World Transit Research

Urban Transit: Operations, Planning and Economics

Vukan R. Vuchic — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:17:51 PST

The only modern text to cover all aspects of urban transit operations, planning, and economics

Global in scope, up-to-date with current practice, and written by an internationally renowned expert, Urban Transit: Operations, Planning, and Economics is a unique volume covering the full range of issues involved in the operation, planning, and financing of transit systems.

Presenting both theoretical concepts and practical, real-world methodologies for operations, planning and analyses of transit systems, this book is a comprehensive single-volume text and reference for students as well as professionals.

The thorough examination of technical fundamentals and management principles in this book enables readers to address projects across the globe despite nuances in regulations and laws. Dozens of worked problems and end-of-chapter exercises help familiarize the reader with the formulae and analytical techniques presented in the book's three convenient sections:

Transit System Operations and Networks
Transit Agency Operations, Economics, and Organization
Transit System Planning

Visually enhanced with nearly 250 illustrations, Urban Transit: Operations, Planning, and Economics is a reliable source of the latest information for transit planners and operators in transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, city governments, consulting firms as well as students of transportation engineering and city planning at universities and in professional courses.

Urban Transit Systems and Technology

Vukan R. Vuchic — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:17:48 PST

This is the only current and in print book covering the full field of transit systems and technology. Beginning with a history of transit and its role in urban development, the book proceeds to define relevant terms and concepts, and then present detailed coverage of all urban transit modes and the most efficient system designs for each. Including coverage of such integral subjects as travel time, vehicle propulsion, system integration, fully supported with equations and analytical methods, this book is the primary resource for students of transit as well as those professionals who design and operate these key pieces of urban infrastructure.

Transportation for Livable Cities

Vukan R. Vuchic — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:17:45 PST

The twenty-first century finds civiliation heavily based in cities that have grown into large metropolitan areas. Many of these focal points of human activity face problems of economic inefficiency, environmental deterioration, and an unsatisfactory quality of life—problems that go far in determining whether a city is "livable." A large share of these problems stems from the inefficiencies and other impacts of urban transportation systems.

The era of projects aimed at maximiing vehicular travel is being replaced by the broader goal of achieving livable cities: economically efficient, socially sound, and environmentally friendly. This book explores the complex relationship between transportation and the character of cities and metropolitan regions. Vukan Vuchic applies his experience in urban transportation systems and policies to present a systematic review of transportation modes and their characteristics.

Transportation for Livable Cities dispels the myths and emotional advocacies for or against freeways, rail transit, bicycles, and other modes of transportation. The author discusses the consequences of excessive automobile dependence and shows that the most livable cities worldwide have intermodal systems that balance highway and public transit modes while providing for pedestrians, bicyclists, and paratransit. Vuchic defines the policies necessary for achieving livable cities: the effective implementation of integrated intermodal transportation systems.

What Do Passengers Do During Travel Time? Structured Observations on Buses and Trains

Marie Russell et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:30 PST

Structured observation is one way to assess how public transport passengers actually use their travel time. This study reports on 812 adult passengers in Wellington, New Zealand. Researchers recorded passenger characteristics and behavior over a 4-minute period, on a range of routes and times, using 12 pre-set codes. Most passengers (65.3%) were “looking ahead/out the window” at some point in the observation period, more on buses than on trains. About one-fifth of all passengers observed were seen reading, more on trains. Other activities included listening on headphones, talking, texting, and sleeping/eyes closed. Activities were compared on the basis of gender, age group, mode, and time of day. Comparisons are made with recent observational and survey studies, with discussion of both methods and results.

The Effect of City Bus Maneuvers on Wheelchair Movement

Michael J. Turkovich et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:27 PST

A state-of-the-art four-point tiedown system, a prototype automatic docking system, and a prototype rear-facing wheelchair passenger station (RF-WPS) were installed in a large accessible transit vehicle (LATV). A manual wheelchair, powered wheelchair, and a three-wheeled scooter were used to test the securement performance of each wheelchair securement system during LATV normal driving, hard braking, and rapid turning maneuvers. All test wheelchairs were loaded with an ISO 7176 Part 11 compliant loader gage representing the weight of an average male wheelchair occupant. A tri-axial accelerometer measured vehicle acceleration during driving maneuvers, and a low-tech movement tracking system measured wheelchair movement during driving maneuvers. Results show that each wheelchair securement system limited wheelchair displacement to less than the 51-mm Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) displacement limitation, and none of the securement systems showed visible signs of failure. Accelerations during LATV normal driving, hard braking, and rapid turning did not exceed 0.76 g.

Assessing Demand for Rural Intercity Transportation in a Changing Environment

Jeremy Mattson et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:23 PST

With higher fuel costs and changing economic conditions, travel behavior and the level and allocation of resources in highways, rail, air, and transit service in rural areas, may be changing. The objective of this study is to determine the attitude of would-be passengers in their choice of mode and the factors determining their choice in rural and small urban areas. A stated preference survey was developed and administered to residents of North Dakota and northwest and west central Minnesota. The survey asked respondents to identify their mode of choice in different hypothetical situations where there were five modes available – automobile, air, bus, train, and van – under differing mode and trip characteristics. A multinomial logit model was used to estimate the likelihood that an individual would choose a given mode based on the characteristics of the mode, the characteristics of the individual, and the characteristics of the trip. Results show that travelers, especially those of lower income, respond to higher gasoline prices by choosing alternative modes in greater numbers, suggesting rural intercity bus, van, and rail ridership would increase if gasoline prices rose. Results also show that age, gender, income, transit experience, traveler attitudes, travel time, trip purpose, and party size affect mode choice.

Transit-Oriented and Joint Development: Case studies and legal issues

John L. Renne et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:20 PST

In 1999, TCRP Legal Research Digest 12, "The Zoning and Real Property Implications of Transit-Oriented Development" (TOD) addressed the legal implications of this subject, but it did so with a narrow focus and at a time when fewer completed TOD projects were available for study. Since 1999, much has changed in law and practice with regard to TOD. Many new TOD and joint development programs and projects have come "on line." In addition, federal law and new guidelines have changed, making these developments easier to finance and build. Much of the material in the 1999 study is still relevant; however, this digest is intended to help transit and legal professionals benefit even more from an up-to-date treatment of TOD legal issues. The digest examines a combination of large, medium, and small TOD and joint development projects since 1999 and provides comprehensive case studies, with an emphasis on what made the project succeed and how legal issues relate to TODs in general. Case studies from Portland, Oregon; Oakland, California; Chicago, Illinois; Plano, Texas; and Morristown, New Jersey, while illustrating important legal issues, demonstrate that what is needed for TOD success extends beyond laws, financial mechanisms, and public-private contracts. Sample documents have been included, as a supplement to the case studies; these are published on the enclosed CD-ROM, CRP-CD-96.

Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled Rails: Public Transportation and Climate Change Adaptation

Tina Hodges — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:17 PST

The objective of this project is to provide transit professionals with information and analysis relevant to adapting U.S. public transportation assets and services to climate change impacts. Climate impacts such as heat waves and flooding will hinder agencies’ ability to achieve goals such as attaining a state of good repair and providing reliability and safety. The report examines anticipated climate impacts on U.S. transit and current climate change adaptation efforts by domestic and foreign transit agencies. It further examines the availability of vulnerability assessment, risk management, and adaptation planning tools as well as their applicability to public transportation agencies. The report provides examples of adaptation strategies and discusses how transit agencies might incorporate climate change adaptation into their organizational structures and existing activities such as asset management systems, planning, and emergency response. By focusing specifically on public transportation, and the unique assets, circumstances, and operations of that mode, the report supplements transportation sector wide studies whose scopes did not allow for more in-depth treatment of transit.

Cost-saving properties of schedule coordination in a simple trunk-and-feeder transit system

Karthikgeyan Sivakumaran et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:13 PST

The paper explores how the coordination of vehicle schedules in a public transit system affects generalized costs. We consider an idealized system that delivers its users to a common destination by requiring each to transfer from a feeder- to a trunk-line vehicle. Continuum models are used first to analyze cases in which the trunk-line vehicle schedule is given exogenously. We find that when feeder vehicles are dispatched in coordination with this exogenous trunk-line schedule, the reduction in user cost often outweighs the added cost to the feeder operation. In cases when the frequencies of trunk and feeder services can be established jointly, the models show that coordination can be Pareto improving, meaning that operator and user costs both diminish. Conditions that give rise to these cost savings are specified. Practical implications are discussed.

User Evaluations of Intermodal Travel to Work: Exploratory Studies

Steven Silver — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:10 PST

The general importance of intermodal travel (i.e., travel in which there is a combination of modes to a destination, for example, train or light rail and a bus connection) has been emphasized in extensive congressional hearings and in state and regional sponsored transportation studies. Available empirical studies of the use of intermodal travel have predominantly been in cases where travel is across cities or regions. These studies have most often related use of intermodal travel options to distance, time of day and user demographics and user-identified factors and ratings that evaluate these factors. The principal objective of this exploratory study is to identify candidate factors that users relate to the public transit options when work travel is within a local corridor. Two focus groups were conducted in each of two travel corridors in Northern California’s Bay Area. Results identify four factors that are reported to be major considerations in user evaluation of intermodal travel to work. The importance of these factors is indicated by their independent identification in each group and the amount of discussion of the factors. The cost of uncertainty in waiting time between connections and the imputed lack of coordination between modes in service offerings were among the predominant factors in the discussions of all groups.

The challenge of getting to the station passenger experiences

Passengerfocus — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:06 PST

Both the National Passenger Survey and the last National Travel Survey tell us that most passengers already arrive at the station under their own steam, by foot. After that, excluding over/under-ground train connections where they are available, the second most common mode of access is by car; be that dedicated trips to the station where the car is parked, or being dropped off at the station by a third party.

Transport Network Design Problem under Uncertainty: A Review and New Developments

Anthony Chen et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:03 PST

This paper aims to provide a state-of-the-art review of the transport network design problem (NDP) under uncertainty and to present some new developments on a bi-objective-reliable NDP (BORNDP) model that explicitly optimizes the capacity reliability and travel time reliability under demand uncertainty. Both are useful performance measures that can describe the supply-side reliability and demand-side reliability of a road network. A simulation-based multi-objective genetic algorithm solution procedure, which consists of a traffic assignment algorithm, a genetic algorithm, a Pareto filter, and a Monte-Carlo simulation, is developed to solve the proposed BORNDP model. A numerical example based on the capacity enhancement problem is presented to demonstrate the tradeoff between capacity reliability and travel time reliability in the NDP.

Understanding neighbourhood design impact on travel behaviour

Paulus Teguh Aditjandra et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:00 PST

The objective of this study is to explore whether changes in neighbourhood characteristics bring about changes in travel choice. Residential self-selection is a concern in the connections between land-use and travel behaviour. The recent literature suggests that a longitudinal structural equations modelling (SEM) approach can be a powerful tool to assess the importance of neighbourhood characteristics on travel behaviour as opposed to the attitude-induced residential self-selection. However, the evidence to date is limited to particular geographical areas and evidence from one country might not be transferrable to another because of differences in land-use patterns and land-use policies. The paper is to address the gap by extending the evidence using British data. The case study is based on the metropolitan area of Tyne and Wear, North East of England, UK. A SEM is applied to 219 respondents who reported residential relocation. The results identify that neighbourhood characteristics do influence travel behaviour after controlling for self-selection. For instance, the more people are exposed to public transport access, the more likely they drive less. Neighbourhood characteristics also impact through their influence on car ownership. A social environment with vitality also reduces the amount of private car travel. These findings suggest that land-use policies at neighbourhood level can play an important role in reducing driving.

Carrying Capacity Reliability of Railway Networks

Yajing Zheng et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:56 PST

The railway network carrying reliability refers to the carrying capacity meeting the OD demand which consciously changed with random and irresistible factors under prescribed conditions and stated time. Based on reviewing the domestic and international achievement of carrying capacity reliability research and analyzing the characteristics of railway transportation, the paper presents the definition of the carrying capacity reliability of railway network. Then, a model for railway network capacity calculation is developed and the approach for reliability determination is proposed. In the final section, a numerical experiment is conducted with different levels of OD demand. The result shows that the fluctuation of OD demand directly affects the carrying capacity of railway networks, and the effective control of fluctuation plays a positive role for a good performance of railway networks.

Estimation of Travel Time Values for Urban Public Transport Passengers Based on SP Survey

Xumei Chen et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:53 PST

Quantitative study on the travel costs of urban transit passengers has great significance for scientifically evaluating social benefits of public transportation system. Analysis of travel time values is one of the most important parts of traveler's travel cost estimation. According to the stated preference (SP) survey data for Beijing residents, factors that influence public transport values of travel time are analyzed and a Logit-based model is used. An improved SP survey based model is proposed, in which traveler's income is introduced as a variable. The parameters estimating the travel time values under the trip purposes of work/business and leisure are calibrated. Then the values of travel time under different conditions in Beijing are obtained (i.e. different trip purposes and with/without transferring). The results indicate that the travel time values for work are generally higher than those for leisure. The waiting time values are higher than transferring time values and in-vehicle time values under any circumstances, and the waiting time values are higher with transferring than those without transferring.

Conjoint Analysis Based Transit Service Quality Research

Jianrong Liu et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:49 PST

Transit quality service is an important factor that affects the bus split rate. This paper studies the passenger's preference of the bus service with the conjoint analysis. Through the actual survey and data analysis, the utility values of the reliability, frequency, walking time, etc. are measured. And the attributes' weights are determined through the utility values. The results show that the bus reliability is passengers' first concern, which is followed by in-bus environment, walking time and frequency. And the station environment and the price weight low. Then the bus service quality in Nanjing was investigated based on the attributes. The results show that passengers' evaluations about reliability, in-bus environment and frequency in the peak period are much lower than that in the non-peak period. And their evaluation on reliability is very low. The peak period in-bus environment and frequency also get bad evaluation.

Transit ridership and the built environment

Del Peterson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:46 PST

The built environment consists of everything humanly made, arranged, or maintained (Bartuska and Young 1994). In relation to travel behavior, there has been a focus on improving our understanding of how the built environment influences one’s travel mode choice. Planners need evidence showing how land use matters as they advocate for the adoption of different planning principles. This is especially true in small urban areas where planners seldom utilize innovative land-use principles, such as smart growth, within their planning process (Peterson 2009). The objective of this research is to determine what variables (i.e., residential density, land-use mix) play an important role in determining the built environment/transit ridership relationship in the Fargo-Moorhead community. Socio-economic and level of service variables were also considered. Overall, built environment results indicated that residential density and walkability were significant in predicting transit ridership and performed as anticipated. Land-use mix was also significant, but results were mixed with respect to their influence on transit ridership. Policy makers looking to support land uses that increase both transit use and walkability should consider these implications. Small, medium, and large communities can all benefit from planning techniques that give travelers options rather than car centric neighborhoods that do not provide the needed flexibility to support different transportation modes.

A Stated Preference Analysis of Real-Time Public Transit Stop Information

Brian Caulfield et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:43 PST

This paper presents the results of a study conducted to examine the benefits derived from real-time public transit stop information. This research examines the preferences between several options of receiving real-time public transit stop information. The literature states that one of the main reasons individuals access real-time information is to remove the uncertainty when using public transit. This relationship was examined to ascertain if the provision of real-time public transit information can remove the uncertainty and frustration associated with using public transit. A nested logit model structure was applied in this study to examine the benefits derived from accessing real-time public transit information. These models are estimated on segments of the dataset to ascertain how the mode of transport used by the respondents impacts the benefits derived from using real-time public transit information. The results of this study demonstrate that passengers derive the greatest benefit from accessing transit stop information from real-time information displays. Respondents were shown to obtain the second highest utility when accessing transit stop information via a mobile phone short message service (SMS). Bus users were found to gain the highest benefit from the provision of real-time transit stop information.

A New Customer Satisfaction Index for Evaluating Transit Service Quality

Laura Eboli et al. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:39 PST

In this paper, an index based on customer perspective is proposed for evaluating transit service quality. The index, named Heterogeneous Customer Satisfaction Index, is inspired by the traditional Customer Satisfaction Index, but takes into account the heterogeneity among the user judgments about the different service aspects. The index allows service quality to be monitored, the causes generating customer satisfaction/ dissatisfaction to be identified, and the strategies for improving the service quality to be defined. The proposed methodologies show some advantages compared to the others adopted for measuring service quality, because it can be easily applied by the transit operators.