Bus Stop Research Articles

Exploring the factors influencing the use of public transport by commuters living in networks of small cities and towns

The use of public transport is directly associated with a reduced environmental impact for satisfying daily mobility needs. Current research has focused on identifying the factors affecting the use of public transport, elements such as age, car ownership, travel distance, or parking availability having been associated with a direct impact on an individual’s transport mode choice. However, most of these studies focused on the travel behaviour of individuals living in large cities, where the population density is high, and public transport is usually more developed than in small cities and towns. The present study provides additional insights into the impact of eleven different factors on the use of public transport by employees living and working in networks of small cities and towns in Northern Europe. The study uses ordered logistic regression to analyse the data collected in 2019 through a regional travel survey conducted in Agder, Norway. The results reveal that the choice of public transport as a daily commute mode is significantly affected by car ownership, distance to work, parking availability, and ticket prices. Additionally, the results indicate that the odds of employees using public transport increase when the respondents do not have persons in care. On the other hand, factors such as low bus frequency and long walking distances to the home bus stop show a negative impact on the use of public transport. Based on these results, regional and local policy actions are proposed.

Analysis of the Relationship between the Characteristics of the Areas of Influence of Bus Stops and the Decrease in Ridership during COVID-19 Lockdowns

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the areas of influence of bus stops and the decrease in ridership during COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent initial reopening processes. A novel GIS methodology was developed to determine these characteristics from a large amount of data with high spatial detail and accurately assign them to individual bus stops. After processing the data, several multiple linear regression models were developed to determine the variables related to different activities and changes in mobility during lockdown that may explain the variation in demand owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The characteristics related to population and land use were also studied. The proposed methodology can be used to improve transit planning during exceptional situations, by strengthening public transport in areas with a predictably higher transit demand, instead of uniformly decreasing the availability of public transport services, promoting sustainable mobility. The efficiency of the proposed methodology was shown by performing a case study that analysed the variation in bus demand in A Coruña, Spain. The areas with the highest sustained demand were those with low inhabitant incomes, a high population density, and significant proportions of land use dedicated to hospitals, offices, or supermarkets.

The identification of significant features towards travel mode choice and its prediction via optimised random forest classifier: An evaluation for active commuting behavior

IntroductionPhysical activity is the foundation to staying healthy, but sedentary activities have become not uncommon that ought to be mitigated immediately. The study aims to highlight the role of a transport system that encourages physical activity among users by applying an active door-to-door transport system. Users’ mode choice is studied to understand their preferences for active commuting. The use of machine learning has since been ubiquitous in a myriad of fields, including transportation studies and hence is also investigated towards its efficacy in predicting travel mode choice. MethodologyThe application of the Random Forest (RF) model to identify travel mode choice is explored using the Revealed/Stated Preferences (RP/SP) Survey data in Kuantan City during weekdays. A total of 386 respondents were involved in this survey. The efficacy of the tuned RF models towards predicting the travel mode choice is evaluated via the Classification Accuracy (CA) performance indicator. In addition, a Feature Importance study is also carried out in order to identify significant factors that contribute towards travel mode choice. ResultsThe results from the present investigation demonstrated that the default RF model has acceptable predictability for both training and test dataset of users’ mode choice, with a CA of 70.2% and 69.3%, respectively. Upon identifying the significant features and further refining the hyperparameters of the RF model heuristically, it was shown that with 145 trees, the CA improved to up to 71.6% and 70.1% for both the training and test dataset, respectively. Through the feature selection technique, the most significant features that affect users mode choice are total travel time (TT), waiting time at a public transport stop (WT), region, walking distance from the last stop to destination (WD2), and walking distance from home to the nearest bus stop (WD1). ConclusionsThe study has illustrated the efficacy of the optimised RF in predicting travel mode choice as well as identified the significant factors for the selection. The findings of the present study provide significant insight for policymakers to improve the performance of the public transportation system so that the users will benefit in terms of health and well-being from active commuting.

The Effect of 3D Printing on Lightweight Structures. Case Study: Mansoura Public Transport Bus Stop

The Effect of 3D Printing on Lightweight Structures. Case Study: Mansoura Public Transport Bus Stop

An Evaluation of Smart Selangor Bus Service Efficacy

Smart Selangor Bus (SSB) is a free bus service that is a local government initiative as one of the most effective measures for its citizens. It aims to improve the quality and transport system in the state of Selangor. The SSB serves as one of the public transport vehicles carrying passengers around the city without charge regardless of age, occupation, gender or nationality. The purpose of this research is to determine the factors that can contributed to commuter satisfaction and evaluate an effectiveness on subsidized fare free public transport (FFPT) services provided. Data for the study were gathered through questionnaire among passenger of SSB on socio-demographic characteristics, travel behaviour characteristics and question of willingness to changes the mode of transportation and rider’s data depends on type of routes from Klang Municipal Council (MPKlang). The Cronbach’s Alpha test shows that the value is α>0.7 which is it showed the questionnaire to reach the high reliability. The results of this study show that an effectiveness of SSB is significantly related commuter satisfaction on bus stop cleanliness and comfort, bus cleanliness, comfort and safety of the bus and also punctuality and other facilities and also related to the increase in the number of riders every month. Those factors that can contribute to the commuter satisfaction further affect the willingness of Klang residents to switch to public transport mode options and continue to enjoy this free fare public transport facility and at the same time increase the effectiveness of SSB service. These findings provide a vision for better management to SSB stakeholders, especially to funders na

Destinations fostering older adults\u2019 walking for transport: a cross-sectional study from Germany

BackgroundHaving destinations within walking distance can encourage older people to walk. Yet, not all destinations may be equally important. Little is known about the types of destinations fostering older adults’ walking for transport in small and medium-sized towns and rural communities. The aim of this study was to explore the associations between the availability of different destinations and walking for transport among older adults living in communities with less than 100,000 inhabitants.MethodsBetween May and September 2019, self-reported data from 2242 older adults (≥ 65 years) living in the Metropolitan Region Northwest (Germany) were collected within the project AFOOT – Securing urban mobility of an aging population. Data from 2137 study participants were eligible for this analysis. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the relationship between the perceived destination availability of 19 different destinations within a 20-min or 10-min walk from home, respectively, and the engagement in walking for transport. Crude and adjusted models were run separately for each destination and distance category. Exploratory subgroup analyses examined the associations between the availability of destinations within a 20-min walk from home and walking for transport stratified by gender, use of a walking aid, and car availability.ResultsThe availability of each of the investigated destinations within a 20-min walk and of nearly all of these destinations within a 10-min walk from home was significantly positively associated with walking for transport in crude models. Most associations remained significant after adjustment for covariates. The strongest associations were found for the availability of small stores, pharmacy, and bakery. The availability of a bus stop showed the weakest associations and was not significantly associated with walking for transport after adjustment for covariates.ConclusionsThe provision of local amenities within walking distance may be a promising approach to foster older adults’ walking for transport in smaller communities with less than 100,000 inhabitants and to enable active and healthy aging in place. Further quantitative and qualitative research is needed to validate these findings and to better understand older adults’ walking behavior.

Non-adoption decision of biogas in rural Pakistan: use of multinomial logit model.

In 2009, Pakistan introduced a subsidized biogas program to disseminate clean and affordable energy in rural areas. However, the adoption rate did not appear as expected. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the determinants behind the non-adoption of biogas digesters. Detailed information via a structured questionnaire was obtained from biogas adopters and non-adopters, and analyses were performed in two levels. Initially, the study used the multinomial logit regression to elicit the non-adoption behavior. Results depicted family size, risk aversion, cook education (women), kitchen (inside the home), home structure, and non-availability of inputs as significant factors behind non-adoption. Detailed analysis also revealed that the factors like the age of household head, area of the house, cook education (women), location of the kitchen (inside the home), and the distance of the house to the bus stop (minutes) lead towards the potential adoption of biogas. The study also investigated the potential factors behind the long-term sustainability of biogas digesters with the help of binary logit. The results depicted that the kitchen's location (inside the house), cook education (women), training, and subsidy significantly and positively impact the biogas plant's probability of being functional. Based on these results, the study suggested that policymakers increase women's education in rural areas, provide a subsidy to reduce costs and risk, and arrange training for adopters.

Conflicts between bus drivers and passengers in Changsha, China

Bus safety represents an important topic for injury prevention. When drivers experience conflict with their passengers, it likely distracts them from the driving task, both physically and mentally, and jeopardizes the safety of all passengers. However, detailed information concerning the frequency and type of conflicts between bus drivers and passengers is unavailable. We conducted a driver-reported cross-sectional survey to investigate the characteristics of driver-passenger conflict in the past month. The survey was completed in Changsha city, China in August 2019. In total, 779 bus drivers were surveyed. Of 732 drivers who completed the questionnaire, 635 (86.7%; 95% confidence interval: 84.3–89.1%) drivers reported experiencing at least one conflict with passengers in the past month. After adjusting for other demographic variables, drivers who were male, younger, less educated, less experienced as a bus driver, and with a comparatively high self-reported work intensity were more likely to report experiencing conflicts. Of the reported conflicts, verbal quarrels and abuses were most common, followed by “passengers attacked driver with physical objects like sticks or knives” and “passengers spat on or threw objects toward the driver”. Most drivers reported that they had experienced only conflicts causing no physical injury or financial loss in the past month, but a small portion experienced conflicts causing injuries to themselves. The most frequent reasons for driver-passenger conflicts were “passenger refused to pay fare”, “passenger requested to get off the bus at a location that was not a bus stop”, and “passenger was drunk or deliriously attacked the driver”. Bus drivers responded to some of the passengers’ verbal or physical attacks, but not all. Some preventive measures were adopted frequently by bus companies (e.g., bus alarms, protective shields for drivers) but others were not. Least often adopted were efforts to offer safety training for drivers (46.6%) and to offer psychological counseling services for drivers (39.1%). We conclude that bus driver-passenger conflicts are common in Changsha city, China. The conflicts impose a substantial threat to the safety of both drivers and passengers. We recommend multiple preventive actions to reduce driver-passenger conflicts and improve bus safety.

Dockless bike use as a last-mile solution: Evidence from Reno and Sparks, Nevada

Dockless bike-sharing schemes have become more prevalent in cities around the world. While interest grows in studying their usage in larger cities with well-established transit systems, their role in expanding mid-sized cities that are more automobile-dependent remains understudied. This paper evaluates how dockless bike-sharing can provide a last-mile solution by connecting existing bus stops with destinations through an analysis of data collected from 111,155 unique trips over a five-month trial period of a dockless bike sharing scheme in Reno-Sparks, Nevada, USA in the summer of 2018. We classify trips by frequency of use and adjacency to bus stops into four categories and apply multivariate models to determine the link between trip occurrence and the immediate environment. Results indicate that repeat users’ trips that begin or end near the same bus stop are more strongly linked with proximity to bicycle lanes, but tend to be farther from parks and casino resorts. Repeat users typically start trips in denser areas of the city with higher shares of renter-occupied units and higher shares of households without a vehicle, and ended them in less dense areas with higher percentages of white, non-Hispanic residents compared to one-time users. We find differences in association of travel with food service, education, health services, and casino resorts. This suggests that some benefits may be realized by deploying bike sharing in mid-sized cities, but must be weighed against findings that show repeat usage in areas that align with common early transportation technology and service adopter profiles.

The Influence of Robot Designs on Human Compliance and Emotion: A Virtual Reality Study in the Context of Future Public Transport

As robots enter everyday environments, they start performing tasks originally performed by humans. One field of application is the public transport sector. The deployment of autonomous transport systems comes with a lack of human contact persons for help, guidance, and crowd management. This elicits challenges regarding redirecting and managing passengers. Current solutions on platforms can be replaced or enriched with service robots whose task includes crowd management as well as social interaction. This study investigates how the human-likeness of a robot influences the compliance and emotions of public transport users. A Virtual Reality experiment was conducted (N=33) to evaluate two different robot designs in a bus stop boarding scenario. The two robot designs differ in terms of humanoid appearance. In different experimental trials, participants had to perform a given task that was nullified by instructions from one of the two robots. Additionally, the dissonance of the situation was altered so that the environment either justified the robot's interference or not. Compliant behavior, pleasure, and arousal ratings, as well as task processing times were recorded. The experiment included an individual interview and a post-study questionnaire. The results suggest that future deployment of service robots has the potential to redirect passengers. In dissonant situations, clear reasoning must be given to make the robot effective. However, the robot's visual appearance has a more substantial impact on arousal and subjective preferences than on evoked behavior. The study implies that the presence of a service robot can influence peoples’ choices and gives hints about the importance of giving a reason. However, objectively, the level of the robot's humanoid appearance did not make a difference.

Real-time temperature monitoring at the bus stop in São Carlos / Monitorização da temperatura em tempo real na paragem de autocarro em São Carlos

This paper aimed to investigate, both by simulations and experiments, the report from the passengers that use the bus stop located in Praça dos Voluntários, next to the Municipal Market in São Carlos, in the countryside of São Paulo state, Brazil. Since the installation, users have claimed an excessive increase in the temperature in the region below the covering. We started characterizing in the laboratory the optical properties for the polymeric material used for the structure, and we simulated refraction and reflection effect at the covering surface. From the experimental point of view, we designed, fabricated and tested a low-cost monitoring station with the purpose of collecting in-situ data to correlate our model with the measurements. Once installed the station, the measurements showed a good agreement with the theoretical optical model developed for the architectural structure. Moreover, we showed that also if the material is probably the main responsible for influencing excessive heat and temperature increase, the shape and geometry amplify the studied optical phenomena. The reflection and the refraction at the covering add up getting worse the thermal situation and compromising the role of the roofing at the bus stops: to protect the passengers from the sunlight and to reduce the heat detected above the architectural structure.

‘This place is a bus stop’: Temporalities of Zimbabwean migrant men waiting at a Zimbabwe-South Africa border transit shelter

This article explores how temporal disruptions at international borders shape immobile bodies’ experiences and modes of waiting by focusing on irregular Zimbabwean migrant men at the Zimbabwe-South Africa border who have arrived in South Africa but are restricted in moving further into the interior. It argues that waiting is a component of both governing these migrants as well as them seeking agency through the relationship between time, space and humanitarianism in this border regime. This shows how immobilities at ‘carceral junctions’ can be conceptualised as in time as much as in space. The article is based upon four months of ethnographic field research at the ‘I Believe in Jesus Church’ men's shelter in the border town of Musina. The intersections of immobility and temporal agency in this article contribute to a growing body of work that shows that the relationship between resistance and domination in waiting is ambivalent. This article also troubles assumptions about immobility as an experience that leads the inhabitants of humanitarian camps as well as carceral time-spaces to realise the status of ‘bare life’. While imposed forces make assumptions about the future precarious, the precariousness of the future also creates multiple and new possibilities.

Dwell Time Analysis and Priority Granting for Bus Service in Budapest

Public transport has always been a structuring factor in urban development and form. Buses, which are one of the essential public services, do not require expensive infrastructure, can be introduced quickly and run as frequently as necessary to meet the demand. Budapest is known by the diversity of its transportation modes and their high frequency, nevertheless, it still faces traffic congestion issues. Thus, the priority granting for the buses is essential to minimize the travel time delays.This research analysis investigates the bus service's situation on the chosen corridor based on personal data collection in peak-hours at the bus stops and on-board using GPS tracker. This research aims to study the dwelling bus’s impact on car delays and targets to optimize the situation by implementing bus priority. The iterative models coded with Octave calculates the vehicles’ delays function of the arrival time and dwelling time of the bus and analyses all scenarios depending on the time the bus is ready to leave the stop and adjusting it by either holding the bus at bus stops or allowing an immediate departure with speed adjustment or green light extension. The objective of the proposed priority model is not only to minimize the bus delays, but also the average vehicle delays on the different branches of the intersection. The prioritization system takes into consideration the non-violation of the maximum holding time, maximum green time extension and maximum red time in the intersection’s branches where the bus stop exists.

Review: Cinque viaggi (1990–98), by Guido Guidi

Review: <i>Cinque viaggi (1990–98)</i>, by Guido Guidi

Ten Years Before I Met You

Ten Years Before I Met You Blas Falconer (bio) 70 kilometers eastof the capital, I livedin one of many buildings ofthe communist era, the imageof efficiency and utility,though the mines closed years before,Russian no longer required in school.Each morning for work, I walkedtoward the center, though it seemedI'd never get there, pastthe butcher shop, the church,the station, where trains came and went,almost empty, the bar fullby mid-morning. A path up the hill,from which you could seethe whole city—I would goone day. In winter, the skybecame a wall, the snow never ending.At the bus stop, no one spokeEnglish. When it came, late and full,it stopped, but the doorsdid not open. Some nights, I stoodin the orange booth, calling outto anyone who would answer. I grew lean,over the months, shedding whatI brought but didn't need,until my loneliness becamebeautiful, whetting a wantinside me, and when the rowof cottonwoods that lined the streetsbloomed in March, their seedsfloated through the air, a nuisance, butlike a dream. A gift from—whom? Someone tried [End Page 102] to tell me once. I cannotremember. I didn't understand. [End Page 103] Blas Falconer Blas Falconer is the author of three poetry collections, including Forgive the Body This Failure. His poems have been featured by Poetry, Kenyon Review, and The Georgia Review, and his awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange. He is a poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review and teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University. www.blasfalconer.com Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Travel-mode classification based on GPS-trajectory data and geographic information using an XGBoost classifier

Massive Global Positioning System (GPS) trajectory datasets are being produced owing to the advances in mobile sensors, the Internet, and GPS devices. Accurately inferring travel modes from GPS trajectory data can be helpful in transportation planning and modeling, infrastructure design, etc. However, adverse factors such as data noise, differences in sampling rate, and inadequate features have a negative impact on the results of travel mode classification. In this paper, to address such issues, we first propose a preprocessing workflow, which includes data cleaning, segmentation, and resampling, to preprocess raw trajectories. Then, we add new features related to the road and bus stop information for travel mode classification using an XGBoost (eXtreme Gradient Boosting) classifier, along with various basic features of the trajectories. We conducted a set of experiments on the GeoLife dataset using a group of state-of-the-art methods. The results showed that the proposed methods can improve the classification accuracy by using all the classifiers we compared and the classification accuracy using the XGBoost classifier can reach a maximum of 90.41%.

Nonlinear effects of factors on dockless bike-sharing usage considering grid-based spatiotemporal heterogeneity

• Examined the spatiotemporal pattern of BSS using random forest with PDP. • Analyzed the relative importance of influencing factors across different scenarios. • Revealed the nonlinear and threshold effect of built environment factors. • Compared the heterogeneous impact of influencing factors between study areas. To better understand dockless bike-sharing (DBS) usage and advance the knowledge on shared bicycle service, this study empirically investigated the riding behavior in the time and space dimensions based on multisource datasets. Taking Central Business District (CBD) and Beijing West Railway Station (BWRS) as study areas, this study analyzed and compared the DBS usage based on the traffic grid between the two study areas. Furthermore, the random forest (RF) model was applied to investigate the contribution of influencing factors on origin/ destination and origin–destination pair trip volume. Partial Dependence Plots (PDP) analysis was conducted to explore the nonlinear effects of influencing factors. Results show considerable variation across different scenarios. Variables such as government agencies, restaurants, bus stop distance, and metro distance show nonlinear and threshold effects on DBS usage. The findings offer valuable insights for urban infrastructure development and bike rebalancing strategies, and the formulation of green and sustainable transportation policies.

Developing Guidelines for Age-Friendly Buses: a Survey of Older Peoples’ Preferences Regarding Headways, Distance to the Bus Stop and Destinations

Background: Transport providers and policy makers should be guided by research evidence when developing age-friendly transportation services. There are significant gaps in the literature regarding older peoples’ preferences for bus headways, distance to the bus stop and destinations. Therefore, the aims of this study are to 1) quantify the preferred headways for older people, 2) quantify the preferred distance to the bus stop for older people, and 3) list and rank the preferred destinations of older people. Methods: A survey of community-dwelling older people in Hervey Bay and Brisbane (both in Australia) was conducted to quantify the preferences of older people regarding headways, distance to the bus stop and destinations. Results: One hundred participants completed the survey. The majority of older people preferred headways of a maximum of 30 minutes during the day and hourly at other times. The preferred distance to the bus stop was 200m or less. Preferred destinations included cross-suburban travel, leisure destinations, shops, central business district, medical services and other towns. Conclusion: These results contrast with usual practice and industry conventions. Transport providers and policy makers who are interested in providing age-friendly services should attempt to meet these guidelines. They may need to consider innovative approaches in order to meet these requirements.

Mitigation of Insufficient Capacity Problems of Central Bus Stops by Controlling Effective Green Time

Mitigation of Insufficient Capacity Problems of Central Bus Stops by Controlling Effective Green Time

The Effect of a New Subway Opening on House Prices Near Metropolitan Bus Stops in a New Town: The Case of the New Town of Gwanggyo

This study examines the effect of a new subway opening on house prices near metropolitan bus stops, which provide the only means of transportation to Seoul before reaching the subway, in a new town. In the empirical analysis, a difference-in-differences is applied on the Gwanggyo housing market, where the Shinbundang Line has opened in 2016. Using over 4,800 apartment transaction data, empirical results suggest that the opening of the Shinbundang Line has a positive impact on house prices near metropolitan bus stops. Apartment prices increase within 300 m from metropolitan bus stops by up to approximately 10.9% after the opening of the Shinbundang Line. The results imply an overall increase in housing demand in the region due to the expansion of the transportation network. Likewise, the effects on price tend to be more significant in the long term, like in three years’ time, than in the short term, like in one and in two years’ time.