Critical Appraisal of Parameters for Successful Implementation of BRTS in India

Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) is establishing itself as a new and sustainable solution to mass transit against the conventional transit systems in many cities across the globe as well as in India. Different BRTSs have adopted various case-specific solutions to make the system contextual to the place, user-friendly, strategic, technologically advanced, and ecologically sustainable. In most cases, the most favoured solution is governed by aspects related to available infrastructure, budgetary allocations, demand and behavioral patterns of passengers, and areas of focus. The paper makes a critical appraisal of various parameters contributing to the implementation of BRTS services across the world and applicability of the same in India. It also deals with how the application of a new transportation system affects the surrounding area and with the resulting various social and physical impacts. As a conclusion, this paper establishes that successful BRTS must combine proper station design, track design, maintained vehicles and running ways with backup infrastructure, educated and updated drivers and workforce, public cautiousness, and system-backed information technology. Further, it concludes that the institutional framework needs revamping in Indian scenario for successful implementation of BRTS projects

Evolutionary design of sustainable mobility and transport system（進化計算を用いた持続可能なモビリティと輸送システムの設計）

信州大学(Shinshu university)博士（工学)ThesisARMAS ANDRADE TITO ROLANDO. Evolutionary design of sustainable mobility and transport system（進化計算を用いた持続可能なモビリティと輸送システムの設計）. 信州大学, 2018, 博士論文. 博士（工学), 甲第686号, 平成30年03月20日授与.doctoral thesi

Smart accessibility patterns and shrinking cities: The added value of urban design

During these last decades, the shrinkage of cities has become a major urban issue, a process caused by many factors but one that will generally increase during the next years. This is mainly because of the trend of urbanization: in 2016 the UN estimated that 54.5% of people live in urban settlements, and that by 2030 it will become 60%. The non-urban areas impacted by depopulation, will face several issues in terms of land maintenance, heritage preservation, and conservation of local traditions. This dynamic is strongly related to the notion of accessibility, which, here, stands for the possibility of people to access places, spaces, items, and services. This approach tries to include different points of view such as the notion of accessibility seen in transportation terms, based on its efficiency and multimodality, or the issue of accessibility concerning people with disabilities. The ongoing digital revolution has further impacted the issue of accessibility. The pervasive transition from analogue to digital processes and the development of Information and Communication Technologies has provided new opportunities to supply information, infrastructures, and public services to people. With our smartphones, citizens can access and produce data, which can then be used by them to increase their awareness about urban opportunities and optimize urban projects and policies. Worldwide internet connection has blurred the relation between a place and its use, deepening reuse strategies for buildings and neighbourhoods. The development of shared and circular economy and new health standards in cities has led to the innovation of public services both in an evolutionary way (e.g. water supply and management, waste management) and in a disruptive way (e.g. transportation design, urban hybrid services). Smart Cities projects try to catch most of these opportunities, focusing on innovative urban solutions able to exploit this potential. This article aims to contribute to this debate, reviewing some of the main definitions of urban accessibility and showing the possible added value given by innovative urban strategies open to ICT solutions. To better understand this approach these notions will be related to Gjirokastra, one of the most important cities in southern Albania. Its distinctive combination in terms of heritage, strategic position and business opportunities are facing urban shrinkage, with the consequent loss of city population, lack of maintenance of its renowned heritage and a declining economy. Then a design proposal that uses the notion of accessibility to analyse and indicate strategic accessibility patterns to challenge shrinkage will be outlined. These actions will be referenced to pilot projects and case studies to prove how innovative urban design can add new value to urban accessibility patterns. The conclusions will resume the role of urban design dealing with these issues, indicating constraints and potentials of this approach

Multimodal pricing and the optimal design of bus services: new elements and extensions

This thesis analyses the pricing and design of urban transport systems; in particular the optimal design and efficient operation of bus services and the pricing of urban transport. Five main topics are addressed: (i) the influence of considering non-motorised travel alternatives (walking and cycling) in the estimation of optimal bus fares, (ii) the choice of a fare collection system and bus boarding policy, (iii) the influence of passengers’ crowding on bus operations and optimal supply levels, (iv) the optimal investment in road infrastructure for buses, which is attached to a target bus running speed and (v) the characterisation of bus congestion and its impact on bus operation and service design. Total cost minimisation and social welfare maximisation models are developed, which are complemented by the empirical estimation of bus travel times. As bus patronage increases, it is efficient to invest money in speeding up boarding and alighting times. Once on-board cash payment has been ruled out, allowing boarding at all doors is more important as a tool to reduce both users and operator costs than technological improvements on fare collection. The consideration of crowding externalities (in respect of both seating and standing) imposes a higher optimal bus fare, and consequently, a reduction of the optimal bus subsidy. Optimal bus frequency is quite sensitive to the assumptions regarding crowding costs, impact of buses on traffic congestion and congestion level in mixed-traffic roads. The existence of a crowding externality implies that buses should have as many seats as possible, up to a minimum area that must be left free of seats. Bus congestion in the form of queuing delays behind bus stops is estimated using simulation. The delay function depends on the bus frequency, bus size, number of berths and dwell time. Therefore, models that use flow measures (including frequency only or frequency plus traffic flow) as the only explanatory variables for bus congestion are incomplete. Disregarding bus congestion in the design of the service would yield greater frequencies than optimal when congestion is noticeable, i.e. for high demand. Finally, the optimal investment in road infrastructure for buses grows with the logarithm of demand; this result depends on the existence of a positive and linear relationship between investment in infrastructure and desired running speed

Desarrollo de un algoritmo heurístico, con programación multiagentes, para la generación de la matriz de ruta del sistema lineal Y=AX utilizado en la estimación de la matriz origen-destino

El actual documento ilustra el diseño y la elaboración de un algoritmo heurístico implementado en dos diferentes escenarios: el primero orientado a objetos y el segundo con programación multiagente. El algoritmo realiza el cálculo y generación de la matriz de ruta considerada en el modelo, = donde representa la matriz de ruta. el número de pasajeros que ingresan-salen de la parada o el número de pasajeros que desciende del bus entre los pares origen-destino y, es el número de pasajeros estimado que viajan desde una estación origen hacia una estación destino. Una vez elaborado los dos algoritmos se realizan pruebas de rendimiento para saber cuál es más eficiente en cuanto a tiempo de ejecución.The current document illustrates the design and elaboration of a heuristic algorithm implemented in two different scenarios: the first object-oriented and the second with multi-agent programming. The algorithm performs the calculation and generation of the route matrix considered in the model = , where represents the route matrix, the number of passengers entering-leaving the stop or the number of passengers getting off the bus between origin-destination pairs, and is the estimated number of passengers traveling from an origin station to a destination station. Once the two algorithms have been developed, performance tests are carried out to find out which is more efficient in terms of execution time

Proceedings of the SUPTM 2022 conference

This book includes the proceedings of the 1st international Conference on Future Challenges in Sustainable Urban Planning & Territorial Management celebrated on January 17-19, 2022. Urban planning is an essential tool in our global society's journey towards sustainability. This tool is as important as the territorial management to execute the plans. Both, planning and management, must be efficient to achieve the goal of sustainability inside the general framework of Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. It does not exist any B planet so, identify urban & territorial challenges in our territories such reaching sustainable mobility, diagnose natural hazards and control land resource consumption is mandatory for our XXI century generation. Planning land uses compatibles with the ecosystem services of territory and manage them by public-private cooperation systems is a greatly challenge for our global society. Human activities do not have very frequently among their objectives to maintain ecosystem services of territory. Therefore, this field of research must help to guarantee the maintenance of natural resources, also called Natural Capital, necessary for social and economic activities of our global society. This conference aims to be a space to share research works, ideas, experiences, projects, etc. in this field of knowledge. We want to put in value that planning and management are subjects that include technological and social matters and their own methodologies. Laws, rules and cultures of different countries around the world are or can be very diverse. But the planet is only one. Technologies are shared, methodologies to analyze territories are also communal to share experiences about the global goal of sustainability, so these events are a necessary way to build our joint future. We trust that the success of this first edition of the SUPTM conference (which has been attended by more than 200 researchers from the five continents) will be an opening step towards international collaboration and the dissemination of knowledge that is so important in this field of urban planning and territorial management

Urban logistics and spatial territorial intelligence indicators: State-of-the-art, typology and implications for Latin American cities

This paper reviews the state of the art in spatial accessibility and attractiveness indicators for urban freight transport and logistics, from a territorial intelligence and analytics viewpoint. It proposes a first typology of indicators and analyzes their potential in Latin American urban planning and development. After presenting the main notions of business intelligence and analytics, as well as a definition of territorial intelligence and analytics, the paper proposes an overview of territorial intelligence indicators, focusing on accessibility and attractiveness indicators, and a typology of five categories of indicators: infrastructure-based indicators, generation-based indexes, distance/time/cost measures, gravity-based indicators and space-time compatibility indexes. Finally, the main issues for implementing such indicators are presented, in terms of data requirements and potential applications focusing on the Latin American context.El presente artículo presenta el estado del arte sobre indicadores de accesibilidad y de atractividad espacial para el transporte de carga y la logística urbana, desde el punto de vista de la inteligencia y la analítica territorial. El artículo propone una primera tipología de indicadores, y analiza el potencial de su uso en la planeación y desarrollo urbano en Latinoamérica. Tras presentar las principales nociones de inteligencia y analítica de negocios, y proponer una definición de la inteligencia y analítica territorial, el artículo propone una visión de conjunto de los indicadores de inteligencia territorial, con un foco en los de accesibilidad y atractividad, y una tipología con cinco categorías de indicadores: de infraestructura, de generación, de distancia/tiempo/costo, gravitatorios y de compatibilidad espacio-temporal. Finalmente, se presentan las principales cuestiones en la implementación de dichos indicadores, en términos de requerimientos en datos y de potenciales aplicaciones, con un foco en el contexto latinoamericano

The dynamic interaction of land use and transport in a highly fragmented city: the case of Cape Town, South Africa

The need for more inclusive and integrated cities has resulted in a paradigm shift in the South African transport and land use policy environment where transport and land use planning are viewed as a continuum as opposed to isolated planning aspects. Issues such as residential segregation, social exclusion, spatial inefficiencies, inequality, residential informality, marginalisation of the low-income cohort continue to form part of the current planning discourse. While policy acknowledges the need to redress these issues, the urban spatial patterns in South African cities continue to trace the historical planning trajectory. Recently, congestion has become an issue in some of South Africa’s cities with Johannesburg and Cape Town appearing in the list of the top hundred most congested cities in the world. It is thus essential to understand how South African cities can address urban accessibility and mobility issues along with redressing apartheid spatial planning to attain sustainable cities that allow for inclusivity of all population groups. Like most South African cities, Cape Town is a relic of apartheid planning where the urban spatial patterns reinforce social exclusion among other issues. Urban and transport planning in Cape Town focuses on addressing issues of spatial inefficiencies, social exclusion, congestion due to rapid motorisation and the proliferation of informal settlements. It is against this backdrop that the central concern of this research is to understand urban dynamics linked to the spatiotemporal interaction of transport and land use in Cape Town to aid in the formulation of proactive urban policies. There is compelling evidence in the literature that dynamic integrated land use transport models provide an avenue through which the urban change process can be understood to aid in the development of adaptive land use and transport strategies. METRONAMICA, a dynamic land use transport model, is applied in this research to simulate and understand land use and transport change in Cape Town. A sequential stage-wise procedure was implemented to calibrate the model for the period 1995- 2005 and an independent validation was carried out from 2005 to 2010 to evaluate the model. Kappa statistic and its associated variants were applied to assess the ability of the land use model block to reproduce land use patterns while the EMME model and previous transport studies for Cape Town were used to evaluate the transport model. The results from the calibration and validation exercise show that the model can reproduce historical land use and transport patterns. The integration of the transport and land use model through accessibility improved the Kappa Simulation and Fuzzy Kappa Simulation. This showed that the model explained urban change better when land use and transport interacted compared to an independent land use model. This shows that accessibility can be employed in the Cape Town context to enhance the understanding of the urban change process. In addition to the Kappa statistics, the fractal dimension which measures the landscape complexity was used to assess the predictive accuracy of the model. The model performance revealed that the landscape patterns simulated by the model resemble observed land use patterns signifying a good calibration of the model. The calibrated land use transport model for the Cape Town Metropolitan region (CTMRLUT) was applied for policy scenarios. Three scenarios were simulated, specifically the business as usual (BAU), redressing social exclusion and the potential for in situ upgrading of informal settlements. The study found that intensive land use development along the Metro South East Integration Zone (MSEIZ) was linked to a reduction in commuting distances to economic activities which is in contrast to the BAU scenario. While these scenarios looked at the urban spatial patterns, the effect of land use patterns on congestion was also explored. The findings from the scenario simulations suggest that despite the reduction in distance to economic centres, the congestion condition in Cape Town will continue to deteriorate. Further, the findings indicate that interventions that only target land use developments are not sufficient to address congestion issues in Cape Town. Instead, to address the congestion problem in Cape Town, mixed land use and compact growth strategies need to be complemented with travel demand management strategies that target private car usage and intensive investment in transport infrastructure, especially rail, to facilitate the use of alternative modes. With regards to informal settlements, the study found that in situ upgrading could be a viable option to tackle some informal settlements. However, for proper inclusionary informal settlement policy, an approach that resonates with contextual realities would be more suitable to assess the viability of in situ upgrading based on the location of informal settlements relative to centres of economic activities. Additionally, the study revealed that instead of informal settlements locating as stand-alone settlements, some of them located adjacent to low-income housing which might be indicative of a growth in backyard shacks which is an existing housing trend in some lowincome suburbs in Cape Town. While this research has shown that integrating land use and transport in policy is potentially useful in solving urban issues, it has also revealed the value of urban modelling as a platform on which to assess the potential impacts of policies before their implementation. This is a strong case for the utilisation of decision support tools in land use and transport planning in contemporary South African cities

World migration report 2018

"This volume is the result of a highly collaborative venture involving a multitude of partners and contributors under the direction of the editors. The World Migration Report 2018 project commenced in September 2016 and culminated in the launch of the report in November 2017 by the Director General at the 108th Session of the IOM Council. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IOM. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout the report do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IOM concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.