Metropolitan Transportation Systems Research Articles

Operational Concepts for Urban Air Mobility deployment in the next decades

Urban Air Mobility development and deployment into future cities is gaining increasing and relevant interest in the last years, as a new mobility form suitable to meet the future greener, scalable and efficient mobility targets needed to solve the issues today’s big cities are facing in terms of traffic congestion as well as related environmental consequences. In this framework, the ASSURED UAM (Acceptance, Safety and Sustainability Recommendations for Efficient Deployment of UAM) project has been funded by H2020 and is ongoing, with the main objective of providing cities with knowledge concerning deployment of UAM services and definition of necessary standards and recommendations assuring common acceptance, safety and sustainability within integrated metropolitan transport system for three time horizons (2025, 2030 and 2035). In the project, dedicated activities have been carried out to develop operational concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) deployment in the next decades. The main results from these activities are presented in this paper, which namely includes the main project outcomes in terms of: the identification of the most relevant and promising technologies that can enable the UAM implementation over the next decades, taking into account the current technological trends and perspectives; the outline of the regulatory framework in which the UAM will be shaped in the next decades; the definition of the most relevant aspects and constraints affecting the UAM deployment from the point of view of integration of such new mobility form in the cities infrastructures; the outline of the foreseen UAM concept of operations and definition of the most relevant use case that are expected to be implemented in the cities over the three time horizons considered in the project, i.e. 2025, 2030 and 2035.

Exploring the link between regional transportation governance and outcomes: A novel measure of polycentricity in metropolitan public transportation systems

Lack of reliable and valid measures of the polycentricity of public transportation systems impedes our ability to understand its impact on key system performance indicators. We use data from four U.S. metropolitan regions to measure polycentricity using an index of concentration based on providers' policymaking zones. We discuss the measure's validity and reliability, and describe its potential application. Our proposed index will allow exploration of efficiency and equity outcomes relating to transit operations both in the U.S. and internationally.

Bikeshare and subway ridership changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented in its scale and speed, impacting the entire world, and having an impact on metropolitan transportation systems. New York City (NYC) was especially hard hit in March and April 2020. A mandatory stay-at-home order was instituted, with all but essential businesses ordered closed. In this paper we examine the impact on the Citi Bike system and the NYC subway. Usage patterns during the lockdown are compared to corresponding days in 2019. Controlling for weather patterns we examine the effect of the lockdown and subsequent reopening of economic activity up through the end of September 2020. The results show that both subway ridership and bikeshare usage plummeted initially; bikeshare usage has nearly returned to normal while subway ridership remains substantially below pre-COVID levels. Implications for policy suggest that the bikeshare system provides resilience to the overall transportation system during disasters when public transit is considered dangerous or is disrupted.

Population downscaling in multi-agent transportation simulations: A review and case study

Simulating the dynamics and evolution of metropolitan transportation systems serving millions of travelers remains a difficult task, beyond existing standard software's abilities. MATSim (Multi-Agent Transportation Simulation) is the only high-resolution spatially-explicit framework that allows intrinsic population downscaling - simulating the entire system's dynamics based only on a fraction k of the traveling population. Till now, the choice of k was dictated by hardware performance, and a common rule was not to downscale below 10%. We investigate downscaling in MATSim by comparing the aggregate and disaggregate statistics that describe the dynamics of car traffic in full-scaled and downscaled simulations of the Sioux Falls test case road network. Simulations with 25% or higher shares of the traveler population preserve all major urban traffic statistics. Within the 10–25% interval, downscaling becomes unstable for some of the statistics. For scenarios that are downscaled 10% and below, statistics can substantially deviate from the full-scale model. We further discuss the problems related to a multimodal transportation simulation's downscaling that also includes public transportation.

Multi-Criteria Decision Making Process in Metropolitan Transport Means Selection Based on the Sharing Mobility Idea

The article presents the idea of modeling the decision-making process in the field of the metropolitan areas transport system. Due to the increasing process of metropolization and urbanization, which is predicted to be 68.4% worldwide and 83.7% in Europe in 2050, the issue will be even more sophisticated. The problem of depletion of transport network capacity as well as the implementation of modern technology solutions forces metropolitan committees to apply tools for metropolitan passenger transport system optimization. Significantly, the policy and regulations on sustainable urban mobility management are based on the mobility demand predictions and understanding of the travel decision-making process of citizens. The scientific purpose of this article is to build a mathematical model, as a tool supporting the multi-criteria decision-making process regarding the choice of means of transport in a developing metropolis. The issue raised in this article considers the most important research areas of the metropolitan transport means selection, which includes transport safety, qualitative, financial, and ecological aspects. The model was implemented in Silesian Metropolis in Poland with a particular emphasis on sharing mobility transport means users. As a result, a ranking of sharing transport means was developed, which is a piece of significant information for planners and future investors in the development of the metropolitan transport system.

Changing student mobility behaviour under financial crisis: Lessons from a case study in the Oporto University

This paper explores how the commuting patterns of university students have changed in the face of the financial crisis that has affected Portugal in 2008. In this research, we focus on the mobility behaviour of students from the Faculty of Engineering of Oporto University (FEUP). Based on two similar surveys carried out in 2006 and 2012, i.e. before and during times of financial crisis, and macrosocial data from the Portuguese Census and from the metropolitan public transport system, we provide detailed accounts of commuting patterns, including main motivations, barriers, and discuss the influence of considering different scales of analysis of the built-environment. The results show a general trend to reduce the students' costs of commuting by living with their families and using more often public transports. Our results also suggest an increasing level of inequality towards mobility, reinforced by austerity policies, which may lead to undesirable travel behaviours in the future. Although the overall evolution of students' travel behaviour points towards greater sustainability, the identified changes also suggest social-spatial injustices.

Recording Permanence and Ephemerality in the North Quarter of Brussels: Drawing at the Intersection of Time, Space, and People

Lying in the Senne River Valley, the North Quarter of Brussels is a physical record of spatial transformations unevenly distributed over time. Waves of developments and unfinished plans colonized its original landscape structure, erasing, writing, and re-writing it with large-scale metropolitan projects and transportation systems, around which an industrial and urban fabric developed. Accumulated expansions left an assemblage of incomplete infrastructures in which a multi-faceted and highly identifiable quarter lies punctuated by weakly defined morphological mismatches. At the center of this diverse and mutilated fabric, Maximilien Park stands as pars pro toto. From a combination of research methods that includes ethnographic fieldwork and interpretative mapping, three drawings are overlaid with the moving dimensions of space, time, and people, and assembled in a reinterpreted triptych to investigate the production of that public space. The first panel “Traces” overlaps lost urban logics and remaining traces on the urban tissue. The second panel “Cycles” traces the uneven deconstruction of the North Quarter during the last century, identifying scars of its past. The third panel “Resignifications” focuses on recent events in the area, examining how people have appropriated and transformed the park since 2015. With this triptych, the article aims to re-interpret the palimpsest of the North Quarter, represent the area’s transforming character, and unravel a spatial reading of the lived experiences of the place through time.

Improving ridesplitting services using optimization procedures on a shareability network: A case study of Chengdu

Ridesourcing services play a crucial role in metropolitan transportation systems and aggravate urban traffic congestion and air pollution. Ridesplitting is one possible way to reduce these adverse effects and improve the transport efficiency, especially during rush hours. This paper aims to explore the potential of ridesplitting during peak hours using empirical ridesourcing data provided by DiDi Chuxing, which contains complete datasets of ridesourcing orders in the city of Chengdu, China. A ridesplitting trip identification algorithm based on a shareability network is developed to quantify the potential of ridesplitting. Then, we evaluate the gap between the potential and actual scales of ridesplitting. The results show that the percentage of potential cost savings can reach 18.47% with an average delay of 4.76 min, whereas the actual percentage is 1.22% with an average delay of 9.86 min. The percentage of shared trips can be increased from 7.85% to 90.69%, and the percentage of time savings can reach 25.75% from 2.38%. This is the first investigation of the gap between the actual scale and the potential of ridesplitting on a city scale. The proposed ridesplitting algorithm can not only bring benefits on a city level but also take passenger delays into consideration. The quantitative benefits could encourage transportation management agencies and transportation network companies to develop sensible policies to improve the existing ridesplitting services.

Introducing autonomous buses and taxis: Quantifying the potential benefits in Japanese transportation systems

The introduction of autonomous buses and taxis is expected to generate such benefits as cost reductions—and particularly for regional bus operations with a substantial deficit—as well as enhancing public transit accessibility through decreased trip costs. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the impacts of introducing autonomous buses and taxis on metropolitan transportation systems by quantifying the costs of travel in Japan, and to discuss the potential benefits. First, this study sets the assumptions on autonomous driving technology, including its impacts on vehicle costs, the decreased labor costs for driving and safety monitoring in buses and taxis, and decreased driving stress for private car users. Next, operating costs are computed for autonomous buses and taxis in Japanese metropolitan areas. The costs of travel, or the sum of monetary and time costs, are then computed with and without vehicle automation for different trip types in high- and low-density metropolitan areas. The results highlight that the costs of public transit trips that currently have a smaller share of time costs in overall trip costs could decrease considerably due to vehicle automation. For instance, costs for 10–20-km trip lengths could decrease by 44–61% for taxi trips and 13–37% for rail/bus trips with taxi access, followed by a decrease of 6–11% for bus trips and 1–11% for rail trips with bus access. Further, private car trip costs could decrease by 11–16%. More substantial cost reductions in rail/bus trips with taxi access could occur in the case of smaller trip distances and/or in residential areas far from stations; larger reductions in rail trips with bus access could occur in low-density metropolitan areas. Finally, it is expected that vehicle automation in more fixed modes of public road transit could primarily benefit the transit industry and government, with such effects as improved labor productivity and reduced subsidies, while vehicle automation in more flexible modes could benefit metropolitan residents as well as the transit industry. This further suggests that a deficit of regional bus operations could be recovered during the transition to the full performance of autonomous buses.

Research on the Construction of Intelligent Transportation System Based on Internet of Things

At present, with the development of economy, people's living standards are getting higher and higher. Based on the current big city traffic congestion phenomenon, by introducing the concept of Internet and related technologies, the five layers of building based on Internet of things a subject three division wisdom metropolitan transportation system architecture, this architecture includes homework layer, perception layer, network layer, application layer and user layer, a main body is a big city traffic database is the core of the information transmission, three departments include traffic police supervision department, city management and cost management departments. Through this framework, the whole process of urban traffic information can be controlled in real time, so as to guarantee the demand of urban consumers and residents and promote the stable and healthy development of transportation in China's big cities. This paper USES the knowledge of Internet of things to build the intelligent transportation system of big cities, hoping to get inspiration from it.

Infraestructura y valor de suelo: ¿Quién se beneficia de la inversión estatal?

In his 2018 Public Account, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera announced the expansion of Santiago's Metro system towards Bajos de Mena, one of the most isolated - and stigmatized - neighborhoods of the city. After the initial thrill of connecting the area to the metropolitan transport system, critical voices addressed a key issue: such a considerable investment has an impact on the value of land. Two potentially dramatic scenarios thus unfold: on the one hand, the State investment generates surplus value to private entities; on the other, the escalation of land value ends up displacing those citizens whom this infrastructure sought to favor. What should be done at this crossroads? Are these inevitable consequences or can something actually be done? For this issue on infrastructure, we are interested in knowing whether the effect that State-built infrastructure has on land value is important, or if it's an irrelevant externality when it comes to evaluating these projects.

Transit-oriented Development in the metropolitan governance a comparison between the Colombian case and the South Korean experience

This research studies the process and the political decisions that were carried out in the creation of Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) in order to respond to a territorial reorganization associated to a public transport supply that resulted in a model of transit-oriented development (TOD). Contemporaneously, the paper studies the normative framework that governs the metropolitan areas in Colombia and its metropolitan public transport, as well as, it studies the structuring of the metropolitan collective public transport system of the Aburra Valley Metropolitan Area (AVMA). The aim of the research is to understand the process of territorial and transport policy decisions that were held in the SMA, which makes it an example and case of study to contextualize a reorganization of the collective public transportation system in the Colombian case, specifically in the AVMA. The objectives of the research are identifying the regulatory principles of territorial and transport planning, strategies, and instruments used for setting the policy decisions that have a binding character on the operating entities of the collective public transport system. In order to put the characteristics of the AVMA collective public transport bus system in evidence, a comparison between SMA and AVMA was developed. The implications emerged from this comparison are used to generate guidelines through three themes: a) governance; b) financial system and c) operational aspects. The guidelines hope point the reorganization of the public transportation bus system and a future transition to a model of Transport - and People - Oriented Development in the Colombian metropolitan level context.

The Impact of the Development of Seaport Objective Functions for a Cargo Logistics System in Urban Areas, Illustrated with an Example of the Szczecin Metropolis

The article presents the issues concerning the impact of a seaport on the port conurbation transport system. A seaport activity is related to the movement of goods, which undoubtedly increases cargo streams in the conurbation transport system. Thus, it can be concluded that the development of objective functions fulfilled in a seaport affect the conurbation transport system, including the logistics system for goods in this area. The second factor that affects the cargo logistics system in urban areas is the sectoral structure of cargo transport provided from the seaport as well as to the seaport.The article presents an analysis of the level of development of objective functions in the port of Szczecin and the sectoral structure of cargo transported by land to and from the hinterland of the seaport. The flows of cargo generated by these functions and their share in the Szczecin metropolitan transport system were analyzed. The analysis demonstrated that along with the development of the logistics distribution function, the amount of cargo generated in the seaport area, for which the place of delivery is the Szczecin urbanized area and other urban areas located at a distance of several dozen kilometers, increases. The analysis also showed which areas of the Szczecin conurbation are particularly burdened by cargo generated by the port of Szczecin and what sectoral and logistic solutions should improve the efficiency of cargo flows, both the transit ones and these which are delivered to the area of the city and neighboring towns.

Fiscal federalism and prospects for metropolitan transportation authorities in Portugal

Fiscal federalism refers to the attribution of public finance functions among different levels of government. We examine Portugal's metropolitan transportation sector through the fiscal federalist lens, in light of the country's decentralization efforts and new relevant legislation. We clarify basic principles of fiscal federalism and adapt them to the finance of metropolitan transportation systems – typically characterized by multiple jurisdictions, numerous externalities and equity concerns – showing the inadequacy of general practice. Portugal's overall public finance system partially adheres to fiscal federalist principles; the transportation sector less so. Metropolitan transportation faces particular troubles, with few direct user fees, prices inadequately reflecting costs, and heavy reliance on central government subsidies for public transportation investments and operations. A new law creating metropolitan transportation authorities is only modestly consistent with fiscal federalist principles, since it inadequately details financial responsibilities and remains under heavy central government control. Absent additional reforms, the new metropolitan authorities should aim to make the transportation finance system explicit and test incentive grants to induce inter-municipal cooperation.

Creating a Financially Feasible High-Performance Metropolitan Transportation System

This paper assesses a strategy to alleviate recurring congestion on metropolitan highway systems by adding "dynamic" capacity during peak periods, using shoulders as travel lanes, along with variable peak-period user charges levied on all lanes, to manage demand and pay for the capacity improvements and complementary multimodal investments. It presents an analysis of the traffic, delay, fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, and cost and revenue impacts. The paper then discusses various technical and public acceptance issues with regard to the concept, and how these issues might be addressed.

Recasting the Local Governments Article of the New York Constitution

New York State has too many types of local governments, and too many local governments. The total number of local governments is between 4,100 and 4,700, which counts were admittedly incomplete. It was estimated that a full count of local governments is over 10,500. Proposal: Four, and only four, types of local governments: counties (subordinate units of the state), towns (subordinate units of counties), one Metropolitan Government and one Metropolitan Transportation System. Total: about 1,000. The Metropolitan Government would be the substitute for New York City, and the Metropolitan Transportation System would be the substitute for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. All other units of local government would be abolished. Cities and villages are not needed, because the state is urbanized and motorized. Distances of space and time, which made cities and villages sensible, were overcome. Limited-purpose local governments, which are atomizations of government, are undesirable. Assets and liabilities of an abolished governmental unit would be transferred to the state or a county or a town or the Metropolitan Government or the Metropolitan Transportation System, as determined by the Legislature. Other essays about revision of the New York Constitution are: New Preamble and New Bill of Rights Article for the New York Constitution New Suffrage Article for the New York Constitution New Legislature Article for the New York Constitution New Executive Article for the New York Constitution New Officers and Civil Departments Article for the New York Constitution New Judiciary Article for the New York Constitution Eight New Articles for the New York Constitution

Climate Change Influence on Priority Setting for Transportation Infrastructure Assets

Transportation infrastructure could be vulnerable to local manifestations of global climate change, such as storm frequencies and durations of seasons. To adapt, transportation agencies need methodologies for reprioritizing their assets subject to the new sources of vulnerability. Prioritizing assets is nontrivial when criteria assessments and owner/operator preferences are considered in conjunction with the possible climate scenarios. Few efforts to date have addressed these scenarios in a priority setting for infrastructure asset management in the literature. This paper extends a scenario-based multicriteria decision framework that can assist decision makers in effectively allocating limited resources to adapt transportation assets to a changing climate. The framework is demonstrated with one of the most susceptible metropolitan transportation systems in the United States, the Hampton Roads region in coastal southeastern Virginia. First, the high-level goals of a long-range transportation plans are used in a traditional multicriteria analysis to generate a baseline prioritization of assets. Next, several scenarios that incorporate and combine a variety of climate conditions are identified. Finally, the scenarios are used to adjust the initial criteria weighting, which results in several reprioritizations of the assets. The results help to identify the most influential scenarios and characterize the sensitivity of the baseline prioritization across multiple scenarios. With these results, additional scientific and investigative efforts can be focused effectively to study and understand the influential scenarios.

SOLVING BEST PATH PROBLEM ON MULTIMODAL TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS WITH FUZZY COSTS

Numerous algorithms have been proposed to solve the shortest-pathproblem; many of them consider a single-mode network and crispcosts. Other attempts have addressed the problem of fuzzy costs ina single-mode network, the so-called fuzzy shortest-path problem(FSPP). The main contribution of the present work is to solve theoptimum path problem in a multimodal transportation network, inwhich the costs of the arcs are fuzzy values. Metropolitantransportation systems are multimodal in that they usually containmultiple modes, such as bus, metro, and monorail. The proposedalgorithm is based on the path algebra and dioid of $k$-shortestfuzzy paths. The approach considers the number of mode changes,the correct order of the modes used, and the modeling of two-waypaths. An advantage of the method is that there is no restrictionon the number and variety of the services to be considered. Totrack the algorithm step by step, it is applied to apseudo-multimodal network.

THE DRIVING FACTORS OF CHINA'S PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS IN METROPOLITIAN TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: PUBLIC SECTOR'S VIEWPOINT

In recent years, China needs far more financing for transportation infrastructure than can be provided by the government alone. Meanwhile the capacity of the Chinese government to provide public services on its own in an effective and efficient way is being questioned and reassessed at various levels. Accordingly, the involvement of private investors in the development of Metropolitan Transportation Systems (MTS) has been promoted by the Chinese public sector by means of adopting the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. However, China's dynamic and complex political, financial, legal and regulatory environment makes the private sector adjust to accommodate the existing regime by way of understanding the driving factors in PPP applications for improving the chances of project success. This paper presents two case studies in China's MTS. Based on a case study and comprehensive literature review, 15 driving factors associated with PPP projects from the perspective of the Chinese public sector have been identified. A structured questionnaire survey targeting the public sector has been conducted to seek, analyze and integrate its perception of the driving factors. Through statistical analysis of the relative significance of each of these driving factors, the writers determined five common major dimensions of the Chinese public sector's purpose in developing PPP schemes, and the key factors that quantify each purpose. The establishment of the measures for these objectives and the key factors that quantify each of these purposes will likely be useful in encouraging private participation in infrastructure management and directing/concentrating efforts of the private sector to deliver quality public services under mutually beneficial long‐term contractual arrangements. Santrauka Pastaruoju metu Kinijai reikia daug daugiau finansavimo transporto infrastruktūrai pletoti, nei gali suteikti vien šalies vyriausybe. Jos galimybes veiksmingai ir efektyviai teikti viešasias paslaugas tiriamos bei vertinamos ivairiais lygiais. Skatinamas privačiu investuotoju itraukimas i metropolijos transporto sistemu (MTS) pletra, taikant viešojo ir privataus bendradarbiavimo modeli. Tačiau Kinijos dinamiška ir kompleksine politine, finansine bei teisine aplinka priverčia privatu sektoriu derintis prie egzistuojančios tvarkos, atsižvelgiant i pagrindinius viešojo ir privataus bendradarbiavimo veiksnius, kurie padidintu projekto sekmes tikimybe. Straipsnyje pateikiami du Kinijos metropolijos transporto sistemu pletros pavyzdžiai. Remiantis nagrinejamais pavyzdžiais ir išsamia literatūros analize, iš Kinijos viešojo sektoriaus poziciju identifikuota 15 pagrindiniu veiksniu, susijusiu su viešojo ir privataus bendradarbiavimo projektais. Buvo atlikta apklausa, orientuota i viešaji sektoriu, išanalizuota, kaip pagrindiniai veiksniai suvokiami ir pritaikomi. Atliekant kiekvieno iš šiu veiksniu santykiniu reikšmingumu statistine analize, buvo apibrežti penki pagrindiniai Kinijos viešojo sektoriaus tikslu aspektai, pletojant viešojo ir privataus bendradarbiavimo schemas, ir pagrindiniai rodikliai, ivertinantys šiuos tikslus skaitine išraiška. Minetu tikslu nustatymas ir pagrindiniu skaitiniu rodikliu ivertinimas galetu būti naudingi, skatinant privatu sektoriu prisideti prie infrastruktūros valdymo, galetu padeti koncentruoti bei nukreipti privataus sektoriaus jegas kokybiškoms viešojo sektoriaus paslaugoms teikti, remiantis abipusiškai naudingomis ilgalaikemis sutartimis.

Multimodal Feeder Network Design Problem: Ant Colony Optimization Approach

Significant service performance capabilities of high-capacity mass transit make it a remarkable part of any large metropolitan transportation system. Unfortunately it is not feasible to provide citywide direct access to high-capacity transit. Other modes of transit are used as feeders to collect and deliver passengers to high-capacity mass transit. By using feeder lines the possibility of use of high-capacity mass transit increases because the travel demand for a more extended area can be satisfied. In this research, multiple modes with various capacities and performances are used in the feeder network design based on the minimization of user, operator, and social costs. Other approaches have only used one mode (usually bus) for designing the feeder network.