Strategic Thinking for Sustainability: A Review of 10 Strategies for Sustainable Mobility by Bus for Cities

The sustainable mobility of the future comes about through sustainable ways of transport, such as walking, cycling, or collective transport. This includes the bus, the underground, and trains in big cities. This article reviews bus-related policies and initiatives worldwide. It also analyses ten cities looking at medium and long-term strategies for the urban bus service. The main ideas are: the forecasts for the use of the urban bus system indicate a significant increase in demand, therefore, there is a need for expanding the offered services; efforts to change the fleets towards Compressed Natural Gas and Electric vehicles; support of technological innovation for communication and accessibility; improving commercial speed and frequencies by infrastructure improvements, operation optimisation and technology; and, the link between these strategies and the air quality of cities. The transition towards a sustainable transport will happen based on the belief that the bus service is no longer the transport of the past or the present, but of the future. Document type: Articl

Effects of new bus and rail rapid transit systems – an international review

Cities worldwide are implementing modern transit systems to improve mobility in the increasingly congested metropolitan areas. Despite much research on the effects of such systems, a comparison of effects across transit modes and countries has not been studied comprehensively. This paper fills this gap in the literature by reviewing and comparing the effects obtained by 86 transit systems around the world, including Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Light Rail Transit (LRT), metro and heavy rail transit systems. The analysis is twofold by analysing (i) the direct operational effects related to travel time, ridership and modal shifts, and (ii) the indirect strategic effects in terms of effects on property values and urban development. The review confirms the existing literature suggesting that BRT can attract many passengers if travel time reductions are significantly high. This leads to attractive areas surrounding the transit line with increasing property values. Such effects are traditionally associated with attractive rail-based public transport systems. However, a statistical comparison of 41 systems did not show significant deviations between effects on property values resulting from BRT, LRT and metro systems, respectively. Hence, this paper indicates that large strategic effects can be obtained by implementing BRT systems at a much lower cost

Stillorgan QBC Dwell Time Analysis

on the Stillorgan Quality Bus Corridor (QBC), a key arterial bus corridor accessing Dublin city centre from its suburbs. The focus of the study was to understand the pattern of dwell-time on the corridor and to identify potential areas, if any, where service levels may be enhanced. The study should provide a beneficial and detailed observation of in-journey bus operations. This in turn can help to understand the impact of ticketing, boarding/alighting and other aspects of journey dwell within a high-level of service bus corridor. The Stillorgan QBC, between Foxrock Church and Leeson Street Bridge, comprises of 28 bus stops, 32 signalised junctions and measures approximately 9km. There are 60 locations, exclusive of running-time delays, where there is the potential for dwell to occur. 21 inbound journey time surveys were carried out in the morning commuter peak period over 7 days between the hours of 07:00 and 10:00, with 3 surveys carried out every day, one in each hour. Approximately 1,200 passenger boardings and 900 alightings were recorded. Individual fare transaction times were also surveyed. Several key findings emerged from the study. Dwell at junctions accounts for 13% of total journey time, with boarding and alighting accounting for 23%. 59% of passengers surveyed alight at four individual stops, and 24% of those surveyed board at two individual stops. Journey times are very variable, with a difference of 23 minutes between shortest and longest journeys (a variance of 110%). This has improved considerably since the last QBC Monitoring Report in 2010 when variances of 259% were recorded. Pre-paid tickets are the most popular and fastest method of payment with 55% of those surveyed using this method. Pre-paid ticket users take on average 7 seconds to board. There is no time-saving for LEAP Card (e-purse) users, who take on average 10 seconds to board (being the same for cash payers). The findings present evidence to support the implementation of off-board ticket purchase and/or the removal of both cash and e-purse ticket transactions from services. Service planning improvements, such as the consolidation of stops, multi-door entry/exit systems and measures to improve performance at junctions, are also suggested

Solving Commuting Challenges with RTS Bus Rapid Transit (RTS-BRT) Rochester, NY

The public transport service in Rochester, NY, is inefficient in terms of reliability, safety, comfort, security, waiting, transfer, and longer commute hours. The public transportation system needs significant transformation to overcome this alleviating issue and relieve the burden on low-income residents, pedestrians, and non-motorized vehicle users. The research objective of this thesis is to advance and discover a connection pattern between transportation, urban sprawl, poverty, and unemployment in Rochester, NY. It targets the low-income resident’s detachment from diverse uses, residential settlement, locations of jobs, and transportation options. The research analyses how-: people commute to work, how long the commute takes, the rate of car ownership, and the financial burdens of owning a car. Furthermore, the research goes deeper into the energy demands and emission reduction caused by the transport sector. The data collection method used for the analysis is metanalysis, gathering data from local authority websites, organizations, research papers, and media. Sustainable transport can be a catalyst for urban development that prioritizes equity, accessibility, and time savings for the low-income commuter while reducing emissions and increasing traffic safety. Thus, all benefactors are a modal shift to lower-carbon transport systems such as walking, cycling, public transport, alternative fuel vehicles, modifying roads, and minimizing travel time. The scope of this study is to assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts caused by car dependency in Rochester, NY. As a result, the research probes the opportunities and challenges of leveraging Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) while introducing a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system

Analysing improvements to on-street public transport systems: a mesoscopic model approach

Light rail transit and bus rapid transit have shown to be efficient and cost-effective in improving public transport systems in cities around the world. As these systems comprise various elements, which can be tailored to any given setting, e.g. pre-board fare-collection, holding strategies and other advanced public transport systems (APTS), the attractiveness of such systems depends heavily on their implementation. In the early planning stage it is advantageous to deploy simple and transparent models to evaluate possible ways of implementation. For this purpose, the present study develops a mesoscopic model which makes it possible to evaluate public transport operations in details, including dwell times, intelligent traffic signal timings and holding strategies while modelling impacts from other traffic using statistical distributional data thereby ensuring simplicity in use and fast computational times. This makes it appropriate for analysing the impacts of improvements to public transport operations, individually or in combination, in early planning stages. The paper presents a joint measure of reliability for such evaluations based on passengers’ perceived travel time by considering headway time regularity and running time variability, i.e. taking into account waiting time and in-vehicle time. The approach was applied on a case study by assessing the effects of implementing segregated infrastructure and APTS elements, individually and in combination. The results showed that the reliability of on-street public transport operations mainly depends on APTS elements, and especially holding strategies, whereas pure infrastructure improvements induced travel time reductions. The results further suggested that synergy effects can be obtained by planning on-street public transport coherently in terms of reduced travel times and increased reliability

The equity impacts of bus rapid transit:A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport

The paper offers an analysis of empirical evidence on the equity impacts of operational Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the Global South. The focus is on vertical equity, i.e. whether BRT systems achieve progressive benefits for poorer segments of the population. Findings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America all suggest that BRT does offer significant benefits to low-income groups, in terms of travel time and cost savings, access enhancement, and safety and health benefits. However benefits are often skewed toward medium-income users and thus less progressive than they might be. Two primary reasons for this are insufficient spatial coverage and inappropriate fare policies. While many features of BRT potentially allow it to deliver pro-poor outcomes, such outcomes only materialize if BRT implementers pay specific and sustained attention to equity. The paper identifies key issues that need to be addressed to steer BRT implementation toward more socially sustainable outcomes—including better integration with other transit, paratransit, and nonmotorized transport services, and with the housing sector

Urban Mobility Transitions: Governing through Experimentation in Bristol and New York City

Transitions away from car-dominance is one of the key debates in urban research, policy and practice today. Car-free public space, cycling and convenient public transport services are widely seen as desirable, yet the reconfiguration of our streets and transport networks has been incremental. This doctoral research examines how mobility in cities is governed through experiments, commonly understood as pilot projects, and whether experiments hold potential for transformative change in urban mobility systems, including transitions away from automobility. The research draws on a synthesis of sustainability transitions, transport studies and urban studies literature, and traces the outcomes of 108 experiments undertaken over two decades in two cities: Bristol (UK) and New York City (USA) between 1996/7 and 2016. The findings demonstrate that experiments can contribute to transforming the physical shape of urban mobility systems and the institutions involved in governing them, and can even contribute to transitions, if assessed as change in commuting patterns away from car use. The research compares the capacity of respective municipal governments, Bristol City Council and NYC city government for ‘transformative experimentation’, and presents an institutionalist analysis of why the transformation of Bristol’s mobility system was more limited than NYC’s. To unpack the problematisation of piecemeal, ‘project-based’ experimentation driven by competitive funding landscapes, the research compares Bristol City Council and NYC city government as two municipalities with a different degree of reliance on external funding. The stronger capacity of NYC city government can be explained by its higher degree of fiscal autonomy and mobility policy discretion, whereas Bristol City Council’s capacity was limited by the centralisation of the UK state. Yet the thesis also shows that both municipalities pursued successful endogenous strategies in response to multi-scalar structure, and points to organisational and governance practices that can create ‘political space’ for urban actors to further transitions