Audio-video surveillance system for public transportation

Prelims

Management of crowd information in public transportation (PT) systems is crucial, both to foster sustainable mobility, by increasing the user's comfort and satisfaction during normal operation, as well as to cope with emergency situations, such as pandemic crises, as recently experienced with COVID-19 limitations. This paper presents a taxonomy and review of sensing technologies based on Internet of Things (IoT) for real-time crowd analysis, which can be adopted in the different segments of the PT system (buses/trams/trains, railway/metro stations, and bus/tram stops). To discuss such technologies in a clear systematic perspective, we introduce a reference architecture for crowd management, which employs modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to: (i) monitor and predict crowding events; (ii) implement crowd-aware policies for real-time and adaptive operation control in intelligent transportation systems (ITSs); (iii) inform in real-time the users of the crowding status of the PT system, by means of electronic displays installed inside vehicles or at bus/tram stops/stations, and/or by mobile transport applications. It is envisioned that the innovative crowd management functionalities enabled by ICT/IoT sensing technologies can be incrementally implemented as an add-on to state-of-the-art ITS platforms, which are already in use by major PT companies operating in urban areas. Moreover, it is argued that, in this new framework, additional services can be delivered to the passengers, such as, e.g., on-line ticketing, vehicle access control and reservation in severely crowded situations, and evolved crowd-aware route planning.

This paper provides a Lagrangian dynamic fluid model of the traffic of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system or of personal rapid maglev-transporters. The transport system using these maglev-transporters or sky-podcars operates in the style of demand-responsive systems. The advantage of the sky-podcars is that they are fast and that they do not operate in the same physical space as the other ground transportation modes. Thus they will contribute to alleviate congestion. We model the dynamics of the sky-podcars transportation system and we solve the problem of relocation with minimum cost in this maglev system. An analysis of assumptions of effective operation of the PRT is carried out. Reactive dynamic assignment in such PRT system is described. In a multi-modal transport system where the maglev-transporters mode is taken into account, we describe the multi-modal dynamic assignment and its spatial interactions with other common transportation systems.

User Perception of Paratransit System Characteristics in the Context of Public Transport System

Public transportation plays a key role to socio-economic development of any nation. This service enhances people’s livelihood framework by facilitating mobility and accessibility to services. Moreover, there is clear global evidence that a well performing public transport is an important enabler of sustained economic prosperity. Rapid urbanization in developing countries has resulted in transport facilities and infrastructure failing to cope with demand resulting in congestion, movement delays, high travel costs, and construction of holding bays in order to decongest the city, which will contribute to an increased usage of non-renewable energy. This prompts implementation of non-comprehensive strategies such as partial deregulation of transportation systems that caused further deterioration in economic sustainability. An economically sustainable transport system advocates for mobility, resource, and operational efficiency. This research focuses on developing a bus investment conceptual framework of a public transport system that improves mobility, resource, and operational efficiency to aid in sustaining of public transportation system for an unforeseeable future. With this in mind, a Harare bus investment system has been modelled as a policy framework model to evaluate its economic sustainability. This will help develop a long-term economically sustainable public transportation and reduce the overall impact of the earlier liberalisation of the transportation sector

Rapid urbanization, increasing population, and a booming economy have stimulated growth in Indian cites, resulting in higher levels of dependence on private vehicles. This has raised serious issues over the sustainability of transport infrastructure in cities. Public transportation (PT) systems can help achieve sustainable transportation. But they face competition from intermediate public transport (IPT) or Paratransit. The existing PT and IPT systems, therefore, need to re-plan their operations to complement each other and deliver a wider network of services. To achieve this, an evaluation of both PT and IPT systems at microscopic levels is needed to facilitate their possible integration in a coordinated multimodal transportation system. The present paper attempts to evaluate the public and paratransit systems in the city of Surat in the Indian state of Gujarat using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique in DEAP software at the individual and system level. The operations, route design, and cost efficiency of both systems are evaluated to understand how well the existing set-up caters to demand. The arithmetic mean of operations, route design, and cost efficiencies of 26 routes of PT system were worked out to be 0.89, 0.94, and 0.69, while that of the 13 routes of the IPT system were 0.92, 0.97, and 0.88 respectively. The system investigation shows that analytically, only 8% of IPT routes were inefficient in all the three aspects, compared with 42% of PT routes. The performance of each route was analyzed, appropriate suggestions made, and the potential of these systems for designing an integrated transport system highlighted.

Sustainable development is a holistic practice and the concept of sustainability considers social, economic, and environmental issues simultaneously. Sustainable transportation system is the need of the hour because of significant challenges for cities with respect to traffic congestion, environment pollution, etc., leading to overall global warming. However, there are no proper guidelines in place for Indian cities currently to be considered by the urban development authorities to implement or evaluate different types of sustainable transportation systems. Considering these, the present study developed a design methodology to enhance the level of existing transport systems in terms of its sustainability for the modes, namely, public transport (PT) and non-motorized transport (NMT) system. Further, the evaluation methodology was also developed by proposing ‘sustainability indices’ which will help policymakers or development authorities in assessing the status as well as changes that occurred due to policy interventions in PT and NMT systems.KeywordsSustainabilityPublic transportNon-motorized transportSustainability index

Smart cards for public transportation have become a significant source of information for analyzing mobility trends and assisting public authorities and transportation organizations in making decisions. This article describes a visualization tool developed by LINKS Foundation that exhibits spatial and temporal characteristics, with the goal of demonstrating the potential of analysing and visualising smart card validation and transit data towards better decision making. The Piedmont region’s transit data was used as a case study. The developed public transport visualization tool (called Mobisuite) represents the transit system supply, the mobility demand, and the ticketing system through three primary visualization modules. The tool employs a virtual check out algorithm, which estimates the users’ travel diary and aids in the calculation of various transit indicators, e.g. passenger kilometers, maximum load, number of on-boarding passengers, average load. Mobisuite can be a helpful tool for displaying the public transport system for the whole transport network at a glance, and it can be used to simplify communication between transit operators and public agencies regarding the public transport planning, operation and fares.KeywordsSmart-card ticketDecision support systemsFare collectionE-ticketing dataTransit planningPublic transportationTransportation demandIntelligent transportation systems

Transportation is considered a key element in the development of a city. Urbanisation will not be possible without proper mobility and well-integrated transportation. Effective and dependable mass transportation networks are critical for the world to maintain its rapid economic development. Services and industrial sectors, in particular, are concentrated around large metropolitan centres, necessitating robust and dependable urban transportation networks to transfer jobs and link from the manufacturing plants to the supply chain. The importance of urban and rural transportation stems from its role in poverty reduction by enhancing access to labour markets and raising wages in disadvantaged communities. Availability and urbanisation sustainability are essential for fostering the long-term economic development of a city's growth in the world. Therefore, they are inextricably linked in spatial distribution, urban stock, flow growth, and built structure unification. However, due to car-centric strategies implemented by subsequent city plans and initiatives, urban mobility has not led to optimal outcomes. In terms of policy and organisational consequences, urban migration is multifaceted. As a result, coherence in policy initiatives and linkages between systems is critical. Improved connectivity is not accomplished by constructing additional bridges, rail lines, or cars, nor by implementing impromptu spatial measures such as traffic control strategies to achieve delocalisation and decongestion in isolation. Countries like India and cities with dense populations and inadequate infrastructure have always struggled to provide congestion-free urban transportation. Part of the reason for this is the weak public transportation systems of such cities. Such inefficient public transportation systems have reduced people's trust in these services. These problems should be tackled by providing a sustainable transport system. This book aims to deliver an effective way of providing a sustainable transport system by reducing all the inefficiencies pertaining to the different modes of transport and by giving better policymaking strategies.

Public transportation is a public service offered to people living in cities.The aim of this study is to evaluate urban transportation and rail systems within the framework of five-year development plans, the first covering the years 1963-1967 and the eleventh covering the years 2019-2023.Qualitative research method was used in the study.During the data analysis phase, eleven five-year development plans were examined and policies and strategies in urban transportation and rail systems were evaluated.In the first five-year development plan; In the second development plan, reducing costs and increasing service quality; The transportation plan was mentioned for the first time by touching on urban transportation problems.In the third development plan; urban transportation problems, in the fourth development plan; The problems caused by the use of private vehicles in urban transportation and oil-based policies, and the start of the construction of the light rail system and metro in Istanbul and Ankara are mentioned.In the fifth development plan; The necessity of the concept of transportation planning and the necessity of the transportation plans to be prepared for cities to be integrated and compatible with the zoning plans, in the sixth development plan; Since traffic and transportation problems, no targets, policies and principles related to urban transportation were determined and no concrete project was included in the seventh development plan; The necessity of accelerating urban transportation master plan studies by meeting the transportation needs in metropolitan municipalities in a coordinated manner with master plan decisions and focusing on public transportation systems for the priorities specified in the plan was mentioned.In the eighth development plan; It is aimed to solve the problems related to organization, responsibility, authority and legislation in urban transportation.In the ninth five-year development plan; The EU perspective on transportation was emphasized, and in this sense, increasing capacity in urban transportation and traffic and demand management strategies were mentioned.In the tenth five-year development plan; Emphasis was placed on improving the transportation connections of underdeveloped regions, switching to a corridor approach, and ensuring integration between transportation systems.In the eleventh five-year development plan; The need to carry out studies to increase accessibility in urban transportation was emphasized.

Releaving traffic congestion by developing public transport as an alternative mode of travel is a common practice all over the world. However, the increasing public transport subsidies have created a financial burden for governments. Encouragingly, private capital supplies an opportunity for public transport in sustainable finance. Previous research mainly focuses on qualitative analysis and money-for-value (MFV) analysis. In this paper, a new investment model is proposed based on the concept ‘passenger value’, and a bi-level programming model (BLPM) is constructed as a quantitative analysis tool. The upper target of BLPM is the total surplus (including the value of time (VOT) of passengers) of the public transport system and the upper constraint is the ticket price. The lower target of BLPM is passenger’s surplus, the lower constraints are service capability and the lowest return rate of the private sector. The public transport of Jinan City, China is taken as a case to quantify the impacts of private capital investment in public transport. Results show that the proposed investment model considering passenger value is superior to the traditional one, and effective private capital investment could increase the total societal benefit of the transportation system. The proposed investment strategy satisfies economic viability and is a financially sustainability strategy. Additionally, travelers should be encouraged to use public transport through improving the service quality and passenger returns. Only in this way can the success rate of the private sector investment in public transport be improved efficiently.

This paper develops recommendations for improving in an evolutionary manner the performance of our urban ground transportation systems. The strengths and limitations of present static control technology and current computer traffic signal and freeway surveillance and control systems in urban areas are described. A taxonomy of possible information and control configurations in urban traffic operations is developed. The alternatives in the taxonomy are analysed and used as the basis for recommending specific real time information and control functions for improving, in an evolutionary manner, the performance of urban ground transportation systems. The recommended improvements would allow for the first time a meaningful substitution of operational control for physical (static) capacity increases in urban transportation.

With the increasing use of automated vehicles (AVs) in the coming decades, government authorities and private companies must leverage their potential disruption to benefit society. Few studies have considered the impact of AVs towards mode shift by considering a range of factors at the city level, especially in Australia. To address this knowledge gap, we developed a system dynamic (SD)-based model to explore the mode shift between conventional vehicles (CVs), AVs, and public transport (PT) by systematically considering a range of factors, such as road network, vehicle cost, public transport supply, and congestion level. By using Melbourne’s Transport Network as a case study, the model simulates the mode shift among AVs, CVs, and PT modes in the transportation system over 50 years, starting from 2018, with the adoption of AVs beginning in 2025. Inputs such as current traffic, road capacity, public perception, and technological advancement of AVs are used to assess the effects of different policy options on the transport systems. The data source used is from the Victorian Integrated Transport Model (VITM), provided by the Department of Transport and Planning, Melbourne, Australia, data from the existing literature, and authors’ assumptions. To our best knowledge, this is the first time using an SD model to investigate the impacts of AVs on mode shift in the Australian context. The findings suggest that AVs will gradually replace CVs as another primary mode of transportation. However, PT will still play a significant role in the transportation system, accounting for 50% of total trips by person after 2058. Cost is the most critical factor affecting AV adoption rates, followed by road network capacity and awareness programs. This study also identifies the need for future research to investigate the induced demand for travel due to the adoption of AVs and the application of equilibrium constraints to the traffic assignment model to increase model accuracy. These findings can be helpful for policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding AV adoption policies and strategies.

The concept of livability is not new to Montana or the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT). Helping build great places in great environments has long been embedded in the department’s mission, and even the state constitution. In light of the current national dialogue on livability, the challenge facing MDT is to more formally define livability for Montana and its communities and understand how livability relates to Montana’s transportation needs. The purpose of this study is to determine what livability means for Montana and the role of transportation. To achieve the goal of the study, the research team: (1) scanned existing demographic data and literature; (2) conducted interviews of peer states; (3) conducted a qualitative analysis on Montana TranPlan 21 public comments; (4) conducted a public survey of Montana communities and a local elected leader survey; and (5) interviewed Montana partner agencies and key MDT staff. The study finds that Montana has some unique characteristics that may have a bearing on measures of its livability. For example, sixty-two percent of Montanans live in areas where the population density is 800 people per square mile or higher, but those areas account for only 0.1 percent of the land area. Along with its unique character, the surveys conducted for this study indicate that Montana is also a good place to live. Survey respondents endorsed the belief that MDT projects add value to their quality of life. There were some consistent themes identified through the various tasks of this study. One size does not fit all, and any definition of livability should have some flexibility and scalability based on local needs and a community vision. Well maintained road system, safety, public transportation systems, bike and pedestrian facilities, and winter maintenance are important features of livability for Montana communities. Based on research and outreach, the research team proposes the following definition for livability in Montana as it relates to transportation: “Provide a transportation system that emphasizes a safe, maintained road network; allows for multimodal transportation opportunities; and considers local community values.” – This report and related materials can be found at http://www.mdt.mt.gov/research/projects/planning/benchmarks.shtml.

The concept of smart transportation systems is increasingly becoming critical in addressing the challenges posed by an increasing number of mega cities in both developed and developing regions in maintaining safety, smooth traffic flow, and an environmentally friendly and sustainable urban environment. The Government of Zimbabwe deregulated its transport sector in the early 1990s. This development ushered in the informal public transport operators, locally referred to as ‘kombis'. Major cities such as Harare are characterised by a disjointed and chaotic urban public transport system. The major problems are the impacts this has on the quality of the environment. Currently, the urban public transport system is contributing greatly to both air and noise pollution within the confines of the city, especially in the Central Business Districts. The problem is further exacerbated by the massive importation of used vehicles from outside the country. These developments have resulted in high emission rates of major air pollutants resulting in a deterioration of the ambient air quality especially in the major cities such as Harare. Transportation is a major source of air pollutants. Vehicles are probably the largest single source of pollutants such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. Other harmful emissions include as lead, benzene, arsenic, aldehydes, sulphates, particulate matter and the secondary creation of ozone. In Harare the number of registered vehicles increased from 192 901 in 1994 to 292 862 and by August 1999 showing that the increase in the number of vehicles is mostly in the cities. This chapter seeks to explore how smart transportation system can be adopted in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. Harare was purposefully selected as it is experiencing rapid urbanization and motorization in the country. Using documentary analysis, discourse analysis and textual analysis, the chapter also describes and examines the challenges, constraints and opportunities of adopting smart urban transportation system in Harare. From this chapter the major conclusions are that the main problem associated with this rapid growth in vehicle population in the major cities is increase concentration of line and area emission sources due to traffic congestion at peak times. The stock of vehicles is quite old and they lack emission control equipment. Major constraints and limitations are observed in the current pieces of legislation. For example, the current Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Act (1971) does not require vehicles to be fitted with emission control equipment. Most of the vehicles use leaded fuel resulting in emission of the dangerous lead particulate matter in the urban areas. There is therefore an urgent need to design and implement air pollution control measures in the urban areas of the country. It is also critical to develop smart and eco-friendly transportation infrastructures so as to achieve sustainable urban communities. The integration of transportation, land use and decision making is also critical in the achievement of smart transport.