Keys to effective transit strategies for commuting

Commuting poses relevant challenges to cities\u2019 transport systems. Various studies have identified transit as a tool to enhance sustainability, efficiency and quality of the commute. The scope of this paper is to present strategies that increase public transport attractiveness and positively impact its modal share, looking at some case studies and underlining key success factors and possible elements of replica to be ultimately planned in some of the contexts of the Interreg project SMART-COMMUTING. The strategies analyzed in this paper concern prices and fares, service expansion, service improvements, usage of vehicle locators and other technology, changes to the built environment. Relevant gains in transit modal share are more easily achievable when considering integrations between various strategies, thus adapting and tailoring the planning process to the specific context

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

Transportation Research Challenges Based on the Analysis of EU Projects

In recent years several projects have been realised in the field of transportation, but there is a lack of systematic analysis of research challenges connected to these projects. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to provide an overview of these challenges through EU funded projects in the field of smart, green and integrated transport. Based on EU strategic documents, reports and roadmaps, 10 topics are identified playing a crucial role in transportation-related research. A systematic analysis of the projects is realised, where the projects collected from an online database in the Horizon 2020 framework programme from 2015 to 2020 are categorised into these topics. The results show that travel behaviour, big data and open data, sustainable mobility planning and smart solutions are covered by several projects which reflect the main research trends. While active and shared modes, multimodal transportation, trip optimisation and Mobility as a Service are also popular topics. Based on the results, the most underrepresented research areas are artificial intelligence and social networks. The analysis of the connections between the research topics could enable the achievement of a long-term paradigm shift in urban mobility, which is beneficial for researchers, professionals and policy makers

Costs of Interchange: A Review of the Literature.

Interchange within mode influences the demand for that mode through the effect it has on time spent waiting, time spent transferring between vehicles and the inconvenience and risks involved, whilst interchange between modes has additional implications in terms of information provision, through ticketing and co-ordination. The valuation and behavioural impact of each of these factors will vary with an individual’s socio-economic and trip characteristics as well as with the precise features of the interchange. A reduction in the costs of interchange brought about by an improvement to any of the above factors will lead to increasingly ‘seamless journeys’ and such benefits which must be quantified. Indeed, this issue has been identified as an area of key importance in the Government’s Transport White Paper (DETR, 1998a) which states: Quick and easy interchange is essential to compete with the convenience of car use. This message was reiterated by the draft guidance for Local Transport Plans (DETR, 1998b), which called for: more through-ticketing, better connections and co-ordination of services, wider availability of information and improved waiting facilities. Rather than being perceived simply as a barrier to travel, quality interchange is now also being regarded as an opportunity to create new journey opportunities. A recent report on the subject of interchange (Colin Buchanan and Partners, 1998) claimed that : It will become more sensible and economic to base public transport networks around the concept of interchange rather than the alternative of trying to avoid it. whilst in response to the diffuse travel patterns made possible by increased car availability, CIT (1998) commented: people should readily be able to complete a myriad of journeys by changing services (and modes) if a through facility is not available. Ease of interchange should be something we take for granted. Regardless of the precise direction in which transport policy and public transport provision develop, practical constraints and the fact that the most heavily trafficked routes tend to have through services places limitations on the extent to which the need to interchange can be reduced whilst no matter how fully integrated different modes of transport are the need to transfer between them cannot be removed. In contrast, the need to change would inevitably increase with the adoption of a practice of building networks around interchange to create new journey opportunities. However, there is considerable scope to improve existing interchange situations or to design new ones which impose minimum costs. Although previous empirical research has focused on the need to interchange or not, and this remains important, it is essential that research is also directed at improvements which facilitate interchange.The aims of this study, as set out in the terms of reference, are centred around the demand side response to interchange rather than the technical supply side issues relating to improving interchange and integration which have been covered in other studies (Colin Buchanan and Partners, 1998; CIT, 1998). The objectives are: to explore the extent to which the reality and perception of interchange deters public transport use, absolutely and in relation to other deterrents to investigate how public transport users perceive interchange; how they make choices and trade-offs in travel cost and time and the influence of interchange attributes (e.g. information, through ticketing) on those choices to assess which components of interchange act as the greatest deterrent to travel to investigate the extent to which interchange penalties vary according to journey purpose, distance and time of travel (or other factors)

State of Developing Mobility as a Service in the City of Zagreb

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a paradigm for shifting from private cars to different mobility solutions encompassing every transport mode in the form of a service consumed according to passenger needs. As well as Smart City and Smart Mobility, this is a relatively new concept that has become possible due to recent developments in information and communication technologies and intelligent transport systems, and it is most feasible in dense urban environments, where demands for mobility are the highest. This paper will present an overview of current trends of MaaS in the world as well as state in the City of Zagreb, providing the most prominent areas for MaaS as well as the most probable obstacles. This paper will also present an approach to solutions for implementation in Croatian cities by the best recommendations and examples of good practice analysed

Analysis of roles and position of mobile network operators in mobile payment infrastructure

A number of different mobile payment solutions have been presented the last decade. The phone subscription with its security mechanisms are used for user identification and payments. This is the case for SMS based payment and ticketing systems that are getting more and more popular. However, there are other ways to implement a Trusted Element (TE) , where a SIM card architecture is only one. It can be in the mobile phone, as a separate integrated circuit, as an optional customer deployed plug-in device (e.g., microSD) or be running as an application on a server existing entirely as software. In this paper we analyze what roles and responsibilities different actors have in different types of mobile payments solutions. The main focus is on the implications for the mobile operator business. It turns out that new types of intermediary actors in most cases play an important role. Sometimes mobile operators are not even involved. The emergence of new payment together with other non-SIM card based TE solutions opens up for many different market scenarios for mobile payment services. --

RFID: Prospects for Europe: Item-level Tagging and Public Transportation

This report, which is part of the COMPLETE series of studies, investigates the current and future competitiveness of the European industry in RFID applications in general and in two specific cases: item-level tagging and public transportation. It analyses its constituent technologies, drivers and barriers to growth, actual and potential markets and economic impacts, the industrial position and innovative capabilities, and it concludes with policy implicationsJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

URRUC - Urban-Rural Connectivity in Non-Metropolitan Regions. Annex VIII: Policy Guidelines and Recommendations

Annex VIII contains a methodological overview of the policy development approach as well as the creation of European policy recommendations