Bus allocation to short-turning and interlining lines.

We propose injecting flexibility into public transport service planning by introducing a demand driven method for generating and assigning buses to short-turning and interlining services. This study formulates, solves and applies the problem of assigning vehicles to the lines of a bus network subject to the dual objective of (a) improving the passenger waiting times at stops and (b) reducing the operational costs. At first, the vehicle allocation problem is expanded with the explicit consideration of interlining and short-turning lines that provide greater operational flexibility. The paper introduces a rule-based approach for generating interlining and short-turning lines that are considered as "virtual lines" because some of them might remain inactive if their operation does not improve the vehicle allocation solution. The bus allocation problem to existing and virtual lines is modeled as a combinatorial, multi-objective optimization problem and is solved with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) meta-heuristic that can return improved solutions by avoiding the exhaustive exploration of a combinatorial solution space. The vehicle allocation to existing and virtual lines is applied to the bus network of The Hague with the use of Automated Fare Collection (AFC) data from 24 weekdays and General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. Sensitivity analysis results demonstrate a significant reduction potential in passenger waiting time and operational costs without adding a large number of short-turning and interlining line options that could impede the practicality of the bus services

Staircase to Higher-Order Topological Phase Transitions

We find a series of topological phase transitions of increasing order, beyond the more standard second-order phase transition in a one-dimensional topological superconductor. The jumps in the order of the transitions depend on the range of the pairing interaction, which is parametrized by an algebraic decay with exponent $\alpha$. Remarkably, in the limit $\alpha = 1$ the order of the topological transition becomes infinite. We compute the critical exponents for the series of higher-order transitions in exact form and find that they fulfill the hyperscaling relation. We also study the critical behaviour at the boundary of the system and discuss potential experimental platforms of magnetic atoms in superconductors.Comment: 5+5pages, 7 figures. Accepted as a Rapid Communicatio

Implementing a behavioural pilot survey for the stage - based study of the whole journey traveller experience

AbstractThe European project METPEX aims to develop an evaluation tool for the whole journey experience from the passenger viewpoint. A pilot survey has been implemented to help identify what kind of information should be collected to this effect. Five categories of variables were identified and tested: individual attributes, contextual variables, attitudes, travel experience and satisfaction aspects. Administering the pilot survey resulted in a total of 554 interviews in eight different European cities. The gained experience was supplemented by consultation with 45 different stakeholders that reviewed the tool. Potentialities and shortcomings that emerged from these assessment activities are discussed

Potential of on-demand services for urban travel

On-demand mobility services are promising to revolutionise urban travel, but preliminary studies are showing that they may actually increase the total vehicle miles travelled, thereby worsening road congestion in cities. In this study, we assess the demand for on-demand mobility services in urban areas, using a stated preference survey, to understand the potential impact of introducing on-demand services on the current modal split. The survey was carried out in the Netherlands and offered respondents a choice between bike, car, public transport and on-demand services. 1,063 valid responses are analysed with a multinomial logit and a latent class choice model. By means of the latter, we uncover four distinctive groups of travellers based on the observed choice behaviour. The majority of the sample (55%) are avid cyclists and do not see on-demand mobility as an alternative for making urban trips. Two classes (27% and 9% of the sample) would potentially use on-demand services: the former is fairly time-sensitive and would thus use on-demand service if they were sufficiently fast. The latter class however is highly cost-sensitive, and would therefore use on-demand mobility primarily if it is cheap. The fourth class (9%) shows very limited potential for using on-demand services

What is the market potential for on-demand services as a train station access mode?

Ride-hailing and other on-demand mobility services are often proposed as a solution for improving the accessibility of public transport by offering first/last mile connectivity. We study the potential of using on-demand services to improve train station access by means of a three-step sequential stated preference survey. We compare the preferences for on-demand services with the bicycle, car and public transport for accessing two alternative train stations at different access distances. We estimate a joint access mode and train station choice model. By estimating a latent class choice model, we uncover five distinct segments in the population. We describe the classes based on their stated preferences, travel behaviour, attitudes towards new mobility and their socio-demographic characteristics. The two largest classes, accounting for over half of the sample, are the most likely to adopt on-demand services. Having an average willingness-to-pay, they would choose these services for longer access distances, competing mainly with the car and local public transport. Applying the model estimates, we observe that while on-demand services mainly compete with public transportation (obtaining most of its travellers from it), they are not able to fully substitute a public transport service for train station access, as many users would switch to cycling or driving a car, rather than opting for the on-demand service

Analysis of network-wide transit passenger flows based on principal component analysis

<p>Transit networks are complex systems in which the passenger flow dynamics are difficult to capture and understand. While there is a growing ability to monitor and record travelers' behavior in the past decade, knowledge on network-wide passenger flows, which are essentially high-dimensional multivariate data, is still limited. This paper describes how Principal Component Analysis (PCA) can be leveraged to develop insight into such multivariate time series transformed from raw individual tapping records of smart card data. With a one-month data set of the Shenzhen metro system used in this study, it is shown that a great amount of variance contained in the original data can be effectively retained in lower-dimensional sub-spaces composed of top few Principal Components (PCs). Features of such low dimensionality, PCs and temporal stability of the flow structure are further examined in detail. The results and analysis provided in this paper make a contribution to the understanding of transit flow dynamics and can benefit multiple important applications for transit systems, such as passenger flow modeling and short-term prediction.</p