Public Transport Lines Research Articles

A cross-country comparison of user experience of public autonomous transport

Autonomous solutions for transportation are emerging worldwide, and one of the sectors that will benefit the most from these solutions is the public transport by shifting toward the new paradigm of Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Densely populated areas cannot afford an increase in individual transportation due to space limitation, congestion, and pollution.Working towards more effective and inclusive mobility in public areas, this paper compares user experiences of autonomous public transport across Baltic countries, with the final goal of gaining an increased insight into public needs. User experience was evaluated through questionnaires gathered along pilot projects implementing a public transportation line, using an automated electric minibus between 2018 and 2019. To have sufficient diversity in the data, the pilot projects were implemented in several cities in the Baltic Sea Area. The data analysed in this paper specifically refer to the cities of Helsinki (Finland), Tallinn (Estonia), Kongsberg (Norway), and Gdańsk (Poland).Across all cities, passengers provided remarkably positive feedback regarding personal security and safety onboard. The overall feedback, which was very positive in general, showed statistically significant differences across the groups of cities (Kongsberg, Helsinki, Tallinn and Gdansk), partially explicable by the differences in the route design. In addition, across all cities and feedback topics, males gave a lower score compared to females. The overall rating suggests that there is a demand for future last-mile automated services that could be integrated with the MaaS concept, although demand changes according to socio-economic and location-based conditions across different countries.

Determination of Operational Efficiency in Urban Public Transport Lines

The increasing number of urban centers and the increasing number of vehicles caused by industrialization caused problems such as lack of infrastructure in traffic, environmental pollution and an increase in energy requirements. This situation led the city administrators to search for solutions in order to improve the efficiency of public transportation systems and increase their efficiency. In this study, it is aimed to determine the functional efficiency of the bus lines used in urban public transportation. For this purpose, the lines are classified according to their functional activities by using the functional data of the lines. Both classical cluster analysis and self-organizing mapping (SOM) method were used for classification. Data from Erzurum main public transport lines were used to implement the methods. According to the findings of this study, it was determined that the two methods achieved similar results. As a result, it has been determined that classification of public transportation lines used in cities according to their functional efficiency will be beneficial for decision makers to make correct planning. With the right planning in public transport lines, significant economic and environmental benefits will be obtained.

The Impact of a New Public Transport Line on Parking behavior

To reduce congestion problems in urban environments, policy makers around the world recognize the importance of public transport quality improvement, P&R facilities near peripheral public transport stops, and parking price incentives. This paper proposes a logit model to study the short-term and long-term impact of a new subway line in Amsterdam on the parking behavior. Three groups of travelers are defined in this research: (a) travelers inside Amsterdam, (b) travelers from Amsterdam to outside Amsterdam, and (c) travelers from outside to inside Amsterdam. From the model it is found that in the short term the subway line resulted in an increase in parking near the city center of Amsterdam, especially caused by commuters traveling from outside Amsterdam. However, one year later, the parking demand has dropped significantly which is possibly an effect from increased parking tariffs. Further, before the opening of the public transport line, higher parking tariffs lead to more parking near destination. Experiments with parking tariff cross-variable models reveal that parking tariffs consist of two underlying bi-modal distributions, which are the location of origin and destination with respect to Amsterdam, and whether the time period is during summer or autumn. Parking tariffs affect the parking behavior from and to Amsterdam. Another finding is that during the autumn parking tariffs significantly affect the parking behavior in the short-term. This model can be extended further with more specific location variables, continuing the parking tariffs research, and the addition of more trip, spatial and personal attributes.

Aspects regarding the appreciation of regularity and punctuality in the public transport system from Sibiu, Romania

Regularity and punctuality are two very important measures for evaluating the quality of a public transport system. Several indicators can be used to estimate them, each with advantages and disadvantages. The paper comparatively describes a series of such indicators and presents a study conducted for two public transport lines in Sibiu, Romania. The study shows how, depending on the indicators used, the results show the influence of different factors.

Autonomous buses: Intentions to use, passenger experiences, and suggestions for improvement

Research on the use of autonomous vehicles as a mode of public transport in a city context is lacking. This paper focuses on the use of recently established autonomous buses (self-driving electric shuttle buses) running along a regular public transport line in a residential area of Oslo, Norway. We use a mixed-methods approach based on survey and interview data from two independent studies. The paper examines intentions to use autonomous buses before and after these were introduced in the case area as well as how passengers experience traveling by autonomous bus. Results show that the intention to use the autonomous buses was mostly positive both before and after using them. Most users felt safe while traveling by autonomous bus. Two suggestions for improvement made by the users were to: increase the speed and reduce the abrupt breaking of the autonomous buses. Overall, outcomes from this paper suggest that residents would be willing to use autonomous buses if these offer more frequent bus departures than the existing ones. However, as full automation has not been achieved yet and there is a host on board who can control the vehicle if necessary, passenger experiences and intentions to use should be reassessed with fully automated buses in future studies.

Deployment Scenarios for First/Last-Mile Operations With Driverless Shuttles Based on Literature Review and Stakeholder Survey

Driverless shuttles are a new automated road-based means of transport, small in size and capacity and with a relatively low operational speed. Classified as high-automation vehicles, these shuttles are capable of driverless operations in specific operational design domains. Given their characteristics, driverless shuttles have been studied as a first/last-mile complement to main public transport lines, serving the access and egress parts in multimodal trips. Currently, driverless shuttles are mostly operated as pilots testing their technical capabilities and measuring passengers’ willingness to use them. To reduce the gap between pilots and implementation, this study formulates a set of deployment scenarios for driverless shuttle integration in transit. A four-step approach is followed. First, the scenario field is identified. Second, key factors that support the future integration of driverless shuttles are defined based on a literature study. Third, these key factors are analysed through a stakeholder survey, in which experts in the field of transport define possible development directions. Fourth, survey respondents combine these factors to create plausible future scenarios. Through the formulation of three scenarios, the results of this study show the best combinations of vehicle characteristics, type of supervision, operational characteristics, and type of infrastructure for future integration of driverless shuttles.

Public transport network optimisation in PTV Visum using selection hyper-heuristics

Despite the progress in the field of automatic public transport route optimisation in recent years, there exists a clear gap between the development of optimisation algorithms and their applications in real-world planning processes. In this study, we bridge this gap by developing an interface between the urban transit routing problem (UTRP) and the professional transport modelling software PTV Visum. The interface manages the differences in data requirements between the two worlds of research and allows the optimisation of public transport lines in Visum network models. This is demonstrated with the application of selection hyper-heuristics on two network models representing real-world urban areas. The optimisation objectives include the passengers’ average travel time and operators’ costs. Furthermore, we show how our approach can be combined with a mode choice model to optimise the use of public transport in relation to other modes. This feature is applied in a special optimisation experiment to reduce the number of private vehicles on a selected set of links in the network. The results demonstrate the successful implementation of our interface and the applied optimisation methods for a multi-modal public transport network.

Speed Grade Evaluation of Public-Transportation Lines Based on an Improved T-S Fuzzy Neural Network

This paper proposes an evaluation method based on a T-S fuzzy neural network for evaluating the speed grade of public-transport lines in the context of large-scale rail-transit planning and construction in Hangzhou. The six-dimensional data of morning peak/evening peak average speed, average speed at peak, average station distance, proportion of dedicated lanes, and nonlinear coefficients were selected as input data for the neural network to output the operating speed grade of bus lines. Improving and optimizing the membership function of the Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) model improves its predicted result accuracy compared to a traditional T-S model. The line data of 28 typical trunk lines or expressways in Hangzhou were used as an example; the results demonstrate that the speed grade evaluation method based on an improved T-S fuzzy neural network can effectively and quickly evaluate the speed grade of Hangzhou public-transportation lines. This paper presents a novel analysis and method for large-scale rail-transit planning and evaluation of urban public-transport lines. The aim is to provide practical instruction for the subsequent optimization of public-transportation lines in Hangzhou.

The Gini index of demand imbalances in public transport

The paper studies a general bidirectional public transport line along which demand varies by line section. The length of line sections also varies, and therefore their contribution to aggregate (line-level) user and operational costs might be different, even if demand levels were uniform. The paper proposes the Gini index as a measure of demand imbalances in public transport. We run a series of numerical simulations with randomised demand patterns, and derive the socially optimal fare, frequency and vehicle size variables in each case. We show that the Gini coefficient is a surprisingly good predictor of all three attributes of optimal supply. These results remain robust with inelastic as well as elastic demand, at various levels of aggregate demand intensity. In addition, we find that lines facing severe demand imbalances generate higher operational cost and require more public subsidies under socially optimal supply, controlling for the scale of operations. The results shed light on the bias introduced by the assumption of homogeneous demand in several existing public transport models.

An equality-based model for bike-sharing stations location in bicycle-public transport multimodal mobility

Abstract Bike-sharing systems can be implemented to complete the coverage of public transport networks which could be insufficient to serve an entire urban area. Some methodologies that maximise coverage or accessibility are suggested in the literature. In this paper, we propose a bike-sharing stations location model that includes not only these issues but also equality aspects. The model aims to minimise inequalities in bicycle-public transport mobility among observed population groups trying to maintain specified levels of accessibility and coverage at the same time. We evaluated the performance of the model on a test network and carried out a sensitivity analysis according to the available budget. The results showed that maximising accessibility or coverage alone, without considering equality, may lead to an unequal distribution of accessibility among the population, producing discrimination between different groups. The outcomes of the application revealed the significance of the model in evaluating equality in the network design phase for achieving not only a satisfactory bike-sharing system and public transport multimodal accessibility of each zone but also a high equality measure among the considered population groups. Budget availability also played an essential role since a minimum budget value is needed to achieve higher levels of equality. The proposed approach could serve transport and public authorities as a decision support system in planning future investment as well as promoting multimodal mobility because it links bike-sharing stations with stops/stations of the public transport lines networks.

Impacts of replacing a fixed public transport line by a demand responsive transport system: Case study of a rural area in Amsterdam

The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of demand-responsive transport (DRT). This paper provides a historical overview of DRT experiences, understanding their pros and cons. In addition, it presents the case study of Mokumflex, a 12-month DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a close collaboration with the private enterprise that operated the service and also with the local bus operator, we performed an empirical before and after comparison. These insights help to understand the impacts of DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and public transport. A set of indicators was chosen for the intermodal comparison: travel distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population's perception. Ridership dropped from 78.1 passengers/day to 15.9 passengers/day, however, for being “demand-tailored”, passenger-km reduced even more, going from 1252.8 km/day to 136.6 km/day, hence reducing the costs and GHG emissions per passenger. In regards to population's perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.

The Impact of Visits to Dryland Forests on Environmental Outlook: Results from a National Survey

The effect of visits to the country’s forests on environmental perspectives and commitments was assessed in a national survey of the Israeli public. As a highly urbanized country, visits to the country’s dryland forests constitute an important national pastime across ethnic lines. We evaluated the impact that forest visitation had on the attitudes and perspectives of the visitors. A strong correlation was found between the frequency of visits to forests by individuals and a range of pro-environmental and pro-conservation sentiments. Of particular interest was the response of Israel’s Arab citizens. Not only do Israeli Arabs visit forests more frequently, but they also support environmental policy positions more avidly than do Jewish citizens. The article argues that increasing accessibility to forests and natural sites by expanding public transportation lines should constitute an important component in conservation strategies.

Shared Autonomous Vehicles in rural public transportation systems

This article focuses on the economic potential and the consequences on the regulatory context of Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAV) used in a regional public transportation system. Based on an experimental case study two on-demand scenarios were developed for the Swiss rural area of the Töss Valley. Scenario 1 replaces the current public transportation by SAVs; scenario 2 operates with a SAV fleet instead of buses and integrates the regional railway. Data sources are an overall traffic model and the current business figures of the public transportation. The results suggest that scenario 2 is, out of an economic and traffic system view, an attractive solution compared to line-bound traditional bus and train systems. In both scenarios, a cost-covering service may be possible due to an increase in productivity and demand. Regarding the present regulatory context of the Swiss public transportation system, we propose to change the system of call for tenders for single public transportation lines towards a call for tender for entire regions. This paper contributes to the scholarship discussion on the role of the final provider of new services and which adaptions of current regulations have to be targeted in the future.

Exploring ways to determine an alternative strategic road network in a metropolitan city: A multi-criteria analysis approach

Street functional classification comprises a principal element of urban road networks. However, the conventional approach that has dominated urban and transport planning, has given main priority on car movement. This condition lead to significant negative impacts on cities such as major severances to the urban fabric, low multimodality level, inaccessible road environment for pedestrians and cyclists. As a result, it is clear that we should embark into a new hierarchy system, enhancing and supporting sustainable transport modes.The current research intends to develop a method that determines the strategic road network of a metropolitan region based on a multicriteria analysis process (MCA). More specifically, at first, we created 3 alternatives of re-defining the current strategic road network of the study area. These alternatives propose 3 different strategic network classifications according to several parameters; i) connectivity properties, ii) route position in the road network, iii) urban interest, iv) existence of major public transport lines and metropolitan cycling routes, as well as v) their existing classification condition. Afterwards, we evaluate these alternatives using multicriteria analysis (REGIME method) in order to choose the most efficient one. The evaluation process uses various criteria which cover a considerable range of urban and transport issues. The selected alternative adopts a two-dimensional matrix approach, which addresses the significance of the routes and the modes prioritized. The method is applied to the metropolitan area of Athens in Greece.It is worth noting that the selected alternative can bring about notable benefits for the Greek capital, such as increase of walking, cycling and public transport share, improvement of traffic safety level, greener mobility (less GHG emissions and energy consumption), enhancement of the urban realm, better accessibility and coherence of the urban fabric. The method proposed, is a human-oriented planning tool which provides priority to sustainable modes and could be replicated to other areas with similar characteristics as well.

Potential of Merdeka Square area as the gateway of Medan City

Medan City is a liaison between the city of North Sumatra and the main door of the railway line from Kuala Namu Airport that goes to Medan City at the Merdeka Square railway station in Medan. The Merdeka Square area has not been able to appear as a city gate or as a living room and showroom/etalage in the city of Medan. This research reveals the potential of Merdeka Square to make Merdeka Square a Medan city branding. Descriptively qualitative through the observation method and questionnaire, spatial analysis was carried out with reference to cultural, historical, environmental indicators revealing meaningful places that have the potential to design elements of city gates. The analysis revealed that city railway station, railway monument, main post office, hotel de Boer, BI Building, City Hall, Mandiri Building, Lonsum Building, Titi Gantung bridge as landmarks with distinctive architectural characters, historical narratives, strategic locations. While Merdeka Square and MerdekaWalk’sevent activities become a city gate area. These elements must be integrated through linkage strategies in designing urban design by strengthening public transportation lines and integrating the concept of street and square will strengthen the identity of local locality. In its implementation, development activities that are identified as comprehensive activities involving the potential of local wisdom of local culture make the area of Merdeka Square Medan an identifiable Medan City Gate.

Park and Pool Lots’ Impact on Promoting Shared Mobility and Carpooling on Highways: The Case of Slovenia

Dispersed settlement areas (e.g., Slovenia) result in lower development of fixed public transport lines and thereby car-dependent lifestyles. To avoid congestion inside the cities and on highways in these areas, shared mobility modes e.g., carpooling, is one of the effective solutions, increasing the occupancy of personal vehicles. However, passenger pick-up and drop-off locations still remain an important challenge for carpool users and transport officials. As a collection point for carpooling, we can consider “park and pool (P+P)” lots near highways’ interchanges. This study aims to examine the impacts of P+P lots near interchanges on carpooling behavior of users and on improving sustainable mobility on highways in such dispersed settlement areas. To do so, we employed a field survey, incorporated the P+P lots into the mode choice model, and examined different scenarios using the macroscopic transport model. It is found that factors such as travel cost, public transport service limitations, and improved parking facilities impact highway users’ mode choice. Sixty percent of respondents are willing to leave their car in P+P lots near interchanges. The results also show that P+P lots can increase the number of carpool users. It causes remarkable savings in terms of operating and external costs because of the reduction in total distance and time travelled by personal vehicles as well as parking demand reduction in cities. At the moment, especially in Central Europe, it is easier to invest in a “demand reduction” infrastructure than to increase the capacity of infrastructure. Therefore, P+P lots could be a “win-win” situation for both users and operators.

Mitigating Bunching With Bus-Following Models and Bus-to-Bus Cooperation

Bus bunching is an instability problem where buses operating on high frequency public transport lines arrive at stops in bunches. In this work, we unveil that bus-following models can be used to design bus-to-bus cooperative control strategies and mitigate bunching. The use of bus-following models avoids the explicit modelling of bus-stops, which would render the resulting problem discrete, with events occurring at arbitrary time intervals. In a follow-the-leader two-bus system, bus-to-bus communication allows the driver of the following bus to observe (from a remote distance) the position and speed of a lead bus operating in the same transport line. The information transmitted from the lead bus is then used to control the speed of the follower to eliminate bunching. In this context, we first propose practical linear and nonlinear control laws to regulate space headways and speeds, which would lead to bunching cure. Then a combined state estimation and remote control scheme, which is based on the Linear-Quadratic Gaussian theory, is developed to capture the effect of bus stops, traffic disturbances, and randomness in passenger arrivals. To investigate the behaviour and performance of the developed approaches the 9-km 1-California line in San Francisco with about 50 arbitrary spaced bus stops is used. Simulations with real passenger data obtained from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are carried out. Results show bunching avoidance and significant improvements in terms of schedule reliability of bus services and delays. The proposed control is robust, scalable in terms of public transport network size, and thus easy to implement in real-world settings.

Determinants of individual vehicle type choice and energy consumption in a heavy traffic metropolis of Southeast Asia featuring the case of Metro Manila

Sustained economic growth with insufficient public transport in metropolitan areas encourages private vehicle dependency, thereby increasing petroleum oil consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) production. One way to mitigate these issues is to encourage private vehicle users to own smaller fuel-efficient vehicles. This paper intends to explore determinants (i.e., socio-economic characteristics, travel behavior, vehicle attributes and purchasing conditions, vehicle and gas prices, and built environment characteristics) of individual vehicle type owners and energy consumption in Metro Manila. The data sample of 846 observations and a copula-based joint discrete-continuous framework were employed. The findings highlighted that individuals using bank auto loans are more likely to choose SUVs than cars, thereby consuming more energy. Furthermore, people located in high population density areas and those with road-based public transport line dense areas prefer cars to SUVs. An increase in gas and vehicle cost contributes to energy saving and discourages SUV dependency. The developed models were also applied for a “what-if” scenario analysis to quantify the competing options as an innovative perspective for crafting proactive transportation policies. Understanding the determinants of vehicle type ownership and energy consumption is the precursor of designing consistent transportation policies to mitigate petroleum oil consumption and mobile emissions.

Improved public transportation in rural areas with self-driving cars: A study on the operation of Swiss train lines

Abstract Public transport lines, especially train lines, have historically played an important role as economic lifelines of rural areas. They are one of the most important factors contributing to economic prosperity as they provide access to mobility for all the inhabitants of these regions. Maintaining such rural public transport lines can be a challenge due to the low utilization inherent to rural areas. Today, with the emergence of fully self-driving cars, on-demand mobility schemes in which autonomous robotic taxis transport passengers, are becoming possible. In this work, we analyze if rural public transport lines with low utilization can be replaced with autonomous mobility-on-demand systems. More specifically, we compare the existing public transportation infrastructure to hypothetical mobility-on-demand systems both in terms of cost and service level. We perform our analysis, which focuses on the operational aspects, using a simulation approach in which unit-capacity robotic taxis are operated in a street network taking into account congestion effects and state-of-the-art control (dispatching and rebalancing) strategies. Our study considers the case of four rural train lines in Switzerland that operate at low utilization and cost coverage. We show that a unit-capacity mobility-on-demand service with self-driving cars reduces both travel times and operational cost in three out of four cases. In one case, even a service with human driven vehicles would provide higher service levels at lower cost. The results suggest that centrally coordinated mobility-on-demand schemes could be a very attractive option for rural areas.

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.