A longitudinal analysis of travel demand and its determinants in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area

This study provides a unique long-term investigation of regional travel demand that addresses several gaps in the existing longitudinal literature. Firstly, it investigates the development of travel demand in terms of both vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) and passenger kilometres travelled (PKT), based on actual demand, congestion and equilibrium distances, using road and multi-modal transit networks in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA). Secondly, it identifies influential travel demand determinants after testing an extensive set of variables including longitudinal gravity-based transport accessibility measures. Thirdly, it investigates to what extent the determinants’ influence changes over time and various locations within the study area, providing new insights into the temporal and intra-regional variations of travel demand and its determinants. The findings show that VKT and PKT have grown in absolute and per trip terms, mainly due to substantial population growth, especially in the suburban areas. Whilst average potential travel times by transit have decreased, they are substantially longer than auto travel times. Furthermore, travel demand determinants vary significantly across space by degrees of urbanity, especially for VKT. The findings call for area- and population segment-specific land use and transportation policies across the GTHA

Toward user-oriented asset management for urban railway systems

Managing public infrastructure is becoming more complex due to aging assets, increasing demand, and budget limitations. Besides these challenges, best practices recommend putting stakeholders (specifically end-users) in the center of asset management planning for public assets incorporating provided services in the decision-making process to achieve sustainable cities goals. This study improves the classical asset-based approach and proposed a user-oriented platform to maintain urban railway systems. The model is applied to the Toronto regional railway network (Go Transit) in Canada and the Greater Montreal regional railway network (Exo). Results indicate that a proactive approach significantly can save money and bring higher value and performance for the agency. The user-oriented platform was able to push budget allocation toward enhancing provided and potential services for users. The same idea can be extended to other transit systems as well as other infrastructure