Aalborg Universitet Making Light Rail Mobilities Olesen, Mette Publication date: 2014 Document Version Early version, also known as pre-print Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Olesen, M. (2014). Making Light Rail Mobilities. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? 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Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: October 01, 2021 MAKING LIGHT RAIL MOBILITIES INDUSTRIAL PHD THESIS BY Mette Olesen – AALBORG UNIVERSITY AND COWI A/S 2 COLOPHON Making Light Rail Mobilities Industrial PhD Thesis January 2014 © 2014 Mette Olesen Department of Architecture, Design & Media Technology Section for Urban Design Centre for Mobilities and Urban Studies (C-MUS) Aalborg University, Denmark COWI A/S Department for Urban Planning and Transport Supervisors Claus Lassen Niels Melchior Jensen Printed by: akprint, Aalborg MAKING LIGHT RAIL MOBILITIES CONTENTS 3 CONTENTS 6 PREFacE 8 SUMMARY 12 dansK RESUMÉ 17 PART 1 20 1.INTRODUCTION 1.1 Multiple Realities of Light Rail 20 1.2 The Development of a European Light Rail Practice 22 1.3 Light Rail as Analytical Object 24 1.4 Research Questions 25 1.5 The Structure of the Thesis 27 34 2. StatE OF THE Art 2.1 Prologue 34 2.2 Previous Studies on Light Rail Planning 34 2.3 Studies of Urban Transit from a Mobility Perspective 39 2.4 Epilogue 43 46 3.THEORETICAL ApproacH 3.1 Prologue 46 3.2 Towards a Relational Understanding of Light Rail Mobilities 46 3.3 Mobility Is ‘More than A to B‘ 47 3.4 Theoretical Inspiration from Actor–Network Theory 49 3.5 Analytical Approach 51 3.6 Analytical Framework 63 3.6 Epilogue 63 66 4. CASE STUDY DESIGN 4.1 Prologue 66 4.2 Multiple Cases of Light Rail Mobilities 66 4.3 Collecting Data: Methods 73 4.4 Reflection on Ethics and Validation of Findings 78 4.5 Epilogue 79 82 5. POSITION OF THESIS witHIN THEORIES OF SCIENCE 5.1 Prologue 82 5.2 Deriving Knowledge from Practice 82 5.3 Abductive Reasoning - Learning from Practice 86 5.4 Normativity in Research 87 5.5 The Ontological and Epistemological Orientations of the Project 89 5.6 Epilogue 91 4 95 6. CASE ANALYSIS Reading guide 95 A. Best in the World - bergen light rail 99 B. Mission Tramway - Angers light rail 141 C. Hauptstadt wird zur Tramstadt - Bern Light rail 177 D. The green city - Freiburg light rail 207 244 7. CROSS-CASE ANALYSIS 7.1 Prologue 244 7.2 Central Themes 244 7.3 The Political and Cultural Production of Light Rail Mobilities 245 7.4 The Material and Spatial Concepts of Light Rail Mobilities 247 7.5 The Process of Making Light Rail Mobilities 251 7.6 Epilogue 256 258 PART 2 262 8. JOURNAL articlE 1: FRAMING LIGHT RAIL PROJECTS 282 9. JOURNAL articlE 2: EXPLORING “LIGHT RAILSCAPES” 309 10. FurtHER ACTIONS FOR PracticE 10.1 Prologue 309 10.2 Some Basic Steps 309 10.3 Actions for Strategically Involving the Qualitative Perspective in Light Rail Planning 313 10.4 Epilogue 322 324 11. CONCLUSION 11.1 Themes for Future Research 331 336 REFERENCES 348 APPENDIX MAKING LIGHT RAIL MOBILITIES PREFACE & SUMMARY 5 PREFACE & SUMMARY PREFACE This thesis contributes to the debate on light rail mobilities in both research and planning practice. The thesis approaches this debate from a strategic urban- and mobility-planning perspective and also supplements the more rational economic and technical sides of the debate, where focus has been more on the choice of technologies and the socio-economic outcomes of such projects. From the outset, the thesis acknowledges the importance of such debates but also sees an interesting and lacking political and strategic perspective in this mobility mode. Since practice shows that many light rail projects are built despite being impractical from an economic perspective, there must be other stronger rationales governing the decision to build them, and these rationales are important elements to in- clude and critically reflect upon in the debate. Since the rationales in many cases seem to be based on discourses around urban development, regeneration and redesign, it is also relevant to unfold how these mobilities materially and spatially become an integrated part of city morphology, and which spatial and strategic effects this has from an urban development perspective. The thesis is the result of an interesting journey into a subject that was completely new to me. Educated as an urban planner, I have always been interested in the societal trends and discourses that have been influential in the ways our cities develop. My interest in history and politics has guided the research process and is of great importance to the out- come of the thesis. Furthermore, my shift from the urban planning and mobilities research group to the urban design research group in 2012 has also impacted the end result of the thesis. The new research environment provided insight into the architectural and urban design perspective, which piqued my nascent interest in the material and spatial side of light rail mobilities. I became aware of the way strategic prioritisations can be physically traced as ‘frozen discourses’ in the urban environment, and this perspective proved to be important for the theoretical discussions and findings in the thesis. I started this work with the ambition of writing a thesis consisting of a collection of arti- cles, where the aim from the beginning was to publish three journal articles. The richness of the empirical data collected as well as my personal desire to explain all the complex findings from each case study, however, proved to be too extensive to fit this rigid journal style. Therefore, this thesis has evolved into a hybrid composed of a monograph and a collection of journal articles. The thesis is therefore structured in two major parts, where the first part contains the research design and in-depth case analysis, and the second part contains the two journal articles that outline the findings of some of the cases analysed. The second part also contains a ‘takeaways for practice’ section, as well as the overall conclusions of the thesis. I have put my heart into this work for the last three years, and have nearly turned into one of the ‘rail freaks’ whose enthusiasm for the complexity and history of railways amazed MAKING LIGHT RAIL MOBILITIES PREFACE & SUMMARY 7 me when I started my thesis. Many other people have also had great influence on the work I present in this thesis. First I have to thank my two supervisors, Claus Lassen and Niels Melchior, for their valuable comments and support throughout the research process. I also want to thank the interviewees who have contributed to this thesis who are all mentioned by name in chapter 6, and all the people involved in ‘Danish light rail practice’ who also provided great insight into the complex process of making light rail mobilities. I want to thank COWI for making this work possible, and my colleagues at COWI, who have been of great support in the research process on both a personal and the profession- al level - it has been a real pleasure being a part of the team and having the opportunity to interact with practice. I also want to thank my colleagues in the Urban and Mobility Planning Research Group at the Institute of Planning, where I spent the first two years of my Ph.D., and my new colleagues in the Urban Design Group at the Institute of Architec- ture, Design and Media Technology, where I spent the last year. You have all contributed with interesting perspectives and comments on my work that I greatly appreciate, and you have laughed at my lame humour in the lunchroom, which is equally appreciated and has made the last three years a wonderful time. I want to say a special ‘thank you’ to some of my Ph.D. colleagues: Maria, Ditte, Simon, Cathrine, Anne, Ida, Tina, Jacob, Jacob, Anne Marie, Morten and Nina - thank you for all the great moments in which we have shared our experiences, enthusiasms and frustrations. It has been great having you all as part of this journey. I would like to thank the TSU group at Oxford University who hosted be for a research visit in the autumn 2013. Finally, I want to thank my husband Bo, for being as enthusiastic as I am about my topic; thank you for listening to all my talk about light rail planning with the same curiosity through all three years. During this process you have even sometimes managed to deliver the central point better than I when friends and family have shown interest in the theme! Also thanks to my family for their support throughout the process - I was glad to have such a caring and loving base to stand on during the most frustrating parts of this process. I hope you will all enjoy my contribution to the light rail debate! Mette Olesen, Aalborg January 2014.