Integrated model for walkability and bikeability assessment around railway stations. Pilot application on Val D’Ala, Rome

Walkability and bikeability are recognised as primary factors in promoting active mobility, acting as foundational principles in contemporary urban planning. These factors may become crucial for the improvement of sustainable accessibility to strategic urban areas, such as railway stations. The node-place dual nature of railway stations generally makes these sites and their urban surroundings highly competitive centralities, especially in metropolitan areas, as they express a high ‘enabling potential’, thus attracting investment for regeneration purposes. Although the literature offers various methodologies for the study and evaluation accessibility, walkability and bikeability, there is still a lack of a consolidated, widely adopted and interdisciplinary approach that allows systematic and comparative analyses in the gravitation area of railway stations. This paper presents the first results of research developed in the framework of the Italian Sustainable Mobility Centre (CNMS), involving academic and business partners, aimed at filling the gap and developing a systematic suite of methods, indices and tools, for supporting sustainability assessment of regeneration projects related to train station areas in metropolitan contexts. The workflow of the methodological approach, based on GIS analysis techniques, audit protocols, machine learning and behavioral choice modelling, is presented together with an experimental application on the case study of Val D’Ala in Rome. The outcomes are expected to both refine scientific and technical knowledge and improve business procedures.