Connecting mobility services and spatial territory typology: an application to a former coal mining area in France

When studying “urban unities” as qualified by The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), it may exist different types of towns. They can be centre, periurban or rural areas which could require different transport services. This distinction is based on the percentage of active residents working in an urban centre with an economic approach or upon physical features such as land which has been built and their distances between buildings. Our research field consists in a wide Urban Transport Authority, the “Syndicat Mixte des Transports (SMT) Artois-Gohelle” that counts 115 towns that are globally qualified as urban but they do not share the same degree of transport accessibility. However, they present very different densities of inhabitants. After defining a new typology of towns the paper questions the possibility to adopt transport policies, improving the whole mobility in a context of sustainable development, to specific travel behaviours by connecting transport modes (TM) in these different areas. These behaviours, such as commuting to work or travelling for leisure purposes, are obtained by the Household Travel Surveys (HTS) realised in the SMT Artois-Gohelle.