Examination of Regional Transit Service Under Contracting: A Case Study in the Greater New Orleans Region, Research Report 10-09

Many local governments and transit agencies in the United States face financial difficulties in providing adequate public transit service in individual systems, and in providing sufficient regional coordination to accommodate transit trips involving at least one transfer between systems. These difficulties can be attributed to the recent economic downturn, continuing withdrawal of the state and federal funds that help support local transit service, a decline in local funding for transit service in inner cities due to ongoing suburbanization, and a distribution of resources that responds to geographic equity without addressing service needs. This study examines two main research questions: (1) the effect of a “delegated management” contract on efficiency and effectiveness within a single transit system, and (2) the effects of a single private firm—contracted separately by more than one agency in the same region—on regional coordination, exploring the case in Greater New Orleans. The current situation in New Orleans exhibits two unique transit service conditions. First, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) executed a “delegated management” contract with a multinational private firm, outsourcing more functions (e.g., management, planning, funding) to the contractor than has been typical in the U.S. Second, as the same contractor has also been contracted by another transit agency in an adjacent jurisdiction—Jefferson Transit (JeT), this firm may potentially have economic incentives to improve regional coordination, in order to increase the productivity and effectiveness of its own transit service provision. Although the limited amount of available operation and financial data has prevented us from drawing more definitive conclusions, the findings of this multifaceted study should provide valuable information on a transit service contracting approach new to the U.S.: delegated management. This study also identified a coherent set of indices with which to evaluate the regional coordination of transit service, the present status of coordination among U.S. transit agencies, and barriers that need to be resolved for regional transit coordination to be successful

Strategic Analysis of Transit Service Quality Using Fuzzy AHP Methodology

Customer satisfaction analyses are deeply based on customers’ judgments and as consequence, they can be characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty generally ascribed to coexistence of three relevant aspects: vagueness, imprecision and subjectivity. In the present paper, a methodology able to handle such uncertainty, based on the ServQual discrepancy paradigm and that uses in combined manner the AHP method and the Fuzzy Sets Theory is proposed in order to overcome limitations of the traditional service evaluation approaches. Subsequently, by considering the Italian public transit service sector, a service quality analysis is conducted and the overall transit service quality structure is described. Finally, by using the developed methodology, the evaluation of customer satisfaction for the public urban transit service provided in the city of Palermo (Italy) is performed, and the prioritizing of its critical to quality service attributes is carried out. The obtained results show that only few service attributes play an important role in performing a quality transit service

Methodology for urban rail and construction technology research and development planning

A series of transit system visits, organized by the American Public Transit Association (APTA), was conducted in which the system operators identified the most pressing development needs. These varied by property and were reformulated into a series of potential projects. To assist in the evaluation, a data base useful for estimating the present capital and operating costs of various transit system elements was generated from published data. An evaluation model was developed which considered the rate of deployment of the research and development project, potential benefits, development time and cost. An outline of an evaluation methodology that considered benefits other than capital and operating cost savings was also presented. During the course of the study, five candidate projects were selected for detailed investigation; (1) air comfort systems; (2) solid state auxiliary power conditioners; (3) door systems; (4) escalators; and (5) fare collection systems. Application of the evaluation model to these five examples showed the usefulness of modeling deployment rates and indicated a need to increase the scope of the model to quantitatively consider reliability impacts

WHY FUZZY ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS APPROACH FOR TRANSPORT PROBLEMS?

The evaluation of transport projects has become increasingly complex. Different aspects have to be taken into account and the consequences of the problems are usually far reaching and the different policy alternatives are numerous and difficult to predict. Several pressure or action groups have also emerged causing an even more complex decision making process. The use of multi criteria analysis for the evaluation of transport projects has increased due to this increasing complexity of the problem situation. At the same time, the importance of stakeholders within this evaluation process should have been recognized. Researches on transport projects are generally carried out to provide information to policymakers that have to operate within restrictive parameters (political, economical, social, etc…). Researchers should therefore take greater account of the different priorities of stakeholders such as policymakers, private enterprises and households. These stakeholders should be incorporated explicitly in the evaluation process. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is one of the Fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision Making methods. It can be applied in a very broad range of applications of decision problems. Logistics, urban planning, public politics, marketing, finance, education, economics are a part of this wide application area. In transport subjects it can be used for the evaluation of transport policy measures or decision making problems. Due to its wide range application area, it has been an exciting research subject for many different field researchers. The aim of this paper is to introduce AHP method and to offer how to benefit it for the preference of urban planners in transport problems. This paper is composed of two main parts. First part consists of the literature survey regarding with the AHP and its application areas. The advantage of methods had been mentioned. Second part focuses on a sample application of AHP technique. The study uses AHP technique to determine the selection criteria in the transhipment port selection decision-making process. Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process, Multi criteria analysis, Transshipment port selection.

Port choice by intra-regional container service operators : an application of decision-making techniques to liner services between Malaysian and other Asian ports

Intra-regional container service operators are challenged to design regular and reliable liner services connecting regional ports at the lowest cost and shortest transit time while considering customer demand. This paper focuses on the selection of ports of call in regular intra-regional container services, an under-researched part of the container shipping market. A combination of decision-making techniques (i.e. Analytical Hierarchy Process, fuzzy link-based and Evidential Reasoning) are presented to assist intra-regional container service operators in selecting ports of call. The proposed methodology is empirically applied to container services between Malaysian and other nearby Asian ports. While Port Klang is the main gateway to Malaysia, the results show that other Malaysian ports should play a more prominent role in accommodating intra-Asian container services. This research can assist maritime stakeholders in evaluating intra-regional port-to-port liner service configurations. Furthermore, the novel mix of decision-making techniques complements and enriches existing academic literature on port choice and liner service configuration

Using a Neural Network to Analyze the Impact of Passenger Activity on Bus Dwell Time and Travel Time

This paper applies neural network modeling approach to analyze the impact of passenger activities on bus dwell time and station-to-station travel time. Data used to develop the model was collected by onboard AVL/APC devices. Sensitivity analyses based on a trained neural network were performed to evaluate the relative significance of each passenger activity variable to variation of dwell time and/or station-to-station travel time. Transit providers can use these methods to identify the causes of schedule deviation and to develop improvement measures that are most effective to transit service

Transit Agencies Performance Assessment and Implications

Although most transit systems operate in small urban and rural areas in the United States, these systems have rarely received the same attention as their urban counterparts, both in terms of ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations and understanding the factors that affect their performance. This thesis\u27s main goals are to assess the performance of rural and small urban public transit agencies and help them evaluate adopting a ridehailing program, thereby improving their performance. We applied operations research and decision-making tools to two public transit projects in small urban and rural areas. The first project focuses on three models developed to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and combined efficiency-effectiveness of rural transit agencies using data envelopment analysis. The models were estimated for the case study of transit systems in rural Appalachia and measured the agencies\u27 performance relative to their peers. Besides, the returns to scale were explored in the context of rural transit management. The second project focused on employing ridehailing programs in small urban and rural areas to improve agencies’ performance and reach. The most relevant criteria were identified to evaluate the performance of different ridehailing programs using multi-criteria decision analysis methodology. To perform a set of MCDA methods, we used the perceived rating of each ridehailing program according to the stakeholders\u27 opinions with respect to each criterion. The framework was estimated for the case study of Mountain Line Transit Authority in Morgantown, WV

Quality of service in public transport based on customer satisfaction surveys: A review and assessment of methodological approaches

The growth of literature in the field of quality of service in the public transport (PT) sector shows increasing concern for a better understanding of the factors affecting service quality (SQ) in PT organizations and companies. A large variety of approaches to SQ has been developed in recent years owing to the complexity of the concept; the broad range of attributes required to evaluate SQ; and the imprecision, subjectivity and heterogeneous nature of the data used to analyse it. Most of these approaches are based on customer satisfaction surveys. This paper seeks to summarize the evolution of research and current thinking as it relates to the different methodological approaches for SQ evaluation in the PT sector over the years, and provides a discussion of future directions.This study is sponsored by the Conserjería de Innovación, Ciencia y Economía of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) through the Excellence Research Project denominated “Q-METROBUS-Quality of service indicator for METROpolitan public BUS transport services”

Regional Data Archiving and Management for Northeast Illinois

This project studies the feasibility and implementation options for establishing a regional data archiving system to help monitor and manage traffic operations and planning for the northeastern Illinois region. It aims to provide a clear guidance to the regional transportation agencies, from both technical and business perspectives, about building such a comprehensive transportation information system. Several implementation alternatives are identified and analyzed. This research is carried out in three phases. In the first phase, existing documents related to ITS deployments in the broader Chicago area are summarized, and a thorough review is conducted of similar systems across the country. Various stakeholders are interviewed to collect information on all data elements that they store, including the format, system, and granularity. Their perception of a data archive system, such as potential benefits and costs, is also surveyed. In the second phase, a conceptual design of the database is developed. This conceptual design includes system architecture, functional modules, user interfaces, and examples of usage. In the last phase, the possible business models for the archive system to sustain itself are reviewed. We estimate initial capital and recurring operational/maintenance costs for the system based on realistic information on the hardware, software, labor, and resource requirements. We also identify possible revenue opportunities. A few implementation options for the archive system are summarized in this report; namely: 1. System hosted by a partnering agency 2. System contracted to a university 3. System contracted to a national laboratory 4. System outsourced to a service provider The costs, advantages and disadvantages for each of these recommended options are also provided.ICT-R27-22published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe