Computer-aided Systems in Public Transport

Prelims

This paper examines time windows for scheduled trips in multiple depot vehicle and crew scheduling problems that arise in public bus transportation. In practice, the two planning tasks vehicle scheduling and crew scheduling are traditionally solved sequentially with the implicit understanding that the scheduled time for timetabled trips remains fixed. In order to improve cost efficiency two concepts have been developed over the last years: In order to obtain better flexibility when scheduling crews, vehicle and crew scheduling problems are tackled simultaneously. In order to extend flexibility while scheduling vehicles, variable trip departure and arrival times are considered. Obviously the combination of both concepts promises the largest savings, but probably leads to bursting computational times due to growing problem complexity. In this paper we combine both concepts by extending the integrated vehicle and crew scheduling problem with the possibility to shift scheduled trips within defined time windows. We examine the tradeoffs between solution quality and computational time for different solution approaches.

The urban transport planning process has four main activities: Network design, Timetable construction, Vehicle scheduling and Crew scheduling; each activity has subactivities. In this paper the authors work with the subactivities of timetable construction: minimal frequency calculation and departure time scheduling. The authors propose to solve both subactivities in an integrated way. The developed mathematical model allows multi-period planning and it can also be used for multimodal urban transportation systems. The authors consider demand uncertainty and the authors employ fuzzy programming to solve the problem. The authors formulate the urban transportation timetabling construction problem as a bi-objective problem: to minimize the total operational cost and to maximize the number of multi-period synchronizations. Finally, the authors implemented the SAUGMECON method to solve the problem.

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

Nowadays the traffic congestion is being a common problem in major cities, every time the travel time is increasing and also the number of private cars. It is urgent to take actions to solve this problem. The urban transport is becoming into the best way to fight against congestion; but to make it more attractive to users it has to be more efficient (less travel time, less waiting time, low fare). The urban transport process has four main activities: Network design, Timetabling, Vehicle scheduling and Crew scheduling. The problem presented here is about the integration of the frequency and departure time scheduled both are subactivities of the timetable construction, besides it includes multiple periods planning and multiperiod synchronization, also the authors consider uncertainty in demand and travel time using fuzzy numbers. The planners faced this problem everyday. The authors created a mathematical model including the characteristics previously mentioned, the objectives of this model are to minimize the total operation cost, to maximize the number of multiperiod synchronization between routes, and to minimize the total waiting time for passengers. The SAugmecon method is used to solve the problem, 32 instances were randomly generated based on real data, and the comparison of two defuzzification methods (k-preference and second index of Yager) is presented. Also, the comparison of the problem with uncertainty on demand and uncertainty on demand and travel time is presented.

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

Providing attractive and efficient public transport services is of crucial importance due to higher demands for mobility and the need to reduce air pollution and to save energy. The classical planning process in public transport tries to achieve a reasonable compromise between service quality for passengers and operating costs. Service quality mostly considers quantities like average travel time and number of transfers. Since daily public transport inevitably suffers from delays caused by random disturbances and disruptions, robustness also plays a crucial role. While there are recent attempts to achieve delay-resistant timetables, comparably little work has been done to systematically assess and to compare the robustness of transport plans from a passenger point of view. We here provide a general and flexible framework for evaluating public transport plans (lines, timetables, and vehicle schedules) in various ways. It enables planners to explore several trade-offs between operating costs, service quality (average perceived travel time of passengers), and robustness against delays. For such an assessment we develop several passenger-oriented robustness tests which can be instantiated with parameterized delay scenarios. Important features of our framework include detailed passenger flow models, delay propagation schemes and disposition strategies, rerouting strategies as well as vehicle capacities. To demonstrate possible use cases, our framework has been applied to a variety of public transport plans which have been created for the same given demand for an artificial urban grid network and to instances for long-distance train networks. As one application we study the impact of different strategies to improve the robustness of timetables by insertion of supplement times. We also show that the framework can be used to optimize waiting strategies in delay management.

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

Planning a public transportation system is a multi-objective problem which includes among others line planning, timetabling, and vehicle scheduling. For each of these planning stages, models are known and advanced solution techniques exist. Some of the models focus on costs, others on passengers’ convenience. Setting up a transportation system is usually done by optimizing each of these stages sequentially.In this paper we argue that instead of optimizing each single step further and further it would be more beneficial to consider the whole process in an integrated way. To this end, we develop and discuss a generic, bi-objective model for integrating line planning, timetabling, and vehicle scheduling. We furthermore propose an eigenmodel which we apply for these three planning stages and show how it can be used for the design of iterative algorithms as heuristics for the integrated problem. The convergence of the resulting iterative approaches is analyzed from a theoretical point of view. Moreover, we propose an agenda for further research in this field.

Networking of Public Passenger Transport Modes, a Step Towards Sustainable Mobility in Ljubljana Urban Region

Urban transport plays an important role in low-carbon eco-city and energy conservation and emission reduction in the transport sector. Urban low-carbon transport system is a complex dynamic system including society, economy, motor vehicles, cars, transport infrastructure and other factors. This paper analyzes the complex dynamics relationship through building an urban low-carbon transport system. Taking Shanghai as a case to simulate the urban low-carbon system, and the result suggests rapid increase of private cars is an important driver factor of carbon emissions. So, it is important to strengthen urban transport demand management and improve the urban transport structure in building urban low-carbon transport.

El objetivo de la investigación fue analizar el sistema de transporte urbano de la ciudad de Puno, se propone de infraestructura vial urbano para tener una capacidad vial de acuerdo al tipo de vía y así poder optimizar el tiempo de viaje del pasajero según la tendencia de movilidad, movilidad de origen destino según zonas, movilidad del transporte urbano. Se analizó el recorrido de rutas de transporte público urbano para determinar la velocidad promedio y así poder conocer los tiempos de viajes. La hipótesis que se ha formulado es: con el análisis del sistema de transporte urbano se propone infraestructura vial urbana para optimizar el tiempo de viaje del pasajero de la ciudad de Puno-2018, se analiza la tendencia de movilidad según origen destino, la movilidad del transporte urbano, rutas de transporte urbano público e infraestructura vial urbana. La investigación centró su metodología, bajo un enfoque cuantitativo, diseño no experimental. Se aplicó un cuestionario como un instrumento para el análisis; de los cuales permitieron recoger información y analizar las variables de estudio y efectuar las correlaciones. La muestra estuvo conformada de 384 pasajeros y 8 microbuses que brindan servicio en las principales rutas de transporte público urbano. Como resultado se tiene que el sistema de transporte urbano de la ciudad de Puno es concentrado debido al uso de suelo en la zona céntrica, la movilidad vehicular tiene obstáculos en el flujo debido al uso de la calzada como estacionamiento y que las vías superan su capacidad vial la cual no optimiza los tiempos de viajes en ciudad de Puno para lo cual se requiere de infraestructura vial urbana como son: terminales terrestres, pavimentado de las vías paraderos, declarar zonas rígidas las vías que son utilizadas por las rutas de transporte urbano e implementar un sistema inteligente de gestión de tráfico en las intersecciones principales de la ciudad.

The objectives of crew scheduling and crew rostering in public transport can be summarized as follows: the company’s objective is to achieve a high economic performance: theoretically, this can be achieved by reducing the number of runs, practically, this can hardly be realized; therefore, the only way to save cost is on the one hand side to reduce the share of unproductive times which have to be paid and on the other hand side to shorten the time to plan or to update a crew schedule; the driver’s objective is to have a crew schedule and roster of a high quality, i. e. runs with an acceptable length of break, crew schedules with a small number or no split runs at all and rest times between subsequent runs as long as possible and so on.

Choosing safe and suitable bicycle routes to integrate cycling and public transport systems

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.