Intermodality and fare integration for public transport in metropolitan areas

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

10-2009

Subject Area

planning - integration, mode - subway/metro

Abstract

The best practices in public transport planning often show that competing modal choices are directly linked to the adoption and enforcement of specific transport policies. Planning, rather than being imposed from the top becomes interwoven with its outcome with an iterative and interactive manner. There is nothing in these models that says what passengers ought to do, rather the aim is to find out what people will do, using some simple assumptions about what motivates them and allowing for the constraints they encounter. In order to promote the use of public transport a series of good policies are applied, so that the synergic actions can effectively make public transport competitive with the use of private vehicles. Among these there is the Public Transport Integration system, which aims to combine, to rationalize and to integrate the supply of public transport, to improve accessibility to the system with consequent variation of modal split in favour of the public mode, to increase the customer satisfaction, while increasing and improving the services. A Public Transport Integration System is made of three kinds of integration: - infrastructural integration, which consists in dedicated transport infrastructures, as park and ride facilities, interchange stations, bus stops, et al.; - modal integration, which consists in the possibility to use different kind of Public transport modes(bus, rail) within coordinated time tables; - fare integration, which enables passengers to use different forms of transport with the same ticket. All these aspects need to be adequately analysed and defined by using a methodological approach using of the schedule-based modelling approach to assess loads of each run of public transport lines. Moreover, in the range of integration, the schedule-based approach also allows to assess the benefits of synchronisation strategies, as it can explicitly consider intechange times and penalties at stops among services (e.g. bus-train interchanges) by the calculation of system performances (e.g. level of service attributes) on diachronic networks. The paper presents the approach outlined in the strategy and lists the steps, which have been proposed simulating the introduction of modal and fare integration in two areas of different dimensions (the metropolitan area of Rome and the metropolitan area of the straits of Messina). Simulations of the public transport system for the design scenarios have been carried out by using OT-DYRT, a plug-in of Omnitrans, which allows the simulation of public transport networks using the schedule-based approach. The process of fare integration is described following the steps: a) definition of the structure of the integrated area, b) definition of the fare structure, c) definition of the trade structure, relationships between associated companies, systems of validation and control and relative technologies, incorporating the use of transport telematics, for the reassessment of travel choices, and a coordination of bus and rail operations applied to fare-systems, combined ticketing and information systems.

Comments

Permission to publish abstract given by AET.

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