Promoting environmentally friendly mobility behaviour: Award for outstanding dissertation in interdisciplinary transport research

The Karl Vossloh Innovation Award 2020 goes to the Dresden transport and traffic scientist Prof. Angela Francke. In her award-winning dissertation, she analyzed pricing systems such as the city toll, parking fees and public transport fares and how they could be used to promote sustainable mobility. The prize is awarded every two years by the Karl Vossloh Foundation for outstanding dissertations in transport research and is endowed with 10,000 euros.

The official presentation of the prize took place on 12 November 2021 as part of the "Day of the Faculty" of the "Friedrich List" Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences at TU Dresden (TUD). The prize was presented by Dr. Martin Vossloh, Chairman of the Board of the Karl Vossloh Foundation.

Angela Francke completed her doctorate at the faculty in 2019. The topic of her dissertation, which was awarded by the Karl Vossloh Foundation, was "Analysis of differentiated pricing systems in urban transport - requirements for a user-friendly design to promote environmentally friendly mobility behaviour".

The Board of Directors and the Board of Trustees of the Karl Vossloh Foundation justify the awarding of the prize to Angela Francke as follows: "Ms Francke's work is dedicated to a difficult topic of the highest practical relevance for individual mobility, which is also hotly debated in public: a fair, sustainable and transparent pricing of public and private urban transport. With her interdisciplinary approach, she combines different theoretical approaches from various disciplines in a sound manner, creatively employs new methods and develops suggestions for transport planners on how - or how not - public transport fares, city tolls or parking fees should be designed."

Angela Francke already realised that she "really enjoys" scientific work during her diploma studies in Transport Economics at the TUD. After her studies, she worked as a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the TUD's Chair of Traffic and Transportation Psychology. Since October 2021, she has been head of the Chair of Cycling and Local Mobility at the University of Kassel. "In my many years of research work, the topic of active mobility and urban planning crystallised more and more - in connection with innovative approaches and visions of a liveable city." For her, the focal points are sustainability, road safety and user behaviour.

Her dissertation was supervised by Prof. Bernhard Schlag. He was head of the Chair of Traffic and Transportation Psychology at TU Dresden from 1994 to 2016. He is very pleased about the award for his former doctoral student: "With the Karl Vossloh Innovation Award 2020, this dissertation receives outstanding recognition, which is also an incentive for future research achievements for the author as well as for the Chair of Traffic and Transportation Psychology, the Institute of Transport Planning and Road Traffic and for the "Friedrich List" Faculty of Traffic and Transport Sciences at TU Dresden."

On the significance of Angela Francke's dissertation for transport and traffic research, Bernhard Schlag says: "Angela Francke investigated pricing structures of varying complexity in the areas of city tolls, parking fees and public transport fares. Within the framework of the joint research training group 'DIKE - True Costs in Transport of the Chairs of Traffic and Transportation Psychology and Transport Ecology of the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences at TU Dresden, she has further developed approaches of behavioural economics in a way that provides new impulses for the practical design of pricing systems in the transport sector."

The second supervisor of the dissertation was Prof. Udo Becker, Head of the Chair of Transport Ecology at the TUD until October 2021.

Short vita Prof. Angela Francke
Angela Francke completed her diploma studies in Transport Economics at the "Friedrich List" Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences at the TU Dresden in 2004. Her diploma thesis at the Chair of Traffic Transportation Psychology dealt with the topic: The Theory of Psychological Reactance - an Application to Rail Price Reform. Between 2004 and 2021, she was a research assistant at the faculty, including at the Chair for traffic psychology. She also worked at the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) at TU Dresden for the International Climate Protection Scholars. In 2019, she completed her PhD at the Chair of Traffic Psychology as part of the DIKE - Kostenwahrheit im Verkehr, TU Dresden, funded by a PhD scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the TU Dresden Graduate Academy. Since October 2021, Angela Francke has held the professorship for Cycling and Local Mobility at the University of Kassel. She continues to maintain close ties with Dresden and the TUD.

More about Angela Francke at University of Kassel

About the Karl Vossloh Foundation
The Karl Vossloh Foundation was established on 3 April 1995 by the siblings Anni and Reinhild Vossloh in honour of their father Karl Vossloh (a German entrepreneur, engineer and inventor, 1882 - 1960). On the one hand, the foundation expresses the social understanding of the Vossloh family. On the other hand, it promotes research where Karl Vossloh significantly contributed his inventiveness: in the field of railway construction. Today, not only pure "railway builders" are addressed. With the topic of mobility as a megatrend and the numerous challenges for the transport of the future, the foundation would like to support this on a broad (and interdisciplinary) basis.

More about the Karl Vossloh Foundation I More about the Karl Vossloh Innovation Award

Contact Faculty of Transport Sciences "Friedrich List", TU Dresden:
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Birgit Claire Kleiner
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