming issue in the last decades. These days, several disused railway infrastructures have been converted into non-motorized transport infrastructures. Meanwhile, most of the railway nodes have been abandoned or reused without consideration of the linear infrastructure. This paper argues that former railway nodes can have potential in their surrounding environment and as part of a non-motorized transport axis, i.e., to again be nodes of the former linear infrastructure. Accordingly, the objective of the paper is to analyze the potential of disused railway nodes, focusing on the possibilities they could offer in the area, and defining future approaches for more sustainable development. For that purpose, relations between former railway nodes and their surrounding environment are studied considering transport and land use in the non-motorized influence areas. Existing node/place models were adapted and a multiaxial model was created to measure the balance between transport and land use and typify the defined area. The proposed methodology was applied in a case study, classifying node areas in different development typologies that will be related to different future approaches.