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Assessment of the transfer penalty for transit trips: a GIS-based disaggregate modelling approach

Transit riders negatively perceive transfers because of their inconvenience, often referred to as a transfer penalty. Understanding what affects the transfer penalty can have significant implications for a transit authority and also lead to potential improvements in ridership forecasting models. A new method was developed to assess the transfer penalty on the basis of onboard survey data, a partial path choice model, and geographic information system techniques. This approach was applied to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority subway system in downtown Boston. The new method improves the estimates of the transfer penalty, reduces the complexity of data processing, and improves the overall understanding of the perception of transfers.

Bus-based transit way or light rail? Continuing the saga on choice versus blind commitment

Over the last fifteen years, we have seen the (re)introduction of trams (or light rail) as a suggested ‘solution’ to delivering public transport at a lower cost than heavy rail in the low to medium density trafficked corridors. As an alternative, bus-based transitways are also coming into vogue, but are often compared with light rail and frequently criticised in favour of light rail on the grounds of their lack of permanence because of the opportunity to convert the right-of-way into a facility for cars and trucks. In this paper, we consider the evidence on the costs and benefits of light rail and bus-based transitway systems, with particular attention given to the biases in the positions taken by advocates of either form of public transport. The lessons to date reinforce the importance of delivering seamless transport services with good geographical coverage and sufficient flexibility to respond to changing market needs if we are to make a difference to the dominance of the automobile.

Sustainable public transport systems: moving towards a value for money and network-based approach and away from blind commitment

Growing public transport patronage in the presence of a strong demand for car ownership and use remains a high agenda challenge for many developed and developing economies. While some countries are losing public transport modal share, other nations are gearing up for a loss, as the wealth profile makes the car a more affordable means of transport as well as conferring elements of status and imagery of “success”. Some countries however have begun successfully to reverse the decline in market share, primarily through infrastructure-based investment in bus systems, commonly referred to as bus rapid transit (BRT). BRT gives affordable public transport greater visibility and independence from other modes of transport, enabling it to deliver levels of service that compete sufficiently well with the car to attract and retain a market segmented clientele. BRT is growing in popularity throughout the world, notably in Asia, Europe and South America, in contrast to other forms of mass transit (such as light and heavy rail). This is in large measure due to its value for money, service capacity, affordability, relative flexibility, and network coverage. This paper takes stock of its performance and success as an attractive system supporting the ideals of sustainable transport

Bus rapid transit systems – comparative assessment

There is renewed interest in many developing and developed countries in finding ways of providing efficient and effective public transport that does not come with a high price tag. An increasing number of nations are asking the question—what type of public transport system can deliver value for money? Although light rail has often been promoted as a popular ‘solution’, there has been progressively emerging an attractive alternative in the form of bus rapid transit (BRT). BRT is a system operating on its own right-of-way either as a full BRT with high quality interchanges, integrated smart card fare payment and efficient throughput of passengers alighting and boarding at bus stations; or as a system with some amount of dedicated right-of-way (light BRT) and lesser integration of service and fares. The notion that buses essentially operate in a constrained service environment under a mixed traffic regime and that trains have privileged dedicated right-of-way, is no longer the only sustainable and valid proposition. This paper evaluates the status of 44 BRT systems in operation throughout the world as a way of identifying the capability of moving substantial numbers of passengers, using infrastructure whose costs overall and per kilometre are extremely attractive. When ongoing lifecycle costs (operations and maintenance) are taken into account, the costs of providing high capacity integrated BRT systems are an attractive option in many contexts.

Frequency and Connectivity – Key Drivers of Reform in Urban Public Transport Provision

The selection of appropriate public transport investments that will maximize the likelihood of delivering the levels of service required to provide a serious alternative to the automobile is high on the agendas of many metropolitan governments. Mindful of budget constraints, it is crucial to ensure that such investments offer the greatest value for money. This paper promotes the view that integrated multi-modal systems that provide frequency and connectivity in a network-based framework offer the best way forward. A mix of public transport investments with buses as feeder services and bus rapid transit (BRT) as trunk services can offer a greater coverage and frequency than traditional forms of rail, even at capacity levels often claimed the domain of rail.

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Citywide transit integration in a large city: the Interligado System of São Paulo, Brazil

The Interligado System is a large-scale transit modernization plan for the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, which optimizes bus routes and services through the use of advanced technologies for fare integration, bus fleet renovations, new requirements for the companies delivering transit services, and support infrastructure for buses (e.g., priority and exclusive lanes, bus stops, integration terminals, and user information and control systems). The implementation of the Interligado System represents a significant planning and implementation effort involving 39 private bus providers, cooperatives of 6,000 self-employed van operators, and 13,700 vehicles. Electronic farecards allow passengers to ride a combination of lines within a 2-h period. Integration of municipal bus services was completed in May 2004, and integration with Metro and state buses was completed in 2006. The name «Interligado» is no longer used to brand the transit reform, but the project components not only remain in place but have been upgraded over time. The main outcome of the reform has been an increase in public transportation usage within the city of São Paulo. Transit trips grew 15% and boardings grew 49% between 2002 and 2006. The temporal integration scheme has changed the way passengers select a combination of services and has resulted in travel-time and cost savings. Users have responded well to the operational improvements in the priority corridor Passa-Rápido. Nevertheless, the overall rating of municipal buses has declined. The main complaints were high levels of pollution, long waiting and travel times, and congestion. This paper presents a description of the city context and project implementation; an assessment of planning, implementation, and operational issues; and recommendations and lessons learned.

Bus rapid transit systems in Latin America and Asia: results and difficulties in 11 cities

This paper summarizes technical, financial, and performance information regarding bus system improvements in 11 cities in Latin America and Asia. The cities selected in this review improved their transport conditions either through citywide bus reorganizations (São Paulo, Brazil; Santiago, Chile) or through improvements in selected corridors and areas of the city (Beijing; Bogotá and Pereira, Colombia; Curitiba, Brazil; Jakarta, Indonesia; León and Mexico City, Mexico; and Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador). Both citywide reorganizations and corridor improvements included the introduction of bus rapid transit (BRT) elements. The reviewed systems improved the transport conditions for the commuters served and had other benefits, particularly the reduction of pollution and accidents. The BRT corridors implemented show high performance (carrying 3,000 to 45,000 passengers per hour per direction) and have generally been well received by the users, with relatively low capital investments (1.4 million/km to8.2 million/km) and small or no operational subsidies. The systems have faced problems related to planning, implementation, and operations, mostly as a result of institutional and financial constraints. Most problems were solved in the initial months after implementation. The experiences in developing cities show the potential of BRT for a wide range of applications, from medium-demand to very-high-demand corridors. Lessons learned from these applications are useful for the development of similar projects.

Public transit corridor assignment assuming congestion due to passenger boarding and alighting

This paper proposes a formulation of deterministic equilibrium in a public transit corridor that takes into account the congestion effect as perceived directly in travel times. The identification of the relationship between flows and travel times includes time at transit stops for passenger boarding and alighting. A simple case is analyzed that demonstrates the existence of equilibria in which identical users adopt different travel strategies, and a method is supplied for determining such an equilibrium. To find the general case assignment for a corridor, an assignment algorithm based on incremental flow increases is also presented. Finally, the algorithm is implemented in a simple corridor. The results show that identical users faced with the same trip must be allowed to take different decisions for an equilibrium assignment to exist.

Alternative financing for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT): The case of Porto Alegre, Brazil

In the 1970s, Brazil was leading the implementation of high-flow bus priority schemes, but now cities are less capable of financing public infrastructures. This paper explores the private sector participation in the provision of transit infrastructure based on Public–Private Partnerships (PPP) for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The Porto Alegre BRT contemplates interchange terminals planned to accommodate retail and service activities. It is expected that these areas shall generate enough revenues to remunerate private investors, under a PPP scheme, for the construction of terminals and part of the infrastructure required to upgrade some sections of the existing busways to BRT standards.

Growing patronage: challenges and what has been found to work

The workshop “Growing patronage: Challenges and what has been found to work” included presentations of 10 papers from all continents, addressing issues including service design, transferability, planning, strategy and decision making. Discussion focused on four topics: conflict or compromise between commercial and social objectives when designing services; the effects of growing demand for car use; which are the most effective instruments to increase patronage recognising that cultural and social differences can also be important contextual biases; and whether the sector is striving for real performance or merely towards contractual compliance, and what has to be done to counteract this trend.

Transferability of sustainable urban mobility measures

This paper describes an approach developed to identify common elements of city performance that have transferability potential across a number of cities. The findings provide a wealth of information sourced from 200 measures in 19 European cities. A transferability framework is proposed, that uses ideas from traditional top-down approaches using city clustering to infer the transferability of measures, as well as elements of a bottom-up approach, based on the concept of “measure enabling context”. Systems’ thinking diagramming was used to depict relationships between measures, drivers and barriers, portraying the feedbacks at work and the cause–effect relationships, to establish appealing preconditions for transferability.

A traffic analysis zone definition: a new methodology and algorithm

This paper develops a comprehensive approach to the definition of transportation analysis zones (TAZ), and therein, presents a new methodology and algorithm for the definition of TAZ embedded in geographic information systems software, improves the base algorithm with several local algorithms, and comprehensively analyses the obtained results. The results obtained are then compared to these presently used in the transportation analysis process of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. The proposed algorithm presents a new methodology for TAZ design based on a smoothed density surface of geocoded travel demand data. The algorithm aims to minimise the loss of information when moving from a continuous representation of the origin and destination of each trip to their discrete representations through zones, and focuses on the trade-off between the statistical precision, geographical error, and the percentage of intra-zonal trips of the resulting OD matrix. The results for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area case study suggest a significant improvement in OD matrix estimates compared to current transportation analysis practises based on administrative units.

Zoning decisions in transport planning and their impact on the precision of results

In most transport planning studies, one of the first steps is the definition of a zoning scheme into which the study area is divided and the corresponding space is discretized. There are no clear rules on how to carry out this operation in an optimal way, and the dominating practice is to proceed on the basis of experience, trying to mix a certain degree of within-zone homogeneity and the convenience of using administrative borders as zone limits. The potential errors generated with this operation were examined, both at the statistical level when trip matrices are based on sampling and at the geographical level when all trips starting or ending in a zone are assumed to do so at its centroid. A set of quality criteria for a general zoning scheme and an algorithm that constructs a basic zoning on the basis of a sample of geo-referenced trip extreme points and improves it in successive steps according to those criteria are presented. A case study based on the mobility survey for the Lisbon, Portugal, metropolitan area illustrates those steps and the improvements achieved in each step. The magnitude of those improvements is significant and shows that more attention should definitely be given to this initial process in the transport planning studies.

Flexible long range planning using low cost information

Contemporary transport planning requires a flexible modelling approach which can be used to monitor the implementation of a long term plan checking regularly its short term performance with easily available data; the original model is periodically updated using low cost information and this allows the evaluation of the changes to the plan which may be required. Such an approach requires models suited to regular updating and to the use of data from different sources. Models to update trip matrices from traffic counts have been available for some time; however, the estimation and/or updating of other model stages with low cost data has escaped analytical treatment. The paper discusses this idea and formulates the updating problem for an example involving a joint destination/mode choice model under various assumptions about the nature of the available data. Analytical solutions are proposed as well as some general conclusions.

Bus supervision deployment strategies and use of real-time automatic vehicle location for improved bus service reliability

Bus service reliability has long been a top concern for transit agencies and their customers. Improving service reliability, however, has not been easy to accomplish. The use of appropriate recovery times, improved operator training, and better street supervision has produced limited results. Supervision deployment strategies and the use of real-time automatic vehicle location (AVL) information are investigated to improve current supervision practices and enhance bus service reliability. The Chicago (Illinois) Transit Authority’s real-time AVL pilot project for Route 20 Madison is the case study for evaluation of the effectiveness of real-time AVL to improve reliability. A simulation model of the route was developed on the basis of archived AVL data and was used to predict the effects on service reliability when real-time AVL information is used in bus supervision. A week-long experiment was carried out both to verify the model and to address the feasibility and scalability of the system. The main conclusion is that real-time AVL does indeed have great potential to improve service reliability. Service restoration strategies previously impossible to execute are now feasible because of this new information stream. However, many obstacles remain to networkwide implementation, including the supervision communications structure and manpower deployment questions. The flood of information into a central control center must also be addressed. Automation techniques and exception-based reporting are strategies to deal with the problem of information overload.

The future of exclusive busways: the Brazilian experience

This paper examines the operation of urban bus transport systems based upon exclusive bus roadways (busways) in three cities in Brazil. The historic, economic, political, regulatory and operating context for these services is discussed. The strengths and weaknesses of busway systems in Curitiba, Porto Allegre and So Paulo are compared, with particular reference to the operating capacity of the busways. The paper concludes with an assessment of the importance of operations techniques, infrastructure development, land use planning, political stability and regulation to the success or failure of these systems.

Transport metabolism, social diversity and equity: the case of São Paulo, Brazil

The movement of people in space implies the consumption of resources such as time, space, money and energy, as well as the production of negative externalities such as accidents, pollution and congestion. Some of these effects have been analyzed on an aggregate level by comparing regions in the world, a set of selected cities and different geographical areas in a particular city. The analysis of data on a more disaggregate level that considers the differences in the cause and continuance of negative transport externalities among social classes and groups living in a particular city in the developing world is rare.
This paper uses the São Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR) 1997 origin–destination (OD) survey to investigate such phenomenon by taking advantage of the fact that data are divided according to six levels of household income. Results refer to mobility patterns in workable days.
The main conclusions are that although people at the lowest income level spend a high share of their income on transport, they have a very low overall mobility and contribute almost nothing to transport externalities. At the other extreme, the two highest income groups that use cars intensively invest much more time, space and money to travel around and so contribute to transport externalities 8.4–15.2 times more than the lowest income group. Such large differences challenge current transport policies in developing countries and call both for a reassessment of assumptions and principles as well as for opposition to the propagation of myths that have sustained such inequitable policies.

The intermittent bus lane signals setting within an area

Intermittent Bus Lane (IBL) used for bus priority is a lane in which the status of a given section changes according to the presence or not of a bus in its spatial domain: when a bus is approaching such a section, the status of that lane is changed to BUS lane, and after the bus moves out of the section, it becomes a normal lane again, open to general traffic. Therefore when bus services are not so frequent, general traffic will not suffer much, and bus priority can still be obtained. This measure can be operating at a single city block, but if all related control parameters along bus lines are considered together, more time gains can be obtained. In this paper, the basic structure and operation of IBL around a single intersection are briefly introduced, then the construction of an objective function and its relationships with the related priority control parameters along one bus line and their simplifications are described. Finally the calculations of the priority control parameters when there are several connected bus lines within an area and some simulation results are discussed.

Effects of the modifiable areal unit problem on the delineation of traffic analysis zones

Transportation analysis is typically thought of as one kind of spatial analysis. A major point of departure in understanding problems in transportation analysis is the recognition that spatial analysis has some limitations associated with the discretization of space. Among them, modifiable areal units and boundary problems are directly or indirectly related to transportation planning and analysis through the design of traffic analysis zones (TAZs). The modifiable boundary and the scale issues should all be given specific attention during the specification of a TAZ because of the effects these factors exert on statistical and mathematical properties of spatial patterns (ie the modifiable areal unit problem—MAUP). The results obtained from the study of spatial data are not independent of the scale, and the aggregation effects are implicit in the choice of zonal boundaries. The delineation of zonal boundaries of TAZs has a direct impact on the reality and accuracy of the results obtained from transportation forecasting models. In this paper the MAUP effects on the TAZ definition and the transportation demand models are measured and analyzed using different grids (in size and in origin location). This analysis was developed by building an application integrated in commercial GIS software and by using a case study (Lisbon Metropolitan Area) to test its implementabiity and performance. The results reveal the conflict between statistical and geographic precision, and their relationship with the loss of information in the traffic assignment step of the transportation planning models.

Estimating a rail passenger trip origin-destination matrix using automatic data collection systems

Automatic data collection (ADC) systems are becoming increasingly common in transit systems throughout the world. Although these ADC systems are often designed to support specific fairly narrow functions, the resulting data can have wide-ranging application, well beyond their design purpose. This article illustrates the potential that ADC systems can provide transit agencies with new rich data sources at low marginal cost, as well as the critical gap between what ADC systems directly offer and what is needed in practice in transit agencies. To close this gap requires data processing and analysis methods with support of technologies such as database management systems (DBMS) and geographic information systems (GIS). This research presents a case study of the automatic fare collection (AFC) system of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) rail system and develops a method for inferring rail passenger trip origin-destination (OD) matrices from an origin-only AFC system to replace expensive passenger OD surveys. A software tool is developed to facilitate the method implementation and the results of the application in CTA are reported.

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Centre of Excellence for Bus Rapid Transit development, implemented since 2010 in Santiago, Chile, by Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Financed by Volvo Research and Educational Foundations.

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