Burying the highway: the social valuation of community severance and amenity
Community severance (CS) refers to the separation of people from facilities, services, and social networks within a community, and/or people changing travel patterns due to the physical or psychological barriers created by transport corridors and their use. Separation of neighborhoods and reductions of accessibility are some of the main effects of CS. These costs lack […]
Cost efficiency under negotiated performance-based contracts and benchmarking for urban bus contracts –are there any gains through competitive tendering in the absence of an incumbent public monopolist?
This paper uses data obtained from numerous sources in Australia to assess the extent to which negotiated performance-based contracts with actionable benchmarking can achieve as good as, or better, improvement in cost efficiency compared to competitive tendering when incumbents are not public operators. Stakeholders who promote the position that Government should choose to test the […]
Drivers of Bus Rapid Transit Systems – Influences on Ridership and Service Frequency
Towards a simplified performance-linked value for money model as a reference point for bus contract payments
The burgeoning commitment to contracting the delivery of bus services through competitive tendering or negotiated performance-based contracts has been accompanied by as many contract payments schemes as there are contracts. We are now well placed to design a simplified performance-linked payment (SPLP) model that can be used as a reference point to ensure value for money, given the accumulation of experiences throughout the world which have revealed substantive common elements in contracts. Whether the payment to the operator is framed as a payment per passenger or as a payment per service kilometre, the SPLP identifies efficient subsidy outcomes that are linked to a proxy indicator of net social benefit per dollar of subsidy. We illustrate how the SPLP model can be applied to obtain the gross (subsidy) cost per passenger (or per passenger km) from measures of gross cost efficiency and network effectiveness. This model can then be used as part of a benchmarking activity to identify reference value of money prospects in respect of passengers per $ subsidy outlay by adjusting for influences not under the control of the service provider. A single framework to identify contract payments to operators, and to assess (i.e., benchmark) operator performance on critical KPIs, is provided by internalising critical key performance indicators (KPIs) in the design of the SPLP. The proposed SPLP model is sufficiently general to be independent of the procurement method (competitive tendered or negotiated, for example) and of the treatment of revenue allocation (net or gross based contracts), with the additional advantage of being able to assess value for money for government.
Choosing Public Transport – Incorporating Richer Behavioural Elements in Modal Choice Models
The development of behaviourally richer representations of the role of well established and increasingly important influences on mode choice, such as trip time reliability and accounting for risk attitude and process rules, has moved forward at a fast pace in the context of automobile travel. In the public transport setting, such contributions have, with rare exception, not been considered. In this paper, we discuss and empirically illustrate the merits of advanced modelling developments aimed at improving our understanding of public transport choice, namely the inclusion of reliability in extended expected utility theoretic forms, to recognise risk attitude and perceptual conditioning, the consideration of passenger crowding and its inclusion in linear additive models; and the role of multiple heuristics in representing attribute processing as a way of conditioning modal choice. We illustrate the mechanics of introducing these behaviourally appealing extensions using a modal choice data set collected in Sydney.
Headway control with multiple bus services in the same corridor
BRT and BHLS Evolution Worldwide
El Sistema Integrado de Transporte Público de Bogotá – SITP
High Quality, Affordable, Integrated Transit Keys to Public Transport Success
Public transport integration in Bogotá and Cali, Colombia – facing transition from semi-deregulated services to full regulation citywide
Public transport reform in Latin America
Role of Transport in Transforming Cities
Tecnologías para Vehículos de Transporte Público
BRT and BHLS around the world: Explosive growth, large positive impacts and many issues outstanding
A survey of Bus Rapid Transit BRT and Bus of High Level of Service BHLS around the world indicates that there are about 120 cities with bus corridors, with 99 of the cities entering into the list in the last 12 years. The existing bus corridors comprise about 280 corridors, 4300 km, 6700 stations and use 30,000 buses, serving about 28 million passengers per day. In 2010–2011, 19 cities completed new systems − 16 in the developing world – and seven cities expanded their current systems. By late 2011, about 49 new cities were building systems, 16 cities were expanding their corridors, and 31 cities were in initial planning. This impressive growth may be attributed in part to the successes of Curitiba, Bogotá, México City, Istanbul, Ahmedabad and Guangzhou. These cities show low cost, rapid implementation and high performance BRTs, with significant positive externalities. Interesting trends are emerging, such as the implementation of citywide integrated bus systems, improved processes for private participation in operations, increased funding from national governments, and growth of bus manufacturers and technology providers. Despite the growth, there are some outstanding issues: BRT and BHLS do not have a single meaning and image and are often regarded as a “second best” as compared to rail alternatives. In addition several systems in the developing world suffer problems resulting from poor planning, implementation and operation, due to financial, institutional and regulatory constraints. The BRT and BHLS Industry are in their “infancy” and there is need for consolidation and concerted effort.
Implementation of sustainable urban transport in Latin America
Transportation provides vital support to the economic and social development of Latin America cities, but current growth patterns and trends are not sustainable. While non-motorized and public transport modes have the largest shares in passenger transport, there is a strong increase in ownership and use of cars and motorcycles. In Latin America in 2010 there were 2.5 new motor vehicle registrations for every new child being born.
Motorization results in congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, motorization increases the use of fossil fuels and results in reduction of physical activity, which in turn increases obesity and related illnesses. Costs of negative externalities are estimated to be around 18% of the average income of 15 selected cities in the region. There is a direct relation between fatalities and air pollution with automobile use, so curbing motorization might prove beneficial for the society at large.
There is considerable evidence from Latin America that it is possible to modify motorization trends. This can be done through reallocation of resources already dedicated to transportation to emphasize the provision of access for people and goods rather than maximizing transport activity. Mainstreaming sustainable transport will benefit from cooperation among countries – as it was agreed in the Bogotá Declaration (Foro de Transporte Sostenible de América Latina, 2011). It will also require improved information and institutions, and support from the international community, through focused financial instruments, development assistance and technical cooperation.
Metrobús Line 4, a medium level BRT concept for historic districts with advanced features
Methodology for calculating passenger capacity in bus rapid transit systems: Application to the TransMilenio system in Bogotá, Colombia
Transit textbooks and engineering manuals indicate that the capacity of Bus Rapid Transit –BRT – systems does not exceed 20,000 passengers per hour per direction. The implementation of the TransMilenio BRT System, in Bogotá, Colombia, showed that the systematic combination of multiple platforms at stations, overtaking lanes, level boarding, prepayment, large buses with multiple doors, express and local services, and traffic engineering measures at intersections, allow for very large passenger throughput. Measurements indicate actual throughput of 43,000 passengers per hour per direction with average bus occupancy of 150 passengers per articulated bus, and a commercial speed of 22–24 km/h. According to special formulas developed for the analysis of high capacity BRT corridors, the critical section of TransMilenio has a practical capacity of 48,000 passengers per hour per direction with its existing infrastructure and 150 passengers per bus – 35,000 passengers per hour per direction with 110 passengers per bus. Changes in existing infrastructure, such as additional platforms, higher capacity vehicles, non-grade facilities at critical intersections, among other improvements, may increase the capacity, speed, reliability and quality of service of the system.
Metro, Light Rail and BRT
Towards People’s Cities through Land Use and Transport Integration: Review of India’s National Urban Investment Program
Between 2005 and 2012, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) has invested US$20 billion in urban infrastructure and basic services to the urban poor. The transport program under JnNURM is a very important advance, as it helps the cities with policies and funding for moving people, not vehicles. Nevertheless, it has not sufficiently shifted investment in the urban transport sector from road widening and road expansion to sustainable transport. Based on interviews with several stakeholders, a literature review on JnNURM, and consideration of the urban characteristics and transport needs of Indian cities, the authors suggest key improvements in Indian urban transport policy: i) Reinforce the link between land use and transport in the urban transport policy vision. This will allow the preservation of “people’s cities” in the existing urban areas and development of new accessible, dense and mixed used developments around the existing cities; ii) Advance the preparation and implementation of the Comprehensive Mobility Plans (CMPs), in close connection with the Master Plans and JnNURM budget allocations, to transform them from simple lists of projects and good will, to effective planning and monitoring instruments; iii) Introduce performance measurement of key transport indicators at the city wide level: people served, modal share, travel time, traffic fatalities and transport tailpipe emissions; and iv) Develop capacity building programs for project planning and delivery at the city level and for evaluation and monitoring at the state and national level. The recommendations for India are applicable to other rapidly urbanizing and motorizing countries. The authors do not claim that road expansion is not needed, but that it should not be the only focus of public investments in the transport sector.
TransMilenio BRT system in Bogota, high performance and positive impact – Main results of an ex-post evaluation
On the perception of safety in low income neighbourhoods: using digital images in a stated choice experiment
The relationship between the environment and human behaviour has been studied in certain depth. We are now fully aware that the configuration of urban space affects individual actions. For this reason, modern definitions of urbanism include not only a responsibility for the physical aspect of the city configuration but also for the potential interaction between […]
Diseño de Servicios Expresos para Buses
Los servicios expresos, que en general se pueden definir como servicios que atienden a un subconjunto de los paraderos de un determinado corredor, son una estrategia de operación que puede ser beneficiosa tanto para los operadores como para los usuarios. Una reducción en el número de detenciones beneficia a los usuarios al reflejarse en una […]
An Algorithm for the Express Service Design Problem on a Corridor
Crowding in Public Transport: Objective and Subjective Measures
Crowding in public transport is becoming a growing concern as demand grows at a rate that is outstripping available capacity. To capture the user benefits associated with reduced crowding from improved public transport, it is necessary to identify the relevant dimensions of crowding that are meaningful measures of what crowding means to travelers. There are a number of objective and subjective measures of crowding promoted in the literature, with some objective measures being used as the basis of a standard of acceptable levels of practice. There is a disconnection between objective measures and subjective measures, the latter representing what matters to users. We illustrate the difference in a comparison of monitored crowding levels using crowding measures defined by the rail operator/authority in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, and the level of crowding experienced by rail passengers from two recent surveys to reveal the significant gap between objective and subjective measures of crowding.
O papel do transporte coletivo na visão estratégica de cidades competitivas
Barriers to planning and implementing BRT systems
Exploring the performance limit of a single lane per direction Bus Rapid Transit Systems (BRT)
Despite its booming growth, the BRT industry is still far from reaching maturity. As trial-and-error and empirical techniques were largely used as insights for innovations in design, some BRT systems achieved great successes in terms of performance and became world-class flagships. Other systems would be most properly classified as busway systems requiring major improvements. In […]
BRT e Corredores Prioritários para Ônibus: Panorama no Continente Americano
Oportunidade para Qualificar e Inovar o Transporte Coletivo por Ônibus nas Cidades Brasileira
Buses in Brazilian cities are trapped in congestion that disrupts both the efficiency and the reliability of a service that is vital for the population. The recent people´s outcry for a higher quality transit system, associated to an increasing private motorization in urban areas, demands opportunities for bus innovations that go beyond high-performance BRT (Bus […]
Evaluation of Bus Priority Strategies for BRT Operations
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) uses strategies such as exclusive bus lanes, off-vehicle fare collection, high quality vehicles and stations, signal priority, among others. Transit Signal Priority (TSP) is frequently seen as an option to improve performance of public transportation systems at the operational level. TSP is an operational strategy that aims at reducing the delays […]
Impacto de elementos de projeto no desempenho operacional de sistemas BRT de faixa única sem ultrapassagem
The performance of a BRT corridor with a single lane per direction and no overtaking is investigated, in terms of capacity and operating speed, by simulating 324 alternative scenarios. The simulation runs comprised a range demand levels, boarding and alighting rates, station spacing, vehicle loading, number of berths per station, and traffic signal positioning in […]
Model for the Optimal Location of Bus Stops and Its Application to a Public Transport Corridor in Santiago, Chile
The location and number of bus stops are key to the operational effi- ciency of the services that use them; these criteria affect commercial speed, reliability, and passenger access times. In the defining of the number of stops, a trade-off arises between reduced access time, which widens a route’s coverage area, and both the operational […]
Metrobuses in Sydney: how high capacity and high frequency services are benefiting the Metropolitan fringe
Effects of bus rapid transit on housing price: evidence from Sydney, Australia
Comparison of Dynamic Control Strategies for Transit Operations
Real-time headway-based control is a key issue to reduce bus bunching in high frequency urban bus services where schedules are difficult to implement. Several mechanisms have been proposed in the literature, but very few performance comparisons are available. In this paper two different approaches are tested over eight different scenarios. Both methodologies solve the same problem, the former based on a deterministic optimization over a long-term rolling horizon, while the latter proposes a hybrid predictive approach considering a shorter horizon and a stochastic evolution of the system. The comparison is conducted through scenarios that include three different dimensions: (i) bus capacities which can be reached or not, (ii) service frequencies, considering high and medium frequency services and (iii) different load profiles along the corridor. The results show that the deterministic approach performs better under scenarios where bus capacity could be reached frequently along the route while the hybrid predictive control approach performs better in situations where this does not happen.
Workshop 2: Bus rapid transit as part of enhanced service provision
Workshop 2 focused on the role of BRT as part of enhanced public transport service provision. Discussion topics included case studies around the world; improved performance and operations; and better contracts, institutional settings and enhanced policies. BRT was identified as a vital component of modern public transport systems due to its ability to provide high performance and rapid implementation at a lower cost than comparable rail transit. The participants concluded that on top of improving trunk transit corridors, it is important to look to the first and last kilometers and the connections among transport modes. In addition, it is important to consider all dimensions, not just the technical issues. The workshop identified the desirable ingredients for BRT success, created a table of bus based options for different applications and a list of research topics.
Transantiago, five years after its launch
We review the current situation of Transantiago, the fully integrated public transport system covering the Santiago Metropolitan Area in Chile, identifying its current strength, flaws and challenges. The system captured worldwide attention after its premature implementation in February 2007, before most of the infrastructure and system conditions required by its designers were in operation. The […]
Subjective valuation of the transit transfer experience: the case of Santiago de Chile
The still controversial Transantiago public transport system, in Santiago de Chile, has a topological structure that often requires its users to make one or more transfers to reach their destinations. This was rarely necessary in the previous non-integrated system and users reacted with unexpected displeasure when it started even though fare integration in the new […]
Analysis and evaluation of different headway control strategies for BRT: simulated with real data
Transport research needs
The Changing Publicness of Public Transport
Limitations in the Implementation of Real-Time Information Control Strategies Preventing Bus Bunching
Route choice modelling on metro networks: time, transfers, crowding, topology and socio-demographics
Understanding mode and route choices on a public transport system
Will bus travellers walk further for a more frequent service? A Stated preference investigation
Network planning of bus services requires addressing the trade off between frequency and coverage. Planning for good coverage of bus services using the rule of thumb that people will walk four hundred meters to access bus based public transport services means sharing the available budget between many services. For the same budget, the alternative approach […]
Citizens, Complexity and the City – Lessons from citizen participation in urban (transport) planning in Santiago Chile, 1997-2012
Twentieth century, citizen “revolts” against highway projects have influenced thinking about public transport (Toronto, Vancouver, New York), governance (Portland), and cycling (The Netherlands) to this day. Less is known about how these emerge in developing countries, and what they can tell us about citizens’ role in innovation to achieve more socially just, good and livable cities. Using a complexity-based approach, this dissertation explores lessons from an anti-highway movement in Santiago, Chile (1997), which challenged authoritarian planning paradigms inherited from the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). In 2000, these leaders of diverse communities founded a citizen institution, Living City (Ciudad Viva), which today is a prize-winning, citizen-led planning institution.
Participation is recognized as important to community development, health and urban planning. Nonetheless, a rich literature notes many limitations. Is improving participation just a matter of “getting the process right”? Or does it require re-formulating frameworks to redistribute power, fostering self-generating civil society organizations, and treating democratization as ongoing rather than a “steady state”?
Re-formulating frameworks has far-reaching implications. It requires acting consistently with the premise that the local is central to change in human living systems, and the need to create the civic “infrastructure” conducive to citizen learning and the emergence of multiscalar citizen organizations, able to mobilize ecology of actors for innovation. To effectively address the challenges of climate change, loss of biodiversity, the social determinants of health, the “obesity epidemic” and other issues, the answers lie in city neighbourhoods and human settlements.
If we aspire to good, just and livable cities, uncertain futures require planning for change. This research suggests that we can identify dynamics likely to leverage significant change and activate capacities throughout a system. This requires moving to an inclusive planning paradigm that fully integrates citizen planners.
Download the full thesis here.
Survey methods to inform policy decision makers on environment, energy, climate and natural disasters
Método de calibração de um modelo veículo seguidor para BRT e ônibus em corredor segregado
The car-following model is the heart of the traffic simulation software and it is able to replicate real traffic conditions in a controlled environment when properly calibrated. Still today there is resistance on the car-following model calibration and, even though many papers report calibration forms of this model, there are scarce references in the literature […]
