Level-Based Approach to Public Transport Network Planning

Evaluation of public transport policy formulation and implementation: Case study of 24 mid-sized Nordic cities

Equal access to opportunities has emerged in public transport planning as a social objective that many transport agencies are trying to achieve. Yet in practice, not all public transport agencies are currently providing urban residents with comparable levels of service due to physical barriers in the public transport network that can significantly hinder the ability of individuals with physical disabilities to access opportunities. In countries without a strong federal accessibility act and/or with major financial constraints, some public transport agencies fall behind in applying universal access design principles, making it even harder for people with a physical disability to access opportunities. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology that can be used by public transport agencies or disability advocates to clearly highlight and quantify the performance of the public transport network in a region, in terms of providing transit services to people in a wheelchair and compare that to the service offered to an individual not in a wheelchair. In this study we use accessibility, the ease of reaching destinations, by public transport as the key performance measure in two major Canadian Cities (Montreal and Toronto). Furthermore, we focus on job accessibility in the most socially vulnerable census tracts in both cities, to evaluate levels of job accessibility for wheelchair users residing in socially vulnerable areas. The findings from our study show striking contrasts between the numbers of accessible jobs by public transport for wheelchair users compared to the general population. On average, wheelchair users in Toronto have access to 75% of jobs that are accessible to users that are not in a wheelchair, whilst their counterparts in Montreal have access to only 46% of the jobs accessible to other users. This research is expected to highlight for public transport engineers, planners, policy makers and advocates for those with disabilities, the importance of universal access in a region, especially along public transport networks, using a widely used land use and transport performance measure.

In the developing countries along with formal public transport network (FPTN), informal public transport network (IPTN) also plays an integral role by achieving high public transport ridership. IPTN caters effectively to the user’s expectations and appears to be highly integrated with urban fabric. IPTN either complements or compete with the existing FPTN, even though due credit is not given to IPTN and considered as unlawful entities. Efficiency and robustness of transport network is based on topological structure of network. To summarize which network is more efficient and robust, the study tests the network parameters of formal Public Transport Network and Informal Public Transport Network of Nagpur (India). A topological measure of network structure has tested based on elementary concepts of graph theory. We explore the network structure and their properties. The practical significance of the network parameters was then analysed. In the IPTN the degree of small-worldliness is smaller, as compared to FPTN, indicative of IPTN being more robust as compared to FPTN. This study provides an approach to understand the efficiency of an Informal public transport network in combination with Formal public transport network. The article identifies the importance of Informal public transport network to improve the Complementarity with the formal public transport network. Integrating formal and informal transportation network into a hybrid network has the potential to induce the desired relationships amongst FPTN and IPTN, i.e. competing or complimenting nature to improve the overall efficiency of FPTN.

Discuss the urban traffic line network optimization principle, objective and constraints.Presents mathematical expression for distinct optimum objects function form and corresponding constraints.Finally, varied objectives and programming model of public traffic line network optimization is produced, but evaluated and discussed the objective mathematical expression.The public transit optimizing model for medium city is established by analysing the optimizing aim and the restrictive condition.

The ability to use public transportation should be available throughout the whole service area and the public transportation network should be well connected. This research compared the potential coverage of a feeder bus network in support of urban rail transportation, as well as the impact of future transit network plans on public transportation accessibility in the city of Khoan Kaen, Thailand. The performance of the public transportation system was predicted based on multimodal transport and the completed urban rail public transportation plan, as projected in the year 2036, in order to fill gaps in the existing feeder bus network. The feasibility and characteristics of the route reformation policy concept should provide an effective feeder network for the urban rail system. A comparative study was conducted on stakeholder impact for a three-fold scenario: 1) separate individual lines for bus routes; 2) both forms of feeder bus networks (conventional and reformed); and 3) access to three designated utility areas from the entire feeder bus network. In this scenario, the most effective urban mobility support was provided by public facilities combined with a major roadway directly connecting to the designated positions. The time used on the extended bus route network increased by around 11% on average for the entire trip, while accessibility increased by approximately 67.75%, 47.9%, and 43.68% for the entire multimodal transport network. These analytical results make a significant contribution to future knowledge on urban transformation through urban mass transit projects. The contribution of land acquisition was significant. Also, the demand-responsive connection approach used in this study can be adopted to determine feeder bus reformation options, particularly in emerging economies.

The public transport infrastructure of a city is one of the most important indicators of its economic growth and development. Here we investigate the statistical properties of the public transport network in Shenyang to explore its various properties based on complex network theory. The statistical properties of the public transport system consist of the degree of a node, the average shortest path length, the clustering coefficient of a node, the average clustering coefficient, and the degree distribution. In contrast with the small world evolution model, we find that the public transport system of Shenyang, a network of public transportation routes connected by bus links, is a small-world network characterized by a Poisson degree distribution. Simulation results show that the public transport network exhibits small world behavior with N=148.

Public transport administrators rely on efficient algorithms to tackle various challenges in public transportation networks. In this paper, we primarily focus on designing near-linear-time algorithms for two fundamental path problems: the Earliest Arrival Time (EAT) and the Fastest Path Duration (FPD). Given a temporal graph <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">G</i>, a source vertex <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i>, and a ready time <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">rt</i> at <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i>, the EAT problem aims to compute the earliest possible arrival times for all vertices from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i>, ensuring that each path departs no earlier than <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">rt</i>. Given a temporal graph <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">G</i> and a source vertex <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i>, the FPD problem is to compute the minimum journey time from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i> to all vertices, where the journey time of a path is the difference between its arrival time and departure time. We characterise the earliest arrival and fastest paths in temporal graphs and leverage these insights to design pruning and cache-friendly algorithms for efficiently solving EAT and FPD in public transport networks. Our results show a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art algorithms, with up to a 58-fold speedup for the EAT problem and an even more remarkable 69-fold speedup for the FPD problem. These findings underscore the potential of our algorithms to enhance public transport optimisation, ultimately aiding administrators in improving urban mobility.

In recent years, studies on smart cities have attracted much attention in the literature. In the smart city concept, urban public transportation network studies are one of the most important issues. Afterthe 2000s, smart cards have been widely used in city public transportation systems. Using the data collected through the smart card, many models have been created in line with the smart city concept. In the literature, there are various optimal route recommendation models using urban public transportation network and city smart card data. In this study, some current models built on the basis of urban public transportation network and smart card data are discussed. The specifications of the models, their important differences, the topologies they use, optimization criteria, and computational complexities are analyzed. Dijkstra’s algorithm, which is widely used for the solution of optimal route recommendation models, and its various modifications are analysed. Additionally, various models developed by applying fuzzy logic are examined. Comparative analysis of public transportation network models is given.

Following the detected deficiencies in managing geodata on public transport network in the Olomouc Region, potential solutions of the situation were analysed. On the basis of extensive research of global standards in public transport data standardization, a data model of entities and their attributes according to the needs of public transport management and control in the Czech Republic was established. Further, a data warehouse was created on the base of the newly created data model by means of the special software specializing in work with lines and network elements. A mobile application for a tablet to collect field data was designed to supply the warehouse. The concept of public transport geodata collection, management and updating was created in cooperation of Asseco Central Europe, Coordinator of the Integrated Transport System in the Olomouc Region and the Department of Geoinformatics of Palacky University in Olomouc in reaction to the unsuitable data situation in public transport in the Olomouc Region. Current filling of the data warehouse by means of the designed mobile application will later be followed by creating an interactive transport plan and spatial analysis based on the data about the managed area.

Urban spatial location advantage: The dual of the transportation problem and its implications for land-use and transport planning

This paper addresses the hard problem of route searching on public transport transportation. easy-City is a decentralized collaborative system that takes advantage of public transport users' mobility and observations to provide a route searching service. Users' mobile phones and deployed infra-structure devices establish a delay-tolerant network to efficiently disseminate information about routes and other events occurring on the public transportation network. We introduce a novel message dissemination protocol that exploits estimates of each user's future locations to make informed forwarding, message aggregation and buffer management decisions.A simulation-based evaluation of easy-city with geographical and public transport data shows that, in a realistic scenario, the system aids users to find best route options even in the presence of unpredictable events. A simulation with 468 nodes shows that easy-City often provides better options than a typical journey planning application based on static knowledge about the transportation network.

We study urban public transport systems by means of multiplex networks in which stops are represented as nodes and each line is represented by a layer. We determine and visualize public transport network orientations and compare them with street network orientations of the 36 largest German as well as 18 selected major European cities. We find that German urban public transport networks are mainly oriented in a direction close to the cardinal east-west axis, which usually coincides with one of two orthogonal preferential directions of the corresponding street network. While this behavior is present in only a subset of the considered European cities it remains true that none but one considered public transport network has a distinct north-south-like preferential orientation. Furthermore, we study the applicability of the class of matrix function-based centrality measures, which has recently been generalized from single-layer networks to layer-coupled multiplex networks, to our more general urban multiplex framework. Numerical experiments based on highly efficient and scalable methods from numerical linear algebra show promising results, which are in line with previous studies. The centrality measures allow detailed insights into geometrical properties of urban systems such as the spatial distribution of major transport axes, which can not be inferred from orientation plots. We comment on advantages over existing methodology, elaborate on the comparison of different measures and weight models, and present detailed hyper-parameter studies. All results are illustrated by demonstrative graphical representations.

Schedule optimization is a proven strategy to improve service quality for public transport networks. However, current research mostly optimizes schedule design using prior knowledge of users’ routings, ignoring the optimization of public transport schedules on duplicating stretches of route vehicles. This article presents a new alignment technique of time intervals between consecutive vehicles of different routes on duplicating stretches, considering existing public transport networks in attaining optimization of public transport schedule. Scheduling technique of route vehicles on duplicating stretches includes some steps: analysis of public transport network and determining a lot of duplicating stretches, calculation of the optimal time intervals among arrivals of route vehicles and alignment of these intervals among consecutive route vehicles on duplicating stretches, realization simulation model of urban passenger transport within the simulation modeling system of GPSS World. Furthermore, testing the optimization technique of route vehicle scheduling, analysis of the quality of adjusted schedule with route vehicles of different kinds included, and determining the optimization efficiency for duplicating stretches. The adjusting technique of urban passenger transport schedule allows to increase movement steadiness of consecutive vehicles of different routes on duplicating stretches, adjust traffic intervals for each route, shorten the traffic load on stations, reducing idle time and queue lengths of route vehicles in front of transport stops and also minimize waiting time for route vehicle by those passengers who can be transported along several routes. Improving the bus schedule on duplicating stretches in Gomel is illustrated demonstrating the technique developed. This scheduling technique can be used by carriers and transport operators to improve the quality of services provided.

With the acceleration of urbanization, public transport networks are an important part of urban transport systems, and their robustness is critical for city operation. The objective of this study is to analyze the topological properties and robustness of an urban public transport network (UPTN) with a view to enhancing the sustainability of urbanization. In order to present the topological structure of the UPTN, the L-Space complex network modeling method is used to construct a model. Topological characteristics of the network are calculated. Based on single evaluation indices of station significance, a comprehensive evaluation index is proposed as the basis for selecting critical stations. The UPTN cascading failure model is established. Using the proportion of the maximum connected subgraph as the evaluation index, the robustness of the UPTN is analyzed using different station significance indices and deliberate attack strategies. The public transport network of Xuzhou city is selected for instance analysis. The results show that the UPTN in Xuzhou city has small-world effects and scale-free characteristics. Although the network has poor connectivity, it is a convenient means to travel for residents with many independent communities. The network’s dynamic robustness is demonstrably inferior to its static robustness due to the prevalence of cascading failure phenomena. Specifically, the failure of important stations has a wider impact on the network performance. Improving their load capacity and distributing the routes via them will help bolster the network resistance against contingencies. This study provides a scientific basis and strategic recommendations for urban planners and public transport managers to achieve a more sustainable public transport system.

The shift from auto-dependent modes of urban transportation has been a key focus of the sustainability literature for over two decades (Low, 2013; Mees, 2010). This literature argues that mobility in cities ought to be addressed through public transportation rather than individualised forms of transport as a pathway to low carbon economies. However, pathways to achieve such a city remain highly contentious. Many authors suggest that citizen action and engagement is a crucial part of efforts to reshape public transportation (Low and Gleeson, 2001; Mees, 2010). The Sydney Alliance, a coalition of over fifty trade union, community, and faith-based organisations, decided through extensive community based discussion to take action on public transport across Sydney. A ‘transport research action team’ was formed to develop a set of principles for public transport in Sydney through discussion with community, academics, activists, bureaucrats, and politicians. As members of the National Tertiary Education Union, both authors have been active members of the Transport Research Action Team. Based on its research, the Alliance is organising to implement these principles to achieve improvements to public transport that will address ‘accessibility gaps’ (Mulley and Daniels, 2010), and contribute to the ‘network effect’ (Dodson et al, 2011; Mees, 2010; Nielsen and Lange, 2005). As part of our campaign work, we produced a map of Sydney to show which parts of the city have access to minimum standards of distance and frequency. The first part of diagram shows the areas of Sydney that are within 400 m walk of a transit node (rail, bus, and ferry stops). The second part shows the area of Sydney that is within 400 m walk of transit nodes that have a minimum service frequency of at least every 15 minutes between 5 am and midnight on any given weekday. The map shows that, while there is comprehensive geographic coverage of transport services across Sydney, there is a spatial concentration of public transport services that meet the minimum standard of a useful, frequent public transport service. It also highlights the gaps in accessibility of these services for large parts of, in particular, Western Sydney. The map informs an ongoing Sydney Alliance campaign to ‘fill in the gaps in the maps’.