Field Study to Design Public Transportation Network for One of the Libyan Cities (The City of Houn is an Example)

Abstract

The cultural and urban development that the cities of the world in general have experienced over the years, including the Arab countries, has led to the existence of many urban problems, including urban transportation problems, mainly represented by traffic congestion, noise, and environmental pollution in all its visual and audio forms. Through this, the need for many systems to manage life aspects within these cities emerged from a social, economic and political perspective, including public transportation systems, which are considered one of the most important causes of urban stability in many cities of the world, whether developed or developing countries. The urban transportation system in Libya (as one of the developing countries in the world) suffers from the lack of planning based on scientific foundations for the transportation system - especially the public transportation network - that takes into account data collected in the field on how to design public transportation time tables according to the number of passengers, the length of the line, the trip time, and the number of buses in public transportation network, hence the need to conduct such a field study to plan public transportation networks within Libyan cities is very important. In this study, the city of Houn was chosen as a model for designing a public transportation network. The methodology was divided in two stages. The first stage was for data collection. A questionnaire (1080 surveys) was conducted for the main and active places in the city, including (educational, service, and employment places), as well as traffic counts were conducted by monitoring and recording traffics in the field during the morning and evening peak periods. The second stage was for analyzing and studying the data using Excel program, converting them into charts, comparing and studying the collected data. Based on analyzing and studying the data, the study concluded with the design of public transportation network in which the bus route for the network was determined, the locations and number of bus stops were determined, taking into account the required distances between stations. In addition, the number of buses was determined as well as the size of buses and the frequency of buses for morning and evening peak periods. Keywords: public transportation, questionnaire, traffic counts, peak hours