The principles of public transport network planning: a review of the emerging literature with select examples

This paper highlights for urban planners the key strategies and tactics that can be deployed to improve suburban public transport networks. Introduction The governance and management of public transport systems is an essential component of metropolitan planning and urban management. Most metropolitan strategies in Australia and in other jurisdictions presuppose the provision of public transport. Yet there is often a disconnection between transport plans and land-use schemes. Similarly, metropolitan land-use plans that do integrate with transport plans tend to focus on infrastructure rather than service quality and connectivity. A failure to adequately consider the quality of public transport networks in land-use planning analysis has the potential to produce poor planning outcomes in two key ways. First new land-uses may be inadequately served with public transport services, leading to dependence on alternative travel modes, such as cars. Second, the failure to recognise the significance of well-planned local public transport networks may result in the preclusion of some land-use options. This preclusion may relate to the location of land-uses or their design, such as over-provision of carparking. The continuing debate over whether to address suburban cardependence via land-use change or via transport planning is a case in point. And while the arguments in favour of and against land-use change as a means to overcome car dependence are well known in the planning literature. There is a growing if not yet widely appreciated literature that advocates improvements to public transport network planning and coordination as a means of reducing car dependence. The recognition of improved public transport network planning as a means of reducing car dependence is immensely significant because it offers planners an additional or alternative tool for managing urban transport patterns beyond land-use variation or investment in heavy infrastructure. Urban planning practitioners are not yet well served and informed by the broader public transport planning literature on the advantages of public transport network planning. While there is an extensive literature focusing on the economics and engineering of urban public transport systems the planning literature on the practices that contribute to success in public transport network design and operations is relatively poorly documented. There is also very little literature dedicated to public transport network design within Australian cities which are distinguished by highly centralised radial heavy rail networks with bus or tram networks that are well developed in inner urban zones but less so in the outer suburbs. The remainder of this paper has four objectives for transport planning theory and practice. First the paper reviews the literature on public transport network planning principles; next the paper attempts to formulate these principles in practical terms such that they can be applied to line and network design; third the paper considers further dimensions of network planning, including institutional arrangements and transition points in network design. The paper is intended for three audiences. The first is planning scholars who are involved in debates about public transport. The second is strategic policy officials in planning agencies who are involved in the planning and design of public transport networks. The third audience comprises those involved in development processes and who seek insights into the technical components of public transport network planning. Some caveats are appropriate however. The paper is not seeking to justify public transport network planning. The authors consider that the case for dedicated planning is implicit in the assumption that cities should provide good quality public transport to their residents. The wider case in favour of network planning has been successfully advanced elsewhere. Conversely, the paper is not intended as a directly applicable manual of detailed transport planning practice. While it does offer some insights into the practical public transport network planning task such guidance is better provided by Nielsen et al and Vuchic. Instead the paper highlights for urban planners the key strategies and tactics for that can be deployed to improve suburban public transport networks. Understanding these principles should thus assist urban planners – and urban scholars – to better shape and evaluate urban development processes and patterns

Intelligent transport system for motorcycle safety and issues

This paper provides a review of Intelligent Transport System for motorcycles safety and related issues with some existing or emerging ITS technologies to enhanced vehicles safety. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have significant potential to enhance traffic safety. Numerous ITS technologies have been developed to improve the safety and efficiency of cars, commercial vehicles, public transport and infrastructure. ITS applications have been developed with car safety in mind, but the potential for developments for motorcycle is great. Very few ITS have been developed specially for motorcycles, and all of those that do exist are in-vehicle systems. Many ITS exist or are emerging for other classes of vehicle that have potential to enhance motorcycle safety directly or indirectly. There several ITS technologies in-vehicle system to be introduced and adapted to motorcycles; advanced driver assistance system, intelligent speed adaptation, driver monitoring system, collision warning and avoidance system, lane keeping and lane-change warning system, visibility enhancing system, seat belt/helmet reminder system. However, there is a need for the development of standards for the design of ITS technologies for motorcycles, as there is for the design of ITS technologies for other vehicles. Motorcycle pose particular problem when it comes to the technical adaptation of certain ITS systems, particularly those that have not been custom-designed for motorcycle

Identifying and Surpassing Contextual Barriers in Cross-Border Research Collaboration: The Case of the Sino-Swedish Project Shanghai Local Interaction Platform

The Swedish advanced knowledge in integrating within a vastly car-oriented transport system a new (or improved) breed of sustainable public transport operations, complemented by the Chinese ability to speedily support urban design innovation that could take even city-wide transportation systems to new heights, guarantees a contribution to mobility research of excellent scientific quality. Having in place a well-tested know-how mechanism to overcome cross-cultural differences between distant research philosophies is the most important hurdle in any scientific collaboration between those Sweden and China and could be vital for the success of the programme, despite the best of scientific intentions and planning. After almost two years from the initiation of Shanghai Local Interaction Platform, a consistent mechanism that will promote cross-border communication and the philosophy of shared responsibility is slowly but steadily taking its final form. This work is describing this process

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

Optimal bus fleet management strategies in a congested road network

International Conference on Advanced Systems for Public TransportTHE 11th International Conference on Advanced Systems for Public Transport is jointly organized by Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyA simulation model of car, bus and bus passengers that takes into account the effects of carbus interactions, bus stop dwell time and bus fleet size constraints on bus system performance is described. Feedback loops are incorporated within the model to ensure consistency in car driver and bus passenger route choice behaviors and bus stop dwell time assumptions. A hypothetical network is provided to demonstrate the feasibility of using this model to evaluate alternative bus fleet management strategies.published_or_final_versio

S-MAP 2030. North West of England case study: irrigating the region

SYNAPTIC (‘Synergy of New Advanced Public Transport Solutions Improving Connectivity in North West Europe’) is an EU-funded INTERREG IVB cluster of four North West European transport projects: RoCK (Regions of Connected Knowledge), BAPTS (Boosting Advanced Public Transport Systems), SINTROPHER (Sustainable Integrated Tram-Based Transport Options for Peripheral European Regions), and ICMA amobilife (Improving Connectivity and Mobility Access)

A geographical information systems-based approach to health facilities and urban traffic system in Belgrade, Serbia

We studied the geospatial distribution of health facilities in Belgrade, the capital of the Republic of Serbia, in relation to the public transport system. Analyses in this research were based on advanced geographical information systems using numerical methods. We calculated accessibility to health centres as based on public transport properties accounting for the movement of citizens, as well as patients, through the city. Based on results, the city of Belgrade has a moderate connectivity. Public health centres and a group of other health centres in the central-east part of the city have a better connectivity. Also, in this paper we estimated that the average time necessary to reach health facilities on foot is 100 minutes and by public transport vehicles such as buses, trams and trolleys is 42 minutes

Measuring Copenhagen’s public transport accessibility and network performance in a European context

Spatial accessibility measures have gained prominence in recent years as a supportive tool for decision making as well as stakeholder engagement in integrated land use and transport planning. They have also advanced our ability to conduct comparative and benchmarking studies between the land use-transport systems in different cities, or in a particular city over a longitudinal time line. This paper is based on a public transport accessibility assessment done for metropolitan Copenhagen in 2012 as part of the roll-out of the Spatial Network Analysis for Multimodal Urban Transport Systems (SNAMUTS) tool over a sample of eleven European cities. SNAMUTS utilises a set of seven distinct accessibility indicators to highlight the performance of the public transport network in its urban context from different angles. The application of the tool to Copenhagen showed that the Danish capital is among the top European performers on the majority of these accessibility measures, yet when it comes to actual usage of public transport (expressed by city-wide mode share or number of annual trips per capita), it only occupies a mid-field position in a European context. A more specific comparison of public transport accessibility in Copenhagen with neighbouring Hamburg, using the results of particular SNAMUTS indicators, will serve to highlight some of the key strengths and weaknesses in Copenhagen’s interplay of public transport and urban structure, and inspire some concluding reflections on how the city might use its existing and potential accessibility strengths to attract a higher rate of public transport ridership in the future

IoT, Intelligent Transport Systems and MaaS (Mobility as a Service)

IoT (Internet of Things) applications are crucial in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). MaaS (Mobility as a Service) is an advanced model of ITS in which public institutions, private operators and citizens are deeply connected since means of transport are virtualized in mobility resources and provided to users through the Internet. This contribution, after a short introduction, addresses legal concerns focusing on three aspects: (1) security of technological platforms and infrastructures, (2) protection of user\u2019s personal data, (3) communication among devices and in the IoT ecosystem