Impact Of Public Transport Research Articles

Analysis of passenger transportation and the public transportation impact on the reduction in a smart city

The state of atmospheric pollution is determined by the growth of the population, the amount of transport and the generated volumes of emissions. The object is the process of analyzing passenger transportation in the city. The subject is passenger transport analysis methods. Purpose: analysis of passenger transportation and approaches to optimization of public transport based on the concept of a smart city. Tasks: analysis of passenger transportation, classification of existing conceptual approaches to optimization of public transport with low carbon emissions, systematization of existing methods, means and types of neural networks in smart cities, analysis of successful implementation projects. Methods of statistical analysis, linear and non-linear interpolation, logical generalization, comparison, grouping, analysis and synthesis. Results: the analysis of passenger transportation in the city revealed that statistical data sets indicate a decrease in the main indicators of passenger traffic and an increase in the volume of emissions of carbon-containing compounds. The classification of existing approaches to the optimization of public transport is carried out according to the priority of public transport, hybridization and electrification of vehicles and the implementation of IT monitoring. During the systematization of methods and means in smart cities, the following are highlighted: smart transport systems; electric vehicles; transport sharing networks; smart applications and information systems; innovative payment systems; unmanned vehicles; information boards and announcement systems; networks of bicycle paths and equipped sidewalks; environmental monitoring systems. Among neural networks, recurrent, convolutional, and deep neural networks have been proposed as those that contribute to route optimization and traffic prediction. Conclusions: the statistical analysis of passenger transportation established that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is an unresolved task for both public transport and the transportation system. It is proposed to include methods and means that optimize public transport, reducing the carbon footprint of the initiatives of implementing the concept of a smart city, which are successful all over the world. It is proposed to use recurrent, convolutional and deep neural networks to optimize passenger transportation in smart cities.

The impact of public transport on the diffusion of COVID-19 pandemic in Lombardy during 2020

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world, affecting health, economy, education, and social behavior. Much concern was raised about the role of mobility in the diffusion of the disease, with particular attention to public transport. Indeed, understanding the relationship between mobility and the pandemic is key for developing effective public health interventions and policy decisions. In this work, we aim to understand how mobility, and more specifically mobility by public transport, has affected the diffusion of the pandemic at the regional scale. We focus our attention on Lombardy, the most populated Italian region severely hit by the pandemic in 2020. We explore static mobility data provided by Regione Lombardia, the regional service district, and dynamic mobility data provided by Trenord, a railway operator which serves Lombardy and neighboring areas. We develop an inventive pipeline for the dynamic estimation of Origin-Destination matrices obtained from tickets and passenger counts. This allows us to spot potential triggers in pandemic diffusion enhanced by the concept of proximity induced by mobility. We also develop a novel perspective for assessing the relationship between mobility and overall mortality based upon a functional approach combined with a spatial correlation analysis aimed at identifying the diversified effects on mortality in small geographical areas as a result of the restrictions on mobility introduced to contrast the pandemic.

A Review of the Public Transport Services Based on the Blockchain Technology

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the technical aspects and challenges in existing public transport services. This review highlights the challenges and solutions for the main subsystems of public transport services, being focused on the influence of public transportation in an urban area with high demographics to identify solutions based on blockchain technology for future development of the current management platforms. More than 2000 research papers, published since 2018 and until now, have been analyzed in Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. The keywords used for the analysis of blockchain integration in public transport are related to technology, services, management, the use of electric vehicles, and the impact of public transport on the environment. In this research, we analyzed why there is a need for integrating the blockchain technologies in public transport.

The impact of public transport on regional development in the Trnava self-governing region

The accessibility of regional centers by public transport in a defined area is a very specific problem. Depending on the organization of public transport, there is a potentially related phenomenon – social transport exclusion. The aim of the study is to express the existence of a relationship between public transport and regional development in the rural self-governing region Trnava. At the same time, we identify municipalities – more precisely areas – with reduced transport accessibility in relation to their regional development and we determine the most advantageous means of public transport for the population who does not have the possibility to use a car. The procedure was to use an electronic database of train and bus timetables to obtain information about the studied characteristics for the return journey during the 24 hours of working days (Tuesday). We found that rail and combined transport have better quality in about half of the region’s municipalities. The Pearson correlation coefficient of product of moments indicated that the value of the correlation between the number of points for public transport and points for regional development is only 0.36, and therefore there is no strong connection between them. However, the individual extreme and average values of these indicators and especially their sub-components have shown us that there is a certain dependence between these values. The results show that despite a lower impact on public transport on regional development, it has a more decisive influence, leading to the strengthening of public transport.

Impact of public transport on the infrastructure development of modern cities

Impact of public transport on the infrastructure development of modern cities

Integrated optimization for feeder bus timetabling and procurement scheme with consideration of environmental impact

Undesirable environmental impact of public transport (PT) and saving operational cost are of major importance to deal with. For a design of a new bus line, this plays a significant role on which fleet to purchase. The objectives of this work are to integrate vehicle procurement scheme and timetabling for a new feeder bus line with the constraint of purchasing budget, so as to (i) not only meet passenger demand, but also minimize their waiting time, and (ii) minimize the operator’s costs, including the consideration of environmental impact of PT, which can be measured by the penalty function of greenhouse gas emissions. A bi-objective optimization model for a feeder bus line is formulated to minimize operating cost and to minimize passengers’ waiting time. Timetables with even and uneven headway as well as single and multiple vehicle types are compared to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. The solution approach is based on a decomposition heuristic method to tackle the procurement scheme and vehicle assignment, and on a real-number-coding genetic algorithm to generate departure times for each trip. Buses in three different types are considered: a mini electric, a liquefied natural gas, and a hybrid diesel with capacities of 35, 50, and 70 passengers, respectively. A case study in Beijing shows that, compared with the current timetable, the optimized MT-Uneven-headway timetables save 70.4% and 54.2% passengers’ waiting time and reduces the total cost by 64.1% and 31.2% for the morning and evening peak hours, respectively, indicating that the integrated method is effective.

Traffic congestion relief associated with public transport: state-of-the-art

Public transport (PT) influences the urban road system in many ways, including traffic congestion, environment, society, safety and land use impacts. While there are many studies focusing on the benefits of PT, research on congestion impacts, a fundamental component of any analysis of transport performance, associated with PT has received little attention. This paper aims to review the traffic congestion impacts of PT and how they are assessed. Traffic congestion is most commonly related to vehicle travel; yet, the real measure of congestion in transport systems is people travel. This paper looks at the appropriateness of existing traffic congestion measures and how suitable they are for measuring the impact of an existing PT system in the short-term. The literature review indicates that most studies relating to the congestion impacts of PT have used vehicle-based congestion measures. People-based measures may be more appropriate in assessing PT impacts. The paper also proposes a new framework for looking at the short-term effects of an existing PT system on traffic congestion. It suggests a few areas where further work can be undertaken to improve our understanding of traffic congestion incorporating PT such as exploring the mode shift from PT to car, estimating network-wide PT congestion creation impacts and determining the net congestion impact of PT.

ACCESS: An agent-based model to explore job accessibility inequalities

This paper presents ACCESS, an agent-based model for exploring job accessibility inequalities among different social groups. ACCESS allows for investigation on the impact of public transport and land use policies on the residential location of the working population and their accessibility to job opportunities. ACCESS can be adapted to different realities, allowing to represent societies with diverse socioeconomic disparities. A utility function composed of job accessibility and neighborhood status is maximized by agents during the residential location choice process. The model outputs include Lorenz curves considering the accessibility dimension, as well as Gini metrics to support the analysis of interventions impacts on accessibility inequalities. An empirical case study is performed on the municipality of Sao Paulo, which is characterized by high levels of inequality. Five experiments were simulated considering three different socio-occupational groups. The first experiment includes (i) new public mass rail transport lines, and the other four experiments consider the new transport infrastructure from the first experiment and add (ii) new social housing location strategies; (iii) new job locations; (iv) new jobs and different social housing supplies and location strategies; and (v) provision of social housing based on a government housing program. The results show that ACCESS allowed the residential location of different social status groups to be depicted with a high correlation to the observed situation. Regarding the case study, the results indicate that only having interventions on transport system is insufficient to provide a significant change in terms of inequality. Better results that impact inequality are reached with public mass rail transport interventions associated with land use policies with different social housing and job location programs.

The impact of public transport on the health of work commuters: a systematic review

ABSTRACTAlthough the public transport (PT) commute can form a substantial part of the working day, there is a significant gap in our understanding of how it influences health of those who engage in it. The purpose of this systematic review was to therefore generate evidence from 1972 about the extent to which the PT commute (involving train, bus, subway, tram, or metro) impacts on the mental health, physical health and well-being of the working people. We identified 47 studies in English worldwide involving an empirical quantitative focus which met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 23 studies involved over 500 participants. Although initial multi-modal comparisons showed impact on sickness rate, self-rated health complaints, perceived stress level and reduction in sleep, a more homogeneous analysis of rail commuters showed elevation in salivary cortisol, perceived stress, and affective reactions to crowding. Findings also revealed a bias towards use of endogenous self-report measures. On this basis, we argue that it would be of benefit to test theoretical models to account for more objective measures of job and commuting stress. Recommendations were made for flexible working agendas.

Congestion relief and public transport: An enhanced method using disaggregate mode shift evidence

Mode shift from public transport (PT) to private car in the event of PT withdrawal can increase the level of traffic congestion in urban areas. This increase in congestion is interpreted as the congestion relief impact associated with urban PT. However, existing methods for estimating the impact of PT on relieving traffic congestion have generally assumed a fixed mode shift to car. This paper presents an enhanced method for estimating the congestion relief impact of PT by varying the mode shift to car. First, primary data from a survey conducted in Melbourne, Australia was used to develop a linear regression model for predicting the share of mode shift from PT to car. The Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) dataset was then applied to this model to estimate the potential mode shift for different spatial areas of Melbourne. Second, PT congestion relief impacts were estimated by contrasting the level of congestion in two scenarios: ‘with PT’ and ‘without PT’. This stage was undertaken using the Victorian Integrated Transport Model (VITM), a conventional four step model. The results show that PT operations in Melbourne contribute to reduce the number of severely congested links by more than 63%. Vehicle time travelled and total delay on the road network also reduces by around 56%.

Spatial and temporal disaggregation of the on-road vehicle emission inventory in a medium-sized Andean city. Comparison of GIS-based top-down methodologies

Emission data is an essential tool for understanding environmental problems associated with sources and dynamics of air pollutants in urban environments, especially those emitted from vehicular sources. There is a lack of knowledge about the estimation of air pollutant emissions and particularly its spatial and temporal distribution in South America, mainly in medium-sized cities with population less than one million inhabitants. This work performed the spatial and temporal disaggregation of the on-road vehicle emission inventory (EI) in the medium-sized Andean city of Manizales, Colombia, with a spatial resolution of 1 km × 1 km and a temporal resolution of 1 h. A reported top-down methodology, based on the analysis of traffic flow levels and road network distribution, was applied. Results obtained allowed the identification of several hotspots of emission at the downtown zone and the residential and commercial area of Manizales. Downtown exhibited the highest percentage contribution of emissions normalized by its total area, with values equal to 6% and 5% of total CO and PM10 emissions per km2 respectively. These indexes were higher than those obtained in residential-commercial area with values of 2%/km2 for both pollutants. Temporal distribution showed strong relationship with driving patterns at rush hours, as well as an important influence of passenger cars and motorcycles in emissions of CO both at downtown and residential-commercial areas, and the impact of public transport in PM10 emissions in the residential-commercial zone. Considering that detailed information about traffic counts and road network distribution is not always available in medium-sized cities, this work compares other simplified top-down methods for spatially assessing the on-road vehicle EI. Results suggested that simplified methods could underestimate the spatial allocation of downtown emissions, a zone dominated by high traffic of vehicles. The comparison between simplified methods based on total traffic counts and road density distribution suggested that the use of total traffic counts in a simplified form could enhance higher uncertainties in the spatial disaggregation of emissions. Results obtained could add new information that help to improve the air pollution management system in the city and contribute to local public policy decisions. Additionally, this work provides appropriate resolution emission fluxes for ongoing research in atmospheric modeling in the city, with the aim to improve the understanding of transport, transformation and impacts of pollutant emissions in urban air quality.

Impact of public transport and non-motorized transport infrastructure on travel mode shares, energy, emissions and safety: Case of Indian cities

Current modal share in Indian cities is in favor of non-motorized transport (NMT) and public transport (PT), however historical trends shows decline in its use. Existing NMT and PT infrastructure in Indian cities is of poor quality resulting in increasing risk from road traffic crashes to these users. It is therefore likely that the current NMT and PT users will shift to personal motorized vehicles (PMV) as and when they can afford it. Share of NMT and PT users can be retained and possibly increased if safe and convenient facilities for them are created. This shall also have impact on reducing environment impacts of transport system.We have studied travel behavior of three medium size cities – Udaipur, Rajkot and Vishakhapatnam. Later the impact of improving built environment and infrastructure on travel mode shares, fuel consumption, emission levels and traffic safety in Rajkot and Vishakhapatnam are analyzed. For the purpose three scenarios are developed – improving only NMT infrastructure, improving only bus infrastructure and improving both NMT and bus infrastructure.The study shows the strong role of NMT infrastructure in both cities despite geographical dissimilarities. The scenario analysis shows maximum reduction in CO2 emissions is achieved when both PT and NMT infrastructure are improved. Improvement in safety indicator is highest in this scenario. Improving only PT infrastructure may have marginal effect on overall reduction of CO2 emissions and adverse effects on traffic safety. NMT infrastructure is crucial for maintaining the travel mode shares in favor of PT and NMT in future.

Environmentally Friendly Public Transport

The article "Environmentally Friendly Public Transport" deals with the impact of public transport on the environment by selected types of vehicles. Nowadays, many public transport operators face the necessity to renew their vehicle fleets and consequently decide how to acquire the best vehicle fleet composition with the lowest costs. They need to be competitive with other operators as well as with personal car transport; they need to provide sufficient comfort to passengers, be environmentally friendly, and last but not least, they need to have low operating costs. The renewal of the vehicle fleet traditionally strains an operator's budget. A good decision for a suitable alternative of operated vehicles, or a decision for a suitable mixture of operated vehicles, may have a crucial impact on operating costs and thus affect financial support from their founders. New alternatives are available thanks to the development of new technologies - traditional diesel buses meeting the emission standards of EURO 6, CNG buses, electric buses, trolleybuses, trams, buses with hydrogen fuel cells, etc. The presented work is trying to find the answer to the question of which alternative is ideal for operators from a short-term, medium-term and long-term perspective. The article presents a comparison of economic indicators of the operation of individual alternatives, their impact on the environment and their performance.

The Impact of Public Transport on US Metropolitan Wage Inequality

This article presents a wage inequality analysis for 158 large US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The analysis is concerned with whether public transport has a detectable influence on 1990 levels of wage equality. Because public transport systems are generally designed to link residences with employment locations, higher levels of service provision, all other factors being equal, should be associated with higher employment rates and more uniform distributions of earnings. Few analyses, however, have attempted to evaluate public policies that affect wage distributions. The results of this research provide a macroscopic view of the effectiveness of urban transport investments with respect to urban wage inequality.

Towards the Green Environment

Over the last decade technological advancements of the car have gone rapidly. Emissions and environmental impacts have been significantly reduced. Even so that the Dutch Ministry of Transport wanted to check if it is still valid to prioritise investments in the public transport over the car system motivated by environmental arguments. A study has been performed comparing the environmental impacts of car use and public transport in urban areas. Next to the current situation also technological and policy advancements have been taken into account in considering future scenarios for 2010. For this the NEI-FACTS model has been applied (Forecasting Air Pollution by Car Traffic Simulation). As part of the urban public transport the environmental impacts of busses, trains and trams/metro have been considered. Next to emissions also energy use, noise nuisance, waste materials and use of scare space have been taken into account (MILOV model). The study shows that notwithstanding the technological improvements by the automobile industries the urban environmental impact of the public transport modes is still less than that of cars. Especially rail systems seems very environmentally efficient. Nevertheless serious attention needs to be paid on the emissions of SO2 and Nox by the public transport. Policies like privetising public transport and reductions of subsidies are estimated to work in favour of the environmental impact of public transport although there might be a slower penetration of the market of cleaner but more expensive technologies. This only stresses the need of further internalising of external costs for all modes.