Public Transportation Agencies Research Articles

Characterizing prehospital response to neonatal resuscitation

ObjectiveTo evaluate performance of initial steps of newborn resuscitation according to the American Heart Association and American Academy of Pediatrics’ Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) guidelines in the prehospital setting. Study DesignObservational study of 265 paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) from 45 EMS teams recruited from public fire and private transport agencies in a major metropolitan area. Participants completed a baseline questionnaire assessing demographics, experience, and comfort in caring for children. Simulations were conducted April 2015 to March 2016. Technical performance was evaluated by blinded video review. NRP actions were assessed using a structured performance tool. ResultsTwo hundred sixty-five EMS providers responded to survey questions and participated in simulations. In total, 16% reported feeling very or extremely comfortable caring for children <30 days of age (vs. 71% for children aged 12–18 years). Among 45 EMS teams participating in simulations, 22% (n = 10) dried, 18% (n = 8) stimulated, and 2% (n = 1) warmed within 30 s from arrival and 11% (n = 5) provided BMV within 60 s from arrival, as recommended by NRP. All teams provided BMV. Eighty-eight percent bagged below NRP rate recommendations and 96% bagged with tidal volume exceeding guidelines. Looking over the entire 10-min simulation for ever performing measures, 73% started to dry the baby within a median of 51 (range 0−539) seconds from arrival, 38% started to stimulate the baby within a median of 34 s (range 0−181), and 44% started to warm the baby within a median 291 s (range 27−575 s). ConclusionsThese data from field simulations suggest NRP steps recommended for the first minute after birth are seldom performed in a timely manner and suggests opportunities for improvement.

Optimal service zone and headways for flexible-route bus services for multiple periods

ABSTRACT Where private ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft are transforming the transit sector by making flexible transit cheaper and more readily available than ever before, it may be beneficial for public transportation agencies to adapt to the changing marketplace and provide flexible bus services in low to mid-demand density areas such as suburban or rural areas. This paper proposes an optimization model in which the service area for the flexible bus operations is jointly optimized with headways with time-dependent demand densities. The closed-form solution that minimizes the average costs of user and operator is obtained with analytic optimization. The model presented in this paper may be a helpful planning resource to determine the feasibility of flexible bus services where fixed-route transit operation is not desirable due to the lack of ridership, especially in suburban and rural regions. Numerical case studies and sensitivity analyses for critical operation factors are presented.

Real-time information systems for public transport: user perspective

Public transport (PT) agencies are expected to provide passenger-oriented services. There is a need to understand the user’s perception of information technologies, especially within specific socioeconomic and demographic groups. Because of this, and although public transportation agencies are integrating various systems, this work aims at assessing which type of real-time information (RTI) and display platform (DP) for PT are perceived as the most useful among different socioeconomic and demographic groups citizens. Surveys were disseminated in two different readiness level areas, to understand citizens preferences based on age, academic qualifications, public transportation usage, and access to such type of technologies. There was a total of 655 respondents, 196 in Portugal and 459 in Sweden. The most valued RTI were arrival/departure time (ADT) and trip planning (TP). Results suggest there are clear differences between the preferences of young and older users. While in Portugal, high percentage of young people prefer TP as RTI, in Sweden it was found that the percentage of respondents that prefer ADT or TP increases with the increase of age. With respect to DP, panels and apps are those with more votes. Results show in general, younger people prefer Apps and older people prefer RTI provided through panels. Moreover, the findings suggest that areas served with less technologies on information for public transport give more value of having access to RTI. These results are important to support public authorities on designing an integrated system with such technologies to be possibly implemented at a regional level.

How Would the Trackless Tram System and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Apply to Bulawayo?

The City of Bulawayo urgently needs to rebuild its dilapidated infrastructure and stimulate its economic activities. A Public-Private Partnership funding mechanism could enable the implementation of Trackless Trams on its corridors bringing mobility, a new solar power system and other multiple economic and social benefits, especially demonstrating the intention of Bulawayo to leapfrog into a 21st century future. This study designs a PPP model referred to as a Three Multifaceted PPP Model (TMPM) that will enable the implementation of the Trackless Tram project in Bulawayo. The TMPM model is composed of three layers of players each required to structure a separate PPP arrangement. The city council would lead the first layer responsible for road construction. The real estate developers would lead the second layer and be responsible for constructing station precincts especially the construction of a solar-based Transit Mall. The Trackless Tram consortium and public transport agency will manage the third layer that provides and operates the trams. The split of the project into three layers should enable its quicker delivery by lowering capital risk through spreading it over a number of players. Climate finance could be tapped. This model should be replicable to other developing cities.

Thinking regional and acting local: Assessing the joint influence of local and regional accessibility on commute mode in Montreal, Canada

Accessibility indicators, measuring the ease of reaching destinations via a specific mode of transport, are increasingly used in planning and research as they support integrated land use and transport planning. Research has shown that increased local accessibility (walkability for example) is associated with an increase in walking mode share, whereas increase in public transport accessibility is associated with a greater use of public transport. Yet, while public transport agencies are promoting the combination of active and public transport options to address one's diverse mobility needs, local and regional accessibility are rarely addressed together in research or practice. This research aims to determine the joint influence of local and regional accessibility on the transport mode used for work trips in the Montreal metropolitan region, while controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Data come from the 2013 Origin-Destination survey 2016 Canadian census, 2017 public transport data DMTI Enhanced points of interests. A multinomial logistic model is used to understand how local and regional accessibility are associated with walking, cycling or taking public transport to work across individuals. The results demonstrate that increases in both local and regional accessibility are associated with a higher probability of using sustainable modes. The predicted probabilities suggest that local accessibility is more closely associated with a decrease in car use. This study sheds light on the interaction between local and regional land use and transport systems and is of relevance to planners and policymakers wishing to develop neighborhoods that support the use of sustainable modes.

Fair accessibility – Operationalizing the distributional effects of policy interventions

A fair distribution of public transport benefits is a commonly stated goal of agencies and operators of public transport. However, it is less complicated and costly to provide accessibility in some parts of cities and their surroundings than in other parts. Densely populated areas, and areas situated closer to the city center therefore often have higher public transport accessibility than remote or sparsely populated areas. Neglecting these realities results with an unrealistic assessment of equity in service provision and hampers their consideration when setting policy goals. In this study, we propose a framework for investigating equity in the distribution of accessibility, where the suggested goal is to provide residents with equal accessibility for equally dense and central areas. For the Stockholm County, we show that accessibility may seem to be distributed horizontally inequitable and vertically regressive. However, once controlling for how dense and close to the city center residents live, while still being horizontally inequitable the distribution of accessibility in Stockholm County is found progressive, i.e., benefiting those with lower incomes. We demonstrate the proposed method for the case of skip-stop train operations and find that it shifts our constructed accessibility measure toward a more horizontally inequitable and vertically progressive state. We conclude that our proposed method can be a potent way for public transport agencies to measure and concretize equity goals and evaluate policy changes.

Safety Factor for Drilled Shaft Foundations Subjected to Wind-Induced Torsion

Public transportation agencies commonly use drilled shaft foundations as support of mast arm traffic signs and signal pole structures. These structures and their foundations are subjected to wind-induced torsion. Design provisions can be found in AASHTO specifications for structural supports for highway signs, luminaires and traffic signals; nevertheless, those standards do not provide guidance to estimate the torsional resistance of drilled shaft foundations, or what an appropriate factor of safety (or resistance factor) for design could be. Although load and resistance factors format is desired because AASHTO is moving in that direction, still many Departments of Transportation design requirements are based on factors of safety. In this study, a probabilistic approach is used to recommend a rational procedure to determine factors of safety that consider the uncertainties and the consequences of failure. This procedure can be modified for load and resistance factors design calibration, as well. The skin friction approach was calibrated employing reliability analysis, available statistics, published experimental data, and simulations. However, a lack of field test data has been noticed. Factors of safety for cohesive, cohesionless, and layered soils are recommended. They are presented as a function of the target reliability index, and which in-situ test is performed to obtain the soil strength properties. Three alternatives were considered: standard penetration test, cone penetration test, and vane shear test. The procedure described can be used by practitioners to select appropriate factors of safety based on local conditions when statistical parameters from a particular site investigation are available.

A network-level sidewalk inventory method using mobile LiDAR and deep learning

Sidewalks are a critical infrastructure to facilitate essential daily trips for pedestrian and wheelchair users. The dependence on the infrastructure and the increasing demand from these users press public transportation agencies for cost-effective sidewalk maintenance and better Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. Unfortunately, most of the agencies still rely on outdated sidewalk mapping data or manual survey results for their sidewalk management. In this study, a network-level sidewalk inventory method is proposed by efficiently segmenting the mobile light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data using a customized deep neural network, i.e., PointNet++, and followed by integrating a stripe-based sidewalk extraction algorithm. By extracting the sidewalk locations from the mobile LiDAR point cloud, the corresponding geometry features, e.g., width, grade, cross slope, etc., can be extracted for the ADA compliance and the overall condition assessment. The experimental test conducted on the entire State Route 9, Massachusetts has shown promising performance in terms of the accuracy for the sidewalk extraction (i.e., point-level intersect over union (IoU) value of 0.946) and the efficiency for network analysis of the ADA compliance (i.e., approximately 6.5 min/mile). A case study conducted in Columbus District in Boston, Massachusetts, demonstrates that the proposed method can not only successfully support transportation agencies with an accurate and efficient means for network-level sidewalk inventory, but also support wheelchair users with accurate and comprehensive sidewalk inventory information for better navigation and route planning.

Commuters’ Assessment of Public Transport as a “Reasonable” Option in Montreal, QC

Retaining and increasing public transport ridership is a centerpiece of many strategies to address both the climate crisis and public health challenges. Understanding how and why commuters choose or reject public transport as a viable option or actual mode is, thus, central to policymakers’ efforts. This study makes use of a detailed travel-behavior survey conducted at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, to answer two key questions: 1) What factors influence travelers’ perception of public transport as a reasonable commuting option? and 2) From among those travelers that do consider public transport to be reasonable, what factors influence their final decision to use it? One important finding is that there is sometimes a disconnect between the factors that influence a person’s initial assessment of reasonableness and subsequent mode choice. For example, car owners were paradoxically more likely to consider public transport a reasonable option but significantly less likely to use it. More generally, another important finding of this study is that there may be a sizeable contingent of travelers who consider public transport to be a reasonable or viable option but nonetheless decline to use it. These travelers may be easier to convert to public transport than those who do not already consider it a reasoanble option, making it important for policymakers to understand their motivations. Ultimately, public transport agencies may be able to use this type of information to develop policies better targeted at bolstering ridership.

Assessing operation and customer perception characteristics of high frequency local and limited-stop bus service in Vancouver, Canada

Public transport agencies implement different strategies aimed at improving the operation of transit service and to increase satisfaction among its riders. One service strategy employed by transit agencies is a limited-stop bus service that runs in parallel to a heavily used route to decrease travel times for existing riders and to reduce pressure on the local route. Using bus operations data obtained from automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger counter (APC) systems and customer satisfaction data collected in Vancouver, Canada, the present study evaluates levels of satisfaction among users of a local and limited-stop bus service while controlling for the service characteristics these users have experienced in the past seven days. Our results reveal that after controlling for characteristics related to the conditions of the service experienced by users, namely passenger activity levels, patrons of the express route service were more likely to be satisfied with the transit service compared to users of the local service. This finding indicates that the operational characteristics of a limited-stop service, including in-vehicle time savings and higher route frequency, are highly valued by its users. Results of this study demonstrate how operations data can provide a greater context for customer satisfaction analyses. Finally, this study provides transit planners and policy makers with a better understanding of how customers perceive local and limited-stop service.

BUNDLING: AN INNOVATION IN BRIDGE DELIVERY

Public transportation agencies in the US have broken down the management of their bridge assets into four parts: preservation, preventive maintenance, rehabilitation, or replacement. As these agencies continue their battle to update and rehabilitate their civil infrastructure, bundling multiple bridge construction projects into a single contract can save money, human resources and time. State and local public agencies (LPAs) are beginning to employ this concept, but since practices and methods for bridge bundling are not yet standardized, the Federal Highway Administration has pursued tools and techniques to help these agencies successfully apply bridge bundling. A successful bridge bundling program focuses on a specific group (or bundle) of bridges that are slated for any of the four management areas, and navigates all the bridges in the bundle through the process from conception to completion. This is accomplished in the shortest time possible, with the support of the proper funding options and/or partnerships, Bridge bundling has demonstrated its ability to serve as an efficient and effective approach for sustaining and upgrading bridge assets through use of both federal and non-Federal funds. Use of the tool has led to cost savings and accelerated project delivery, and bridge bundling has proven itself valuable in all four of the major tactics currently employed to manage bridges.

A Tale of 40 Cities: A Preliminary Analysis of Equity Impacts of COVID-19 Service Adjustments across North America

To cope with COVID-19 confinement measures and precipitous declines in ridership, public transport agencies across North America have made significant adjustments to their services, slashing trip frequency in many areas while increasing it in others. These adjustments, especially service cuts, appear to have disproportionately affected areas where lower income and more-vulnerable groups reside in North American Cities. This paper compares changes in service frequency across 30 U.S. and 10 Canadian cities, linking these changes to average income levels and a vulnerability index. The study highlights the wide range of service outcomes while underscoring the potential for best practices that explicitly account for vertical equity, or social justice, in their impacts when adjusting service levels.

Improving the Accuracy of Early Cost Estimates on Transportation Infrastructure Projects

AbstractA better understanding of top-down estimating practices and their contribution to budgeting accuracy allows public transportation agencies to allocate limited construction funds more effici...

Social enterprise as catalyst of transformation in the micro-mobility sector

Abstract The need to transition towards more sustainable futures is evident. This paper explores the role of social enterprise in urban sustainability transitions. Using the UP Bike Share (UPBS), a university-based bicycle-sharing social enterprise (in Metro Manila, Philippines) as a case study, this paper aims to bring a more explicit social entrepreneurship perspective towards sustainability transitions research as well as draw insights from social enterprise as a social innovation to challenge existing sociotechnical regimes. Existing operator models of bike-sharing systems in other countries are predominantly for-profit vendors, publicly-owned entities and non-profit organizations. Emerging from civil society, UP Bike Share, on the other hand, is a social enterprise that grew into a social movement with a well-defined advocacy, and became part of a bigger social movement of sustainability advocates. Where previous attempts to establish a bike-sharing program by the local government, international development institution and public transport agency in Metro Manila failed, the UP Bike Share represents the first bike-sharing system in the Philippines that was successfully piloted, implemented and sustained. We then expound on three mechanisms by which UP Bike Share can achieve such transformation, namely: market formation, insertion into the broader social movement, and replication of innovation in other localities, supporting wider sustainability goals. We end with agenda for future research.

Predicting disruptions and their passenger delay impacts for public transport stops

Disruptions in public transport can have major implications for passengers and service providers. Our study objective is to develop a generic approach to predict how often different disruption types occur at different stations of a public transport network, and to predict the impact related to these disruptions as measured in terms of passenger delays. We propose a supervised learning approach to perform these predictions, as this allows for predictions for individual stations for each time period, without the requirement of having sufficient empirical disruption observations available for each location and time period. This approach also enables a fast prediction of disruption impacts for a large number of disruption instances, hence addressing the computational challenges that rise when typical public transport assignment or simulation models would be used for real-world public transport networks. To improve transferability of our study results, we cluster stations based on their contribution to network vulnerability using unsupervised learning. This supports public transport agencies to apply the appropriate type of measure aimed to reduce disruptions or to mitigate disruption impacts for each station type. Applied to the Washington metro network, we predict a yearly passenger delay of 5.9 million hours for the total metro network. Based on the clustering, five different types of station are distinguished. Stations with high train frequencies and high passenger volumes located at central trunk sections of the network show to be most critical, along with start/terminal and transfer stations. Intermediate stations located at branches of a line are least critical.

Visualizing public transit system operation with GTFS data: A case study of Calgary, Canada

Public transportation agencies are one of the industries that generate a large volume of data on a high frequency and velocity basis. The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is one of the datasets these agencies generate and share openly with the public. GTFS feeds contain data for scheduled transit service including stop and route locations, and schedules information. This paper aims to demonstrate the potential of GTFS data, specifically, the paper describes the development of a GTFS data visualization tool that displays spatial and temporal patterns of transit services from which qualitative information and insights can be gained. In this paper, GTFS data from Calgary Transit was used as a case study. Previous studies focused on the development of visualization tools that display transit movement, or static graphical representation of transit operation. However, there is still a need for a dynamic interactive visualization tool that can also measures and displays transit system operation geographically and statistically. This study builds on the previous investigations and further develops a new public transit system operation visualization tool (called PubtraVis) with six visualization modules that reflect on different transit system operational characteristics; mobility, speed, flow, density, headway, and analysis. The user can evaluate two modules side by side for comparative analysis. The analysis module provides an insightful statistical summary and similarity measure and clustering results based on the transit operation characteristics. PubtraVis was tested with real-world users through a user experience study from which it was found to be useful and easy to start using. PubtraVis can be a useful tool to demonstrate the dynamism of transit vehicles from the entire transit network at a glance, and can be used to facilitate communication between transit operators, city authorities, and the general public regarding the public transit planning and operation.

COVID-19 and Public Transportation: Current Assessment, Prospects, and Research Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a great challenge for contemporary public transportation worldwide, resulting from an unprecedented decline in demand and revenue. In this paper, we synthesize the state-of-the-art, up to early June 2020, on key developments regarding public transportation and the COVID-19 pandemic, including the different responses adopted by governments and public transportation agencies around the world, and the research needs pertaining to critical issues that minimize contagion risk in public transportation in the so-called post-lockdown phase. While attempts at adherence to physical distancing (which challenges the very concept of mass public transportation) are looming in several countries, the latest research shows that for closed environments such as public transportation vehicles, the proper use of face masks has significantly reduced the probability of contagion. The economic and social effects of the COVID-19 outbreak in public transportation extend beyond service performance and health risks to financial viability, social equity, and sustainable mobility. There is a risk that if the public transportation sector is perceived as poorly transitioning to post-pandemic conditions, that viewing public transportation as unhealthy will gain ground and might be sustained. To this end, this paper identifies the research needs and outlines a research agenda for the public health implications of alternative strategies and scenarios, specifically measures to reduce crowding in public transportation. The paper provides an overview and an outlook for transit policy makers, planners, and researchers to map the state-of-affairs and research needs related to the impacts of the pandemic crisis on public transportation. Some research needs require urgent attention given what is ultimately at stake in several countries: restoring the ability of public transportation systems to fulfill their societal role.

How do passenger and trip attributes affect walking distances to bus public transport stops? Evidence from university students in Greece

The spatial arrangement of public transport systems seriously affects their ridership and thus the fulfillment of sustainable transport goals. This paper examines the case of students at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and investigates their perceptions regarding a critical spatial attribute of public transport, that is, the walking distance they have to cover to/from bus stops when they commute by bus to their campus. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect relevant data from 300 students and a set of statistical inference methods was employed to explore whether student-specific attributes relate to the walking distances they consider to be acceptable. Empirical findings highlighted weak relationships between user/trip specific attributes with regard to students, and their walking distance preferences for the bus public transport services they use. The majority of students consider that the maximum acceptable walking distance can be higher than the standard value of 400 meters. Moreover, they would be willing to walk more than they currently do in order to reach a bus stop with higher service frequencies to their campus. The study concept and findings could assist in delivering a more successful spatial design of bus public transport systems which serve university campuses. A more sparsely positioned network of bus stops would provide better opportunities for personal physical activity but should not yield increased total travel times; and they should incorporate local user expectations. Public transport agencies could also benefit from achieving higher service speeds which, in turn, would reduce energy consumption and operating costs.

Investigating bus travel time and predictive models: a time series-based approach

Public transport agencies observe the travel time as one of the main parameters of urban transport performance. In particular, travel time forecasting is an important planning tool for public transport companies given that it can improve the quality of the planned services by reducing the gap between the actual and the planned travel times. In this paper, this relevance is discussed and based on the experimental evidences the goodness to use time series based approach is pointed out. In fact, among the large number of factors affecting the operation of public transport, most of them are shown to follow a given temporal pattern. The analysis is performed using data from automated vehicle monitoring of buses lines sharing the way with other traffic in Lviv (Ukraine). The results prove the goodness of such an approaches and the opportunity offered to operators to improve their services.

A comprehensive perspective of unreliable public transport services’ costs

In recent decades, the main focus of public transport operations has been increasing its speed. Increasing speed not only allows for faster trips but also a higher frequency with the same fleet size, thus reducing waiting times and crowdedness inside the vehicles. This interest in speed has ignored a second key dimension in the level of service: reliability. In this article, we provide a review of a full range of impacts of an unreliable public transport service. We show how regularizing headway could improve level of service beyond the gains of simply increasing the operational speed. Regular headways positively affect comfort, reliability, travel and wait time, operational costs, and even some urban impacts of bus services. Thus, the focus for public transport agencies and operators should bend into reliability’s direction. This is fundamental for making public transport an attractive travel alternative, and therefore must become a core goal for urban sustainability.