A Methodology to Define the Level of Safety of Public Transport Bus Stops, Based on the Concept of Risk

SRM is the Public Transport (PT) Authority of Bologna, managing PT 37 Mkm/year service contract and taking also care of the safety of the whole bus stops network, consisting of 6.700 stops. Most of bus stops have been established more than 30 years ago. During decades, PT network, number of users and road characteristics changed a lot and some bus stops are now less safe than before. A specific instrument was therefore needed in order to define a list of priority, also on the basis of what foreseen by the Regulation on service quality (ISO 13816). In 2010 a survey on all the PT stops was carried out, collecting about 120 information each (concerning geometric features as user waiting area conditions, user\u27s accessibility, road characteristics, GPS location, etc) and pictures. A database was fed by all these information. At the same time, an algorithm able to calculate the Level of Safety of bus stops was defined, starting from the concept of Risk as a combination of Probability and Damage. The algorithm can now assign a mark from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) to bus stops, on the basis of all collected data and of external factors such as vehicular traffic, vehicles speed, number of users per day at the bus stop, number of buses per day. Also the statistic data of car accidents occurred close to stops in the last 8 years were taken into account. Finally, a sort of catalogue of possible and standardized measures was produced in order to make a stop safer or to build a new safe bus stop. This catalogue can be also used to identify the maintenance works to be done to allow a bus stop to reach a predefined condition or mark. These features are now included in a specific software owned by the Authority, who is committed to spread information among administrations and operators

Design and control of public-service contracts and an application to public transportation systems

Until the end of the 20th century it was common that cities organized, financed, and managed their own public transportation systems. More recently (in Italy mainly during the last decade), many countries liberalized the service provision of public transportation. Although offering local public transportation is a political and financial duty of governments, the service provision is outsourced to a private operator, while the government retains a control position, given to a regulatory agency. This is a common scheme not only in transportation. In close collaboration with the public transportation agency of the city of Bologna, Italy, we designed a methodology to optimize some aspects of the contractual relationship between that agency and the bus operator. We focus on the fines specified by the contract when the operator fails to comply with the service level it has agreed to provide, and on a procedure to measure that service level. Our approach has the advantage that it aligns the incentives of both parties to the benefit of bus riders. We model the agency–operator relationship as a multistage game and find its equilibrium to establish the best operating regime. The game-theoretical approach provides expressions for the fines that the operator should be charged if it does not satisfy the contracted services, and for the optimal agency’s budget to devote to control activities. Second, to check the compliance of the operator with the schedule specified by the contract in a resource-efficient way, we compute how to position the agency’s employees to verify if buses are running according to the specifications of the contract. This is achieved by counting bus services and by checking other quality indicators. We formulate this NP-hard problem as a mixed integer linear program and propose an algorithm to solve it that is effective in providing itineraries for the controllers working for the agency. This paper was accepted by Dimitris Bertsimas, optimization

Design and control of public-service contracts and an application to public transportation systems

Until the end of the 20th century it was common that cities organized, financed, and managed their own public transportation systems. More recently (in Italy mainly during the last decade), many countries liberalized the service provision of public transportation. Although offering local public transportation is a political and financial duty of governments, the service provision is outsourced to a private operator, while the government retains a control position, given to a regulatory agency. This is a common scheme not only in transportation. In close collaboration with the public transportation agency of the city of Bologna, Italy, we designed a methodology to optimize some aspects of the contractual relationship between that agency and the bus operator. We focus on the fines specified by the contract when the operator fails to comply with the service level it has agreed to provide, and on a procedure to measure that service level. Our approach has the advantage that it aligns the incentives of both parties to the benefit of bus riders. We model the agency-operator relationship as a multistage game and find its equilibrium to establish the best operating regime. The gametheoretical approach provides expressions for the fines that the operator should be charged if it does not satisfy the contracted services, and for the optimal agency's budget to devote to control activities. Second, to check the compliance of the operator with the schedule specified by the contract in a resource-efficient way, we compute how to position the agency's employees to verify if buses are running according to the specifications of the contract. This is achieved by counting bus services and by checking other quality indicators. We formulate this NP-hard problem as a mixed integer linear program and propose an algorithm to solve it that is effective in providing itineraries for the controllers working for the agency

Evaluating Impacts of New Mobility in Urban and Peri-Urban Areas - Collection of case studies

In urban areas, accessing services, education, workplaces and/or goods requires efficient mobility systems. In recent years, various transport technology developments have started to enable more efficient mobility across the world. Innovative transport solutions and sharing contracts, including new technologies, new business models, new types of infrastructure and sharing systems are being developed to maximize the effectiveness of transport systems in urban regions. Through the integration of multiple transport modes and intelligent systems, there is a significant opportunity to deliver better access and mobility for all transport users. The management of new urban mobility will be one of the main future tasks of public governance, to help ensure these developments provide more efficient and effective access and mobility in a way that also meets the wider needs of citizens’ and city-users. During the Covid-19 pandemic there were travel restrictions across the world. The pandemic strongly influenced people’s travel patterns and their frequency of travel, especially in relation to the proximity between people using public transport systems. The new mobility concept is a dynamic task that has also been influenced in recent years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the transport systems have to address many future challenges in terms of sustainable ways of travelling, sustainable mobility still is the goal for public administrations. The goal of the Technical Committee 2.1 is to establish a shared knowledge base to help guide policy development and decision-making on urban mobility, and to raise awareness of best practice. Considering the purpose, this work seeks to reflect the efforts the different uses of a wide variety of new mobility initiatives around the world. The aim of this project is to collect case studies relating to new mobility in urban and peri-urban areas from all over the world, and to use these case studies to identify good practices for achieving success