Form Of Public Transport Research Articles

Promoting new public transport systems

Concerns about the impact of the car on the environment, on quality of life and on congestion levels have led to increased recognition among transport engineers that alternatives to the car must be promoted. This means that public transport has to form a core part of any sustainable transport system. One form of public transport that is seen as an alternative to the car in towns and cities is light rail. However, there are problems involved with promoting these systems and in anticipating their impacts on travel behaviour. In the past, forecasts of the patronage figures on these systems have been much higher than the actual patronage figures achieved. Transport experts must find a way to make these systems more successful by discovering what the public want from the systems. This paper describes a series of interviews carried out with potential users of Croydon Tramlink. It outlines their attitudes and the concerns they held about using Tramlink. In particular, the surveys examine the impact that publicity from the relevant authorities had on people's modal choices. The paper shows that people were very unimpressed by the publicity and in some cases it had a negative impact on their decisions. The conclusions of the paper have some interesting implications for transport policy and public transport promotion. Suggestions are made on how the lessons learned about people's decision-making processes regarding new light-rail systems could be used to more effectively promote future systems.

Ending the War on Drugs: A Serious Challenge for the Field of Prevention

Several decades ago just before publication of the Surgeon General’s landmark report on the hazards of cigarette smoking, I was part of an ad-hoc group of public health specialists and applied behavioral scientists whom the Public Health Service called to Washington to consult on what the government might do to address the hazard of cigarette smoking in the United States. Out of these meetings the U.S. Government developed a very broad, multi-faceted, and not altogether coherent strategy for reducing the number of smokers in this country. At the time of those meetings, cigarette smoking was not only highly prevalent; it was also an accepted part of individual behavior in restaurants, bars, many forms of public transportation, work places, and public buildings. Cigarette smoking was ubiquitous in movies. Lighting and smoking cigarettes was part of every actor’s everyday stage craft. Today the United States is, by comparison with almost every other country in the world, an amazingly smoke-free environment. The vast majority of restaurants have sections reserved for nonsmokers; in some states smoking is altogether prohibited in restaurants, office buildings, and other public places. Cigarette manufacturers face law suits for damages brought by state governments. Smoking is banned in all domestic airlines. In many places, during their breaks, hard core smokers stand furtively outside the entrances of buildings to grab a puff and thus satisfy their insistent addiction. Yes, altogether too many American adults remain hooked on cigarettes and, although rates rise and fall year by year, an alarming percentage of young people persist in flirting with nicotine addiction. Nevertheless, the combination of public education, judicious warnings, limitations of advertising, efforts of citizen action groups, targeted legal restrictions, and law suits have resulted in a remarkable transformation of our society’s stance towards this major agent of disease.

A spoken dialog system for the Dutch public transport information service

In the Netherlands there is a nationwide premium rate telephone number that can be dialed to obtain information about various forms of public transport. In t996 this number was called more than twelve million times. Human operators managed to handle only about nine million of these calls. In order to answer more of these calls, a spoken dialog system was developed to automate part of this service. The automation component concerns information about journeys between two train stations. The starting point of our research was an existing German information system. This system was ported to Dutch. A bootstrapping method was used to collect the data, which in turn were used to improve the system itself.

Nationalisation or privatisation: Policy and prospects for public transport in Southeast Asia

Numerous investigations of urban transit in Southeast Asia have revealed that the industry is owned and operated by private enterprise, makes few demands on public resources, and provides a very high standard of service. Given the apparent adequacy of existing public transit, this paper examines the reasons for a continued interest in government regulation, state ownership, and foreign involvement at a time when a contrasting set of policies—advocating privatisation and self-reliance—are being promoted in other sectors of Southeast Asian economies. Government intervention is frequently justified on the basis of alleviating traffic congestion, improving productivity and service, reducing air pollution, more comprehensive planning, and economies of scale. In practice, however, few of these objectives have been achieved without substantial costs in terms of direct state subsidies or large-scale foreign borrowing. Therefore, there must be other considerations underlying contemporary policies. Research reported in this paper has found these to be concerned with government aspirations to gain political status by building prestigious projects and monuments, elimination of ‘traditional’ forms of public transport in favour of a more ‘Western’ image; a political desire to exert stronger control over the industry; and foreign pressure to export sophisticated products and services. Whereas the effects of such policies do not appear to be in the interest of the population as a whole, since they contribute to unemployment, to higher public transit fares and taxes, to increased economic instability and to reduced mobility, they do remain the realities underlying policy and prospects for public transport in Southeast Asia.

Australian Urban History: a Progress Report

Australia was possibly ‘the first suburban nation’. Already at the end of the nineteenth century the American statistician Adna Weber noticed the peculiar demography of this ‘newest product of civilization’ whose population, he calculated, was more urbanized than any other country's. Yet the large coastal cities in which most town—dwellers lived were less densely occupied—more suburbanized—than the cities of Europe or North America. Here, Weber suggested, was ‘the representative of the new order of things towards which the modern world is advancing’. Later research on urban development has largely confirmed Weber's opinion. Australian city-dwellers enjoyed among the highest per capita incomes and levels of individual home-ownership in the nineteenth-century world and were among the first to display the low birth and death rates characteristic of ‘modern’ societies. They were early and enthusiastic users of railways, tramways and other forms of public transport. In 1900 about one in five Austalians lived in detached houses in the suburbs of the capital cities but by the early 1970s the proportion had risen to about three in five. A traveller flying in over Sydney or Melbourne now sees ‘the newest product of civilization’ spread out in a monotonous mosaic of green lawns, terra cotta roofs and sparkling backyard swimming pools.

Personal Rapid Transit II: Progress, Problems, and Potential in a Promising New Form of Public Transportation Reported at the 1973 International Conference on Personal Rapid Transit

Personal Rapid Transit II: Progress, Problems, and Potential in a Promising New Form of Public Transportation Reported at the 1973 International Conference on Personal Rapid Transit

Urban transportation in North America 4. para‐transit

Para-transit is defined as a form of public transportation since the user is transported in a vehicle driven by someone else, the ride is shared with others, and service is provided in an organized and systematic way. It is considered that para-transit can take many forms such as dial-a-bus, jitneys, shared taxis, subscription services, van pools, and public automobile service using small vehicles. In summary, para-transit refers to a class of urban transportation modes that utilises small vehicles on existing streets and highways. The author describes various forms of para-transit and provides information on the operations of existing demand responsive transit systems in the United States, Canada and Europe. Reference is also made to the jitney, or shared taxi, and examples quoted of their operation in the USA, Caracas, Venezuela and Manila in the Philippines. Other systems are also described, and it is suggested that the objective of all such systems is to improve mobility by making better use of what already exists and at a reasonable cost. The major impediments to realizing these benefits are felt to be in the areas of regulations, insurance, control of vehicles and drivers, and labour. /TRRL/

Beyond the automobile

The Problem: Over-use of the automobile, in transportation jobs for which it is neither technologically nor economically qualified. This over-use causes land-waste, safety problems, air pollution, property-damage, and tremendous public and private costs. Solutions are available in the form of new and attractive forms of public transportation — forms which can be installed and operated at less cost than automobiles and their related facilities. But don't people prefer autos? Wouldn't they have to be ‘educated’ out of them and into alternative transit? Doesn't public transit require massive subsidies? Can we afford it? These are among the common misconceptions that have to be cleared up. Discuss the history of public transit in the U.S., with emphasis upon the Bay Area — where there was a comprehensive system of electric traction lines and other services, all provided by private enterprise. Discuss the effects upon this system of competition from socialized roads and highways - whose users have no way of sensing the real cost of the facilities which they necessitate. Under such conditions, there can be no valid conclusion concerning real public preference — since the auto did not displace the railway in a normal competitive system.

Recent developments in battery electric vehicles

The paper reviews improvements made in the design and manufacture of battery-powered vehicles and their components during the past ten years or so. Batteries, controllers, motors, chargers and transmission systems are discussed, and a brief commentary is made on the effects of modern tyre equipment on vehicle performance. Comparisons are made in some instances with earlier designs of vehicles and components. Many new vehicles have been designed to cover applications made necessary by the competitive nature of modern commerce, and some of these are illustrated and described. The now familiar chaotic road conditions in our cities and towns are worsening, and the advantages of battery electric traction in reducing noise and atmospheric pollution have led to a reappraisal of electric cars and other forms of public transport. Some recent designs are discussed.

LUBRICANT SPECIFICATIONS

AS we have already observed, the road transport undertaking which operates large numbers of vehicles has a very real interest in the quality of the lubricants they use, for this has a direct influence on running costs. This is also true of the older form of public transport, the railway, where in fact the quality of the oils and greases may be even more important.

Ground Engineering

The development of aircraft during the war was such that a new and reliable means of transport had come into existence before the Armistice was signed. It possessed the supreme advantage of greater speed than any other form of public transport, although the commercial possibilities of the new service had still to be proved.A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Sir Frederick Sykes, and as a result of a series of meetings held during March and April, 1919, framed the first Air Navigation Regulations and the directions issued thereunder, which became a part of the law of the land on April 30th, 1919.In this paper I propose to deal with the sections of the regulations and directions concerning ground engineers.