Designing route buses: from bespoke to mass customisation

Designing route buses: from bespoke to mass customisatio

Reducing variation not function: Lessons from applied route bus design research

Individual bus operators specify vehicles in line with their own unique requirements. Collectively, diversity across vehicle specifications increases costs and lead time and decreases quality in local bus manufacture, paradoxically having negative consequences for the very function that specifications were intended to improve. The vehicle specifications are driven by functional requirements and are therefore difficult to reconcile with manufacturing by simply reducing them. This research set out to develop bus designs balancing user and manufacturer needs.Investigation found that specification diversity results from bus operators determining designs to meet their requirements – resulting in a raft of solutions to the same or similar problems. Two interventions to this situation were formulated; that a higher-specification product could offer equal or better function to bus operators while being of standardised manufacture; and that a system of modular design could be implemented where specification differences were functionally justified.These approaches were tested in the design, manufacture and implementation of a new driver’s area for route buses. It was found to meet the functional requirements of several Australian bus operators while streamlining manufacture. It resulted in a definitive design strategy for the development of better public transport vehicles

An examination of three approaches to metro rolling stock design to ameliorate extended dwell times due to passenger growth and associated crowding.

Increased patronage of suburban rail in many cities of the world has effected network performance. Crowding, especially during peak travel times detrimentally effects dwell times thus reducing network capacity. This paper examines three approaches undertaken by three rail operators to the design of rolling stock in order to ameliorate this problem. Each of the network operations examined in this paper were selected due to their different approaches to the problem but reflecting their own set of circumstances. Stockholm Lokaltrafik AB ran experimental carriages amongst its regular system to determine a new interior carriage design. The Melbourne suburban rail system explored expanding the door vestibule area. The third example, Rio de Janeiro’s Metro, considered both the train interior and platform geometry to reduce dwell times. The research reveals that in each case there is a great deal of pressure to remove seating from the carriage, a policy that often contradicts passenger perceptions of comfort. The purpose of this examination is to inform the design of new rolling stock interiors for future research

Napper cycling typology:Identifying and understanding different bicycle trip purposes

What is a bicycle trip? Our own experiences, observation and reading tells a story – that there is no single or all encompassing “cycling” activity. Although trip purposes are used as examples to illustrate findings or explain ideas, they are often limited to a binary of “transport or recreation”. This oversimplification makes it easy to dismiss and mischaracterise cycling, particularly in countries with low or emerging cycling volumes. This research addressed this gap in knowledge with the development of a typology of bicycle trips. Based on six types of trips, the typology represents how they relate to, and mix with, one another. The typology represents a departure from a tendency of classifying people, to classifying the things they may do. The six journey types are: recreation, commute, tasks and errands, passenger, work, and sport. The implications of trip purposes are discussed, with opportunities arising such as a better understanding of what might be needed to encourage a modal shift from recreational to commuter riding, or a better understanding of user needs in different trips. The practical implications of trip purposes, for example riding with shopping and making short multi-stop journeys carrying goods and children raise implications for the bicycle transport system. This typology provides an addition to the transport lexicon to recognise the many utility functions, and benefits of cycling.</p

Modular route bus design – A method of meeting transport operation and vehicle manufacturing requirements

This research examines the problem of route bus specification and vehicle manufacturability. In order for bus operators to provide transport services, a range of vehicle configurations must be available from bus manufacturers, generating variety which has a negative impact on the manufacturing process. Larger part inventories, uncontrolled labour tasks and more troublesome maintenance are known impacts of this variety. This research identifies the functional necessities in route bus interior design and reduces the problems in bus manufacture and operation caused by specification diversity by proposing a modularised system of bus design. In particular, it makes recommendations as to how bus configuration should be carried out, ensuring an optimum mix of operational and manufacturing needs: 1.Determine user needs before the bus specification process.2.Designs to be developed by the manufacturer in response to user needs.3.This design should be standardised where possible, as suggested by the user needs.4.Where user needs dictate product variations, apply a mass customisation approach to accommodate these needs. The recommendations are communicated in design proposals for a modular bus interior, demonstrated by four cases designed to meet the present status quo of bus interior design and predictions for the future of the field

The role of industrial design in addressing the disparity between user perceptions of public and private transport

This paper examines the disparity between the perceptions of private and public transport from those who might exercise choice between them. There is a great body of literature concerning the identification of problems in public transport mobility. In this study the authors have focused upon the emotional aspects of human needs as they are expressed in aesthetics, materiality and environmental functionality. These qualities have been long understood by the automotive industry in the development and marketing of their products. While the authors acknowledge that these psychological and design factors are not completely unknown to the public transport industry, they are largely inadequately considered compared to the automotive industry. The effect upon public transport is that it struggles to deliver a quality alternative to the car on routes or situations in which it could be seen as competitive

Bridging the divide : design’s role in improving multi-modal transport

For a public transport user to experience an efficient journey, the transport system should demonstrate the network effect (Mees 2000; Nielsen et al. 2005); combining available modes in a network to achieve their best capacity. The transport planning process exhibits an excellent opportunity to foster the network effect, displaying refined intelligent use of the available statistical information. However, there are limitations in the reach of planning alone. Statistical information is prone to disregard some finer points of transport operation; by viewing the world through a quantitative lens we can lose focus on users overlooked by our correlations and percentiles. Incorporating issues outside the scope of statistical analysis leads to an informal design process within planning. These issues are generally unnamed in the literature; Vuchic (2005) alludes to the existence of “minor factors”, parallel to potential travel demand that contribute to influencing transit travel. Usability is a significant contributor to the success of any product, including successful public transport. Physical, psychological and social barriers are evident in transport implementation (Bendixson 1974), and are difficult to predict and combat through planning with only quantitative data. In practice, the qualitative factors are analysed using a descriptive process; one role of design is to provide a proven framework for such a process. The design process offers planners a means to identify and resolve a range of problems from a variety of viewpoints, beyond the constraints of traditional planning and its immediate theoretical boundaries. Following the design process in the planning stage, design will also contribute in the physical sense, as a product. Often dismissed as purely aesthetic, design content embodies information and solutions from disparate fields, whilst in contemporary ergonomic literature aesthetics is recognised as being integral to usability (Norman 2004). The product of design could be implemented as a partner to the planning outcomes, or as the embodiment of a specific solution. The authors recognise the informal existence of design in the planning process, the intention being to formalise and expand on its possible contribution with a focus on user-centric issues. Key to this exploration is the suitability of different stages in the design process to deal with multi-modal transport problems of differing maturity; pre-planning to post-implementation

Changing the climate of public transport : a design research initiative

The Public Transport Design Research Initiative, developed by Monash University’s Faculty of Art & Design and the Institute of Transport Studies in 2005, aims to develop original and innovative design concepts and approaches to address the challenges faced in the design of future public transport vehicles and infrastructure. The initiative is part of Monash Transport, a multi-disciplinary and inter-faculty network at Monash University. This paper presents some of the outcomes from a developing series of design projects run as part of this Initiative. To date, over fifty design proposals have been presented as part of the undergraduate design program, and recently two design PhDs in public transport have developed as part of the growth of the Initiative. The paper predominantly discusses two major undergraduate studio design projects. The first of these projects showcases a series of case studies that responded to Melbourne’s 2030 plan, and in particular the proposal to increase public transport usage to 20% by the year 2020. The selected case studies highlight not only the diversity of design solutions that resulted in three State Awards, but also the unique approaches to undertaking the studio project. The second project discusses the Melbourne Lightrail Towards 2020 competition where teams of Victorian tertiary design students were asked to design a tram for Melbourne based upon Alstom’s Citadis platform. This paper presents a brief overview of five case studies that made it to the finals of the competition, including the winning team