Connecting Mobility Services and Spatial Territory Typology: an Application to a Former Coal Mining Area in France

The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) qualifies as “urban unities” every town inside urban agglomerations. But in these urban organizations, centres, suburban and/or rural areas can exist and we suspect they require differentiated and/or specific transport services. Based on an economic approach, the distinction between urban and suburban or rural areas depends on the percentage of active residents working in an urban centre. In a geographic approach, this distinction is based upon physical considerations such as land which has been built on and distances between buildings. Our research field is organised in a wide Urban Transport Authority, the “Syndicat Mixte des Transports (SMT) Artois-Gohelle” and includes 115 towns overall. These towns are globally qualified as urban but they do not share the same degree of transport accessibility. Moreover, they present very different densities of inhabitants. The aim of this paper is to build a typology of towns based on a combination of these factors and to imagine related services that could provide a better choice between car use and Public Transport (PT) use, improving the whole mobility in a context of sustainable development, and Transport Oriented Development (TOD). The developed methodology allows us to establish such a classification for the SMT ArtoisGohelle towns. Based on the Household Travel Inquiries realized in this area in 2005 and 2006, it can be classified by travel behaviour such as commuting for work or travelling for leisure purposes in order to know the different transport modes (TM) used for these journeys. This work is funded by the French Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais and ADEME.