High-Performance Transit Planning Modes and Networks

From the introduction: In planning our lectures for this seminar, my colleagues and I have decided that we present here an overview of the problems of cities today, of the role of public transportation, and especially high-performance public transportation, as well as some details of planning, and characteristics of modes, their design and operations. We will thus try to combine, as much as the time allows, a general overview with technical details which many of you will be facing when you will be planning and implementing your rapid transit project in the years to come

Analytical Review of Guided Transit Systems

The need for providing high-performance transit services has been increasingly recognized in most cities in recent years. The most important elements for obtaining such services are separate rights-of-way for transit and guided technology. The basic transit system features, such as transit unit size, service frequency, degree of automation and stopping patterns are described and their impacts on performance are analyzed. Rail rapid transit and light rail modes are found to retain clear superiority in high and medium capacity mode categories, respectively; various rubber-tired automatic guided systems are increasingly replacing steered (highway) modes in applications of lower medium capacity range where high performance is needed. Individual automated guided cabin systems (personal rapid tranit) do not represent a viable concept under any conditions

Prospects for Competitiveness of Urban Public Transport

From the introductory paragraphs: If we observe a herd of sheep who want to pass through a gate to a green pasture, we see them pushing so hard that they get stuck at the gate and pass through it only very torturously and with great delay. It is obvious that if they would not push, but pass one or two at a time, the sheep would get through the gate much faster and more easily. The problem is, we conclude, that the sheep are animals with a rather low level of intelligence. If a creature from Outer Space observes one of our cities from a Spaceship ( flying saucer ) on a weekday morning, he will certainly come to conclusions about the behavior of humans in traffic very similar to those we reached about the sheep. The observer from Space would be surprised that the humans, who build beautiful buildings, excellent vehicles and have tools for sophisticated controls, do not manage their cities and their travel as an intelligent system. Traffic in streets mostly consists of individuals driving vehicles for their own immediate benefit. The control that could make the entire system work much more efficiently virtually does not exist. Operation of the transportation system is not much better than what the sheep would arrange. Analyzing our policies and practices in urban transportation, one can easily discover a number of irrational situations which prevent urban transport from efficient functioning

Skip-Stop Operation as a Method for Transit Speed Increase

Increase of transit speeds is one of the most effective ways of increasing the attractiveness of transit for urban travel. While surface transit in particular suffers from low speed, the desirabil­ity of higher speeds is not limited to it. Rapid transit has adequate speed for short to medium-distance trips in urban areas. However, for longer trips, particularly when there is a competing freeway facility, the requirement for speed is rather high. Since many station spacings are adopted on the basis of area coverage, high operating speed of the trains often cannot be achieved. Thus, typical lines of urban rapid transit with average interstation spacings of approximately one-half mile have only limited length on which their speeds are satisfactory; for distances longer than, typically, 5-7 miles, they often become too slow. This is becoming an increasing problem with the spatial spread of cities. This article describes the main alternative solutions to this problem and then focuses on the skip-stop operation, presenting a methodology for its analysis and evaluation of its applicability. Although the article discusses rail services, the basic aspects of the problem are common for any technology. For example, there are a number of bus services for which skip-stop service could be considered utilizing the methodology developed here

From Suburban Railways to Regional Rail Systems

In recent decades rail systems serving cities and their suburbs have undergone a major expansion and evolution. As one of the oldest modes of mechanized urban transportation, suburban or commuter railways were specialized services for commuters operated by railway companies which primarily operated long-distance passenger and freight transport. Today most of these railways have grown into regional rail systems - regular transit services which meet the need for high quality multicentered transportation throughout growing metropolitan areas

Evaluating UMTA’s Work

The period of economic expansion and affluence since World War II created a strong tendency to base planning on unquestioned extrapolation of past trends. This method is acceptable in areas where the developmental trends are in desirable directions. But when this is not the case, this method does not represent rational planning, since its effect is to continue and encourage undesirable developments. Urban transportation has suffered greatly from this type of planning; many of our national and metropolitan area transportation studies placed a heavy reliance on .con­tinuation of growth in auto ownership, VMT\u27s, decentralization, etc. They failed to set clear goals for public transportation and standards for its service

Regional Rail Developments in North America

The increasing importance of regional rail systems for growing cities and metropolitan areas has been shown more clearly in North America than anywhere else in the world. In spite of extremely auto-oriented developments and policies which do not favor railways, a number of North American cities have extended and improved their regional rail systems in recent decades