Promoting Intermodal Connectivity at California’s High Speed Rail Stations

High-speed rail (HSR) has emerged as one of the most revolutionary and transformative transportation technologies, having a profound impact on urban-regional accessibility and inter-city travel across Europe, Japan, and more recently China and other Asian countries. One of HSR’s biggest advantages over air travel is that it offers passengers a one-seat ride into the center of major cities, eliminating time-consuming airport transfers and wait times, and providing ample opportunities for intermodal transfers at these locales. Thus, HSR passengers are typically able to arrive at stations that are only a short walk away from central business districts and major tourist attractions, without experiencing any of the stress that car drivers often experience in negotiating such highly congested environments. Such an approach requires a high level of coordination and planning of the infrastructural and spatial aspects of the HSR service, and a high degree of intermodal connectivity. But what key elements can help the US high-speed rail system blend successfully with other existing rail and transit services? That question is critically important now that high-speed rail is under construction in California. The study seeks to understand the requirements for high levels of connectivity and spatial and operational integration of HSR stations and offer recommendations for seamless, and convenient integrated service in California intercity rail/HSR stations. The study draws data from a review of the literature on the connectivity, intermodality, and spatial and operational integration of transit systems; a survey of 26 high-speed rail experts from six different European countries; and an in-depth look of the German and Spanish HSR systems and some of their stations, which are deemed as exemplary models of station connectivity. The study offers recommendations on how to enhance both the spatial and the operational connectivity of high-speed rail systems giving emphasis on four spatial zones: the station, the station neighborhood, the municipality at large, and the region

The philosophy and practice of Taktfahrplan: a case-study of the East Coast Main Line.

Executive Summary This Working Paper has three purposes, represented by three Parts: - to explain the principles of the Taktfahrplan approach to railway timetabling; - to summarise the implications of the background research on the structure of the network; and - to describe the exercise of constructing a Taktfahrplan for the East Coast Main Line that formed the case-study of the potential benefits of such a scheme compared with the existing timetable. In Part I the broad principles and objectives are first outlined, and the advantages and disadvantages discussed [§ 1.1,1.2]. A Taktfahrplan is based on standard hours and the careful, network-wide coordination of sewices. It is recognised that ultimately the choice between this and conventional timetabling methods must depend on an evaluation of the loss of present flexibility to adjust to time-specific market demands against the gains from enhanced connectivity and from the fact of regularity. Issues concerning resources and the management of peak periods are also explained. Terminology is then dealt with because words and phrases are being used with imprecise and various meanings [§1.3]. There follows a detailed account of the arithmetic rules through which the ideal relationships between train (and bus) sewices can be attained, together with an explanation of the measures that can be taken to make the best compromises in the face of the characteristics of the real network - or to adjust it over time [§ 1.4]. In Part 2 the research to highlight features of the underlying demand for travel is described. This is not a necessary component of strategic timetable planning, but it is argued that it is desirable in order both to break free from the historical baggage and to seize the business, environmental and social-policy opportunities that a 'clean- sheet' timetable would present [§2.1]. The provisional findings from this work (it was left incomplete for reasons that are explained) are then deployed to form the skeleton of a national network connecting 100 important centres with 158 links. This is followed by an analysis of the very variable standards of the rail timetable on those links and of the road competition and by an account of some first thoughts as to how a full-scale Taktfahrplan might start to be developed on this network [§2.2]. This emphasises the inter-relationships between sewices and the inescapable consequences for pathing trains, once it is accepted that sensible spacing of services and striving for good connectivity are more important than optimising routes on a self-contained basis. It was thought appropriate to include a summary of the findings regarding the low-density end of the current rail system in order to indicate the issues that Taktfahrplan might raise in this respect [§2.3]. The East Coast case-study is presented in Part 3. Some technical matters are explained first, including the key point that the exercise used the Viriato timetabling software employed by the Swiss Federal Railways (and many other systems) to construct Taktfahrpliine [§3.1]. Successive sub-parts then describe groups of services: long-distance [§3.2], services within Scotland [§3.3], services in North East England [§3.4], the trans-Pennine network [§3.5] and some of the Yorkshire services [§3.6]

Evaluation of the spatial impacts of improved connectivity from urban transport investments. A GIS (Geographic Information System) application of the ICON indicator for urban areas.

A well-designed urban public transport policy provides significant benefits: reduces congestion and costs, and decreases the number of accidents and environment impacts. Accessibility indicators are used by planners to assess the spatial effects of their proposals and to identify those areas requiring actions to ensure minimum conditions of service. They are also used in decision making on the implementation of new infrastructure projects or improvement of the existing ones. The paper first reviews the ICON indicator, which evaluates the connectivity of a location to the transport networks as a function of the minimum time required to reach the connection nodes of each network and the utility provided in these nodes. In the interurban ICON these networks include roads, railways, ports and airports. ICON is being used in planning and in project appraisal in interurban contexts to quantify in an understandable way the relationship between transport infrastructure and services endowment and variables that are spatially defined. But it has been seldom used in the urban environment context because its particularities introduce important methodological difficulties. The paper presents the adaptation of the ICON indicator to the public transport endowment of urban areas. It includes (a) the definition of a suitable URBan Indicator of CONnectivity (URBICON) providing a quantified spatial measure of connectivity to the transport networks and (b) an analysis of the possible uses of URBICON in regional, urban and transport planning and in project appraisal, through its integration with other spatial information (population, economic activity) and GIS tools. An application to the case of the city of Barcelona is presented, considering the public transport endowment in the year 2004. The URBICON provides an easy way to detect the areas that were poorly covered by the public transport system in 2004. Some of them are already covered by new or improved infrastructures and services and others should be served by 2014. This possibly shows that the zones detected by the URBICON correspond to those where planners have somehow decided to improve public transport services. URBICON thus appears as a powerful quantitative indicator to support urban planning.

International Lessons for Promoting Transit Connections to High-Speed Rail Systems

As the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) project becomes reality, many communities involved in, or affected by, the California HSR project have considered how to connect the new HSR passenger services to local urban transportation systems – such as bus and light rail systems – and how they can take advantage of HSR accessibility and speed throughout the state. European and other overseas systems have decades of experience in forging connections between HSR and various transportation options. This study examines international HSR stations and identifies patterns in transit connections associated with stations on the basis of size, population levels, and other characteristics. Additionally, a closer examination is made of the lessons that can be learned from a strategic sample of overseas HSR stations, correlated to similar cities in the planned California system. Generally, the findings from the comparison suggest that California cities must make significant strides to approach the level of integration and ease of access to other modes that systems outside the U.S. now enjoy

General scores for accessibility and inequality measures in urban areas

In the last decades, the acceleration of urban growth has led to an unprecedented level of urban interactions and interdependence. This situation calls for a significant effort among the scientific community to come up with engaging and meaningful visualizations and accessible scenario simulation engines. The present paper gives a contribution in this direction by providing general methods to evaluate accessibility in cities based on public transportation data. Through the notion of isochrones, the accessibility quantities proposed measure the performance of transport systems at connecting places and people in urban systems. Then we introduce scores rank cities according to their overall accessibility. We highlight significant inequalities in the distribution of these measures across the population, which are found to be strikingly similar across various urban environments. Our results are released through the interactive platform: www.citychrone.org, aimed at providing the community at large with a useful tool for awareness and decision-making

Ghost city phenomenon along China’s high-speed railway grid

A fresh urbanism era appears in China with the development of high-speed railway (HSR). Voluminous numbers of local governments are designing and erecting novel cities oriented to the HSR stations with the objective of gaining benefits from the HSR system. Nevertheless, a huge number of these freshly erected districts or cities entail a tremendously high vacancy rate, thereby resulting in 'ghost cities'. The present paper commences with an outline of the China's urban HSR growth and the phenomena of ghost cities. After a literature review on worldwide urban HSR development, the reasons behind the 'ghost city phenomenon' in China are analysed. In the end, the study is concluded by proposing several suggestions for HSR development

Investigation of Travel Behaviour of Visitors to Scotland

Tourism in Scotland is both an important and extensive land use and a major contributor to Gross Domestic Product. In 2005, it is estimated that Scotland received around 10.5 million visitors from outside Scotland. Just over 76% of the visits originated in the rest of the United Kingdom, with the remainder having an international origin. Tourism relies heavily on passenger transport both to access the destination, but also to travel around within it. However, there has been a lack of attention to the internal accessibility of Scotland from the visitor perspective. Whilst some attempts have been suggested and prioritised for facilitating tourists' travel around Scotland, such efforts are mainly undertaken by tourism organisations throughout Scotland, whose ultimate power to enable changes to transport systems is largely limited to lobbying. Moreover, without a clear picture of how accessible Scotland is internally as a destination, or of the transport demands of visitors in terms of internal accessibility, any measures taken to enhance visitor transportation remain largely uninformed. How tourists travel around Scotland, the extent to which they are reliant on public transport and the importance of existing transport provision in their travel behaviour and experience of the destination, including the areas they ultimately visit, merits further clarification. To this end, this study was commissioned by the Transport Department of The Scottish Executive to provide an overview of existing research into the travel behaviour of visitors to Scotland. The principal aim of the study was to review and collate existing sources of information on the use of transport by those visiting Scotland for leisure, recreation and business purposes. In conjunction with the objectives of the Scottish Executive, a thorough review of the literature and secondary data sources pertaining to the use of transport by visitors to Scotland for leisure, tourism and business purposes was conducted