Abstract
The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of demand-responsive transport (DRT). This paper provides a historical overview of DRT experiences, understanding their pros and cons. In addition, it presents the case study of Mokumflex, a 12-month DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a close collaboration with the private enterprise that operated the service and also with the local bus operator, we performed an empirical before and after comparison. These insights help to understand the impacts of DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and public transport. A set of indicators was chosen for the intermodal comparison: travel distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population's perception. Ridership dropped from 78.1 passengers/day to 15.9 passengers/day, however, for being “demand-tailored”, passenger-km reduced even more, going from 1252.8 km/day to 136.6 km/day, hence reducing the costs and GHG emissions per passenger. In regards to population's perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.
Highlights
Urbanization is not a recent trend and neither are the challenges it raises
As the objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of the replacement of fixed bus lines for demand-responsive transport (DRT), only the outcomes of Amsterdam Noord will be presented
Considering that the objective of this work is to evaluate a DRT project going beyond the traditional operational metrics, a broader set of indicators was selected to compare the regular public transport and the demand responsive offer, considering environmental and social impacts, following the 5E framework proposed by Van Oort et al (2017)
Summary
Urbanization is not a recent trend and neither are the challenges it raises. In 1968, the “first truly comprehensive official look at urban transportation in the light of modern technological capabilities to deal with modern urban problems” was published. The 5E framework, proposed by Van Oort et al (2017), for example, considers the value of public transport by its economic, envi ronmental and social impacts, and regarding its effectiveness (transporting people reliably, safely and reducing congestion) and its efficiency (good usage of (limited) space) When it comes to the analysis of mobility and urbanization, a classical problem is how to serve low-density and dispersed settled areas, where regular public transport is usually not feasible on financial grounds. This study aims to evaluate the impacts coming from the trans formation of a fixed bus line into a demand-responsive system, helping urban planners and operators in their decision-making process. It is based on data from a Dutch DRT pilot called Mokumflex. This paper concludes with a summary of both previous and current systems, demonstrating the weaknesses and strengths of each
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