Decision-making for light rail

In transport literature there is an ongoing discussion on the potential of light rail in mitigating congestion and supporting mobility around urban centres. Throughout Europe and the United States, many policy makers see light rail as an interesting option to improve the accessibility of urban centres. The Dutch national government wanted to support swift light rail realization in a number of promising situations.Several projects gained support from the national government for implementation. However, the decision-making on a local level was not nearly as swift as expected and not in line with the promise. This paper presents an analysis of that perceived slowdown and shows that the approach of the national government with a strict focus on light rail and a detachment from the local processes has played an important role in the slowdown. It shows that light rail can very well be a solid option. However, its successful implementation is not solely dependent on light rail suitability for the mobility patterns in the region, but very much on the approach of the implementation of those supporting the option.     

Modeling a rail transit alignment considering different objectives

An optimization model for station locations for an on-ground rail transit line is developed using different objective functions of demand and cost as both influence the planning of a rail transit alignment. A microscopic analysis is performed to develop a rail transit alignment in a given corridor considering a many-to-one travel demand pattern. A variable demand case is considered as it replicates a realistic scenario for planning a rail transit line. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) based on a Geographical Information System (GIS) database is developed to optimize the station locations for a rail transit alignment. The first objective is to minimize the total system cost per person, which is a function of user cost, operator cost, and location cost. The second objective is to maximize the ridership or the service coverage of the rail transit alignment. The user cost per person is minimized separately as the third objective because the user cost is one of the most important decision-making factors for planning a transit system from the users’ perspective. A transit planner can make an informed decision between various alternatives based on the results obtained using different objective functions. The model is applied in a case study in the Washington, DC area. The optimal locations and sequence of stations obtained using the three objective functions are presented and a comparative study between the results obtained is shown in the paper. In future works we will develop a combinatorial optimization problem using the aforementioned objectives for the rail transit alignment planning and design problem.     

New routes on old railways: increasing rail’s mode share within the constraints of the existing railway network

This paper describes an integrated methodology for identifying potential ‘quick wins’ for mode shift from road to passenger rail transport. Firstly, a procedure for analysing rail’s relative competitiveness in the market for passenger transport between large urban areas is developed and then applied to a UK case study. The purpose of such analysis is to allow the identification of flows where rail is currently relatively uncompetitive (in terms of journey time in particular) and to assess the reasons for this poor performance, so that the issues which suppress rail use may be addressed. In parallel, a framework, methodology and tool for the assessment of existing and potential capacity (trains, seats, TEUs, etc.) is developed for both passenger and freight traffic, to identify and address network constraints. An illustrative example of the use of these demand and capacity assessment tools is then presented, with the tools used to identify and evaluate flows where rail demand is suppressed by poor service quality and where spare capacity exists which would allow the passenger rail service to be improved without requiring significant investments in infrastructure. The effects of such improvements on demand are predicted, and the cost implications of operating such additional services are discussed. The analysis suggests that there may be significant potential for increasing rail’s mode share by providing additional inter-urban services where rail currently offers an inferior service.     

Testing the decentralization effects of rail systems: Empirical findings from Israel

Many sustainable urban development approaches are based on mass public transportation ventures, especially railway development, which has been considered a panacea for the unfavorable effects of suburban development. But rail transit also improves accessibility to the fringes, thus encouraging an exodus to the suburbs. This paper explores suburbanization and sprawling effect of commuter rail transit on the rural exurbia of the Tel Aviv metropolis by analyzing its effect on residential location decisions. The findings indicate that the suburban rail system was a determinant factor in the location choice of households which migrated from the inner parts of the Tel Aviv metropolis, since it allowed them to maintain strong commuting connections to their residential origin. This suggests that rail transit, along with its potential to strengthen the inner cities, also accelerates suburbanization and counter urbanization.     

湛茂阳城市带县域综合交通可达性研究

在借鉴已有研究成果的基础上,以湛茂阳城市带18个县域单位为研究对象,通过利用综合交通可达性指数及交通区位优势度、县域内交通连通度和对外通达性三个分指数,全面分析湛江国际机场搬迁前后湛茂阳城市带各县级行政区的交通可达性空间格局特征。结果表明:湛江国际机场搬迁后,湛茂阳城市带综合交通可达性得到明显提升,较高可达性市县区由7个增加至10个;表现出更强的空间集聚性和空间自相关,并且形成以湛江各区、茂南区和江城区为中心,沿海连续形成可达性高值带状片区。对湛茂阳城市带县域尺度综合交通可达性进行研究能够为区域协调均衡发展提供更好的理论和实践指导。     

Optimization-based study of the location of park-and-ride facilities

Park-and-ride facilities are parking lots located on the periphery of cities to intercept car trips coming from the suburbs and diverting them to a transit system, thus playing a potentially important role in reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in urban areas. In this paper, we present a study carried out to shed light on where to install park-and-ride facilities in the city of Coimbra, central Portugal. Its main component is an optimization model which aims to determine the best possible locations for a given number of park-and-ride facilities under the objective of minimizing car use in the urban areas. The main result of the study is that the introduction of only three park-and-ride facilities could reduce car use in Coimbra's urban areas by 19%, an impact that would be very difficult to achieve through measures such as decreasing bus fares, increasing parking fees and/or increasing bus services.     

Assessing the employment agglomeration and social accessibility impacts of high speed rail in Eastern Australia

There is growing interest in establishing additional evidence, under the umbrella of the wider economy impacts of transport infrastructure projects, to support transport projects in general and public transport projects in particular that struggle to obtain benefit–cost ratios sufficient to gain the support of financial agencies. This paper focuses on one element of wider economy impacts, often referred to as effective economic (employment) density or employment agglomeration impacts, and another, less usually identified, social accessibility impact (SAI) which we refer to as effective social density, which in broad terms provide, correspondingly, evidence of the potential gains in work-related output (often referred to as productivity gains) and potential gains in non-work-related outputs. Both are associated with gains in individual and household benefit attributable to improved accessibility to services linked with populations and particular locations. The SAIs may capture some of the induced benefits in those jurisdictions where these are included routinely in benefit–cost analysis, and the methodology here is most appropriate to those settings where an existing calibrated demand curve may not be available. Using the proposed high speed rail (HSR) project between Sydney and Melbourne as the empirical setting, we identify economic agglomeration and social accessibility benefits for work and non-work related activity respectively. We find the former to be relatively small compared to the significant gains associated with non-work related travel activity, suggesting the greatest benefits associated with HSR, especially for those residents outside of the major metropolitan areas, will be non-work related travel activity.     

Remoteness and accessibility in the vulnerability analysis of regional road networks

This paper considers the development of a method for network vulnerability analysis which considers the socio-economic impacts of network degradation and seeks to determine the most critical locations in the network. The method compares the levels of remoteness (or its inverse, accessibility) of localities within the study region, on the basis of the impacts of degradation of the road network on a recognised accessibility/remoteness index that can be applied to each and every location within the region. It thus extends the earlier work on accessibility-based vulnerability analysis which was limited to assessment of impacts on selected nodes in a network. The new method allows study of impacts on both specified locations (which do not have to be represented as network nodes) and the region as a whole. The accessibility/remoteness index is defined so that an accessibility surface can be calculated for the region, and the volume under this surface provides an overall measure of accessibility. Changes in the volume under different network states thus reflect the overall impacts. The method is applied to a rural region in south east Australia.     

An investigation of passenger interchange and train standing time at LRT stations: (ii) Estimation of standing time

The standing-time of trains at urban rail stations is pertinent to determining the line capacity and fleet size. The assumption of uniform boarding and alighting leads to under-estimation of the standing time. It is shown that the train standing-time is related to the fraction of boarders and the maximum demand for boarding and alighting at a door. It is further shown that the probability distribution of passengers at a door depends on the platform entrance locations. A methodology that takes into account the above factors is proposed for estimating the train standing-time.     

Estimating light-rail transit peak-hour boarding based on accessibility at station and route levels in Wuhan,China

Promoting public transit is a well-recognized policy for sustainable urban transport development. Transit demand analysis proves to be a challenging task in fast growing cities, partially due to the lack of reliable data and applicable techniques for rapidly changing urban contexts. This paper presents an effort to meet the challenge by developing a framework to estimate peak-hour boarding at light-rail transit (LRT) stations. The core part of the framework is an accessibility-weighted ridership model that multiplies potential demand by integral LRT accessibility. Potential demand around LRT stations is generated by using a distance-decay function. The integral LRT accessibility is a route-level factor that indicates the degree of attractiveness to LRT travel for stations in an LRT corridor. A case study in Wuhan, China, shows that the proposed method produces results useful for improving transit demand analysis.     

Rail network accessibility and the demand for inter-urban rail travel

This paper reviews methods that have and can be used to forecast the effect of changes in accessibility to the rail network on the demand for inter-urban rail travel and of available evidence on rail accessibility elasticities. It reveals that relatively little research has been conducted in this area and that the forecasting procedures that could be used imply large variation in accessibility elasticities, which has not been empirically justified. Fresh empirical evidence on two related matters is reported. First, the neglected area of choice set composition is examined and the extent to which rail is considered to be a realistic alternative for inter-urban journeys and the contribution that accessibility to the rail network makes to this are analysed. Second, rail trip rate models are presented that not only contain estimates of accessibility elasticities and of the effects of a range of socio-economic variables on the demand for rail travel, but also that allow tests of the accessibility elasticity variation implied by many forecasting procedures to be conducted. It is found that this elasticity variation is not empirically supported. It is concluded that there is only limited scope for increasing rail demand through improvements in rail network accessibility.     

The effect of neighbourhood characteristics,accessibility, home–work location,and demographics on commuting distances

The goal of this paper is to better understand home-to-work travel distances throughout the Montréal Metropolitan region. A simultaneous equation modelling analysis is carried out to jointly explain commuter trip length and home–work location as a function of neighbourhood typologies, commuter socio-demographics and measures of job and worker accessibility. First, a factor and cluster analysis of urban form is performed over the entire region on a fine-scale grid pattern. The outcome of this analysis is the classification of typologies at both home and job locations. Different measures of accessibility and commuter socio-demographics are then incorporated into the analysis. Varied data sources including a detailed Montréal Origin–Destination Survey on over 30,000 home-to-work automobile trips are analyzed. Among other results, commuters that live and work in a different sub-region almost double the average trip distance and although socio-economic factors have a statistically significant correlation with commuter distance, these factors have a marginal effect. Interestingly, our results highlight the importance of urban form and job accessibility. Deciding on whether to live and work in the same sub-region was modelled as an endogenous binary random utility model; unobserved heterogeneities seem to be simultaneously influencing both the home–work location choice and trip-to-work distances. Our results underscore the importance of home–work location with respect to urban form and job accessibility. Hence, policies that support more dense and mixed land-use in suburban areas would not be enough to reduce commuter distances. These actions should be accompanied by other policy initiatives to discourage long car trips.     

A demand model for recreational travel

A model is developed to describe and to predict the patterns of regional recreational travel. The model is designed in such a manner to allow its calibration and use without the need to conduct extensive travel surveys in a large region. To allow its use for prediction, the model is based on a causal structure and attempts to derive recreational travel demand from behavioural variables. The main hypothesis of the model is that the amount of recreational travel a recreation area attracts is affected by the accessibility of this area to points of demand potential and by its attractiveness relative to the recreation areas.

The calibration is founded on actual data on recreational travel to national forests in California, U.S.A. It is found in the calibration that accessibility to demand potential is the single most important determinant of recreational travel attraction. A simple relationship is derived to relate travel to each national forest to the relative accessibility of the forest. The model is calibrated and statistically validated.

It is suggested that when constructing travel demand models simplicity be sought, even at the risk of the loss of some explanatory power. In the calibration of such models statistical significant is more important than the ability to reproduce observed patterns.     

Long-term planning for ring-radial urban rail transit networks

Extensive work exists on regular rail network planning. However, few studies exist on the planning and design of ring-radial rail transit systems. With more ring transit lines being planned and built in Asia, Europe and the America's, a detailed study on ring transit lines is timely. An analytical model to find the optimal number of radial lines in a city for any demand distribution is first introduced. Secondly, passenger route choice for different rail networks is analyzed, for a many-to-many Origin-Destination (OD) demand distribution, based on a total travel time cost per passenger basis. The routes considered are: (1) radial lines only; (2) ring line only or radial lines and ring line combined; or (3) direct access to a destination without using the rail system. Mathematica and Matlab are used to code the route choice model. A cost-benefit optimization model to identify the feasibility and optimality of a ring line is proposed. Unlike simulations and agent-based models, this model is shown to be easily transferable to many ring-radial transit networks. The City of Calgary is used as an example to illustrate the applicability of each model. The existing urban rail network and trip distribution are major influencing factors in judging the feasibility and optimal location of the ring line. This study shows the potential net benefit of introducing a ring line by assessing changes in passengers’ costs. The changes in passenger cost parameters, such as ride cost and access cost, are shown to greatly influence the feasibility of a ring line.     

Modal split and urban public transport management in an Eastern European country

When public transport is the main means of travel in urban areas, management and planning are easy and the main objective can be to minimise costs for the demand available, i.e. maximise profit. However when public transport faces competition from other modes of transport, and activities can be undertaken in a variety of locations, then the management and planning of public transport services is considerably more difficult.This paper examines a methodology for representing consumer behaviour when faced with alternative travel decisions, in order to identify the demand for public transport and to help operators adjust services and prices to maximise demand, when considering people's disposable income, the alternative modes and activity locations available. From this it is possible to devise criteria for maximising consumer surplus in a city, taking into account social benefits.     

Access to railway stations and its potential in increasing rail use

The propensity to travel by rail, and not, for example by car, can be considered to be a factor of the rail service offered, the access to it and the characteristics of the population served. Efforts to increase rail use usually focus on the rail service itself while the accessibility of the rail network receives less attention. In this context, the paper has two broad aims. First, to evaluate how important the ‘access-to-the-station’ part of a rail journey is to passengers in their overall satisfaction with the rail journey and second, to investigate the balance between characteristics of the service, the access to it and the population served in determining rail use in different parts of the rail network. The analysis is carried out for the Netherlands. To achieve the first aim, we use the Dutch Railways customer satisfaction survey and apply principal component analysis and derived importance techniques to assess the relative importance of accessibility in determining the overall satisfaction with the rail journey. For the second aim, we use regression analysis to explain, at the Dutch postcode level, the propensity to use rail. We find that satisfaction with the level and quality of the access to the station is an important dimension of the rail journey which influences the overall satisfaction from that journey and that the quality and level of accessibility is an important element in explaining rail use. The conclusion reached is that in many parts of the rail network improving and expanding access services to the railway station can substitute for improving and expanding the services provided on the rail network and that it is probably more cost efficient when the aim is to increase rail use. These parts of the network are mainly in the periphery where the current level of rail service is relatively low.     

Assessment of Cross‐Border Spillover Effects of National Transport Infrastructure Plans: An Accessibility Approach

Abstract

Traditional transport infrastructure assessment methodologies rarely include the full range of strategic benefits for the transportation system. One of these benefits is the contribution to cross‐border integration, critical for the European integration process. However, this is a key issue in strategic planning and decision‐making processes, as its inclusion may increase the probability of large‐scale transport infrastructure projects being funded. This paper presents a methodology for the measurement of the contribution of transport infrastructure plans to European integration. The methodology is based on the measurement of the improvement in network efficiency in cross‐border regions of neighbouring countries, via accessibility calculations in a Geographical Information System support. The methodology was tested by applying it to the ambitious road and rail network extensions included in the Spanish Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan (PEIT) 2005–2020. The results show significant and important network efficiency improvements of the PEIT outside the Spanish border. For the road mode, while the Spanish average accessibility improvement accounts for 2.6%, average improvements in cross‐border regions of France and Portugal are of 1.8%. And for the rail mode, the corresponding Spanish value is 34.5%, whereas in neighbouring regions it accounts for 20.2%. These results stress the significant importance of this strategic benefit and the consequent need for its inclusion in strategic planning processes. Finally, the paper identifies the potential of the methodology when applied at different administrative levels, such as the local or state levels.     

What determines rail transit passenger volume? Implications for transit oriented development planning

Transit oriented development (TOD) has been an important topic for urban transportation planning research and practice. This paper is aimed at empirically examining the effect of rail transit station-based TOD on daily station passenger volume. Using integrated circuit (IC) card data on metro passenger volumes and cellular signaling data on the spatial distribution of human activities in Shanghai, the research identifies variations in ridership among rail transit stations. Then, regression analysis is performed using passenger volume in each station as the dependent variable. Explanatory variables include station area employment and population, residents’ commuting distances, metro network accessibility, status as interchange station, and coupling with commercial activity centers. The main findings are: (1) Passenger volume is positively associated with employment density and residents’ commuting distance around station; (2) stations with earlier opening dates and serving as transfer nodes tend to have positive association with passenger volumes; (3) metro stations better integrated with nearby commercial development tend to have larger passenger volumes. Several implications are drawn for TOD planning: (1) TOD planning should be integrated with rail transit network planning; (2) location of metro stations should be coupled with commercial development; (3) high employment densities should be especially encouraged as a key TOD feature; and (4) interchange stations should be more strategically positioned in the planning for rail transit network.     

Electric vehicle park-charge-ride programs: A planning framework and case study in Chicago

In suburban areas, combining the use of electric vehicles (EV) and transit systems in an EV Park-Charge-Ride (PCR) approach can potentially help improve transit accessibility, facilitate EV charging and adoption, and reduce the need for long-distance driving and ensuing impacts. Despite the anticipated growth of EV adoption and charging demand, PCR programs are limited. With a focus on multi-modal trips, this study proposes a generic planning process that integrates EV infrastructure development with transit systems, develops a systematic assessment approach to fostering the PCR adoption, and illustrates a case implementation in Chicago. Specifically, this study develops a Suitability Index (SI) for EV charging locations at parking spots that are suitable for both EV charging and transit connections. SI can be customized for short-term and long-term planning scenarios. SI values are derived in Chicago as an example for (1) commuter rail stations (for work trips), and (2) shopping centers near transit stops as potential opportunities for additional weekday parking and EV charging (for multi-purpose trips/MPT). Furthermore, carbon emissions and vehicle miles travelled (VMT) across various travel modes and trip scenarios (i.e., work trips and MPT) are calculated. Compared to the baseline of driving a conventional vehicle, this study found that an EV PCR commuter can reduce up to 87% of personal VMT and 52% of carbon emissions. A more active role of the public sector in the PCR program development is recommended.     

Park and ride facilities on light rail transit systems

There is now considerable interest in exploring the idea of strategic park and ride as a means of promoting the use of rail transit and encouraging a transfer of commuters from car to public transport. This is especially evident in North America, where extensive park and ride facilities have been installed on a number of light and heavy urban rail systems. There is a general consensus about the most suitable types of location for facilities, but less agreement on the development of a reliable method of forecasting demand and also on the required size of sites. Experience in practice indicates that although park and ride is attractive to commuters, schemes do not generally result in lasting reductions in highway congestion, due to rising car ownership and use and the phenomenon of generated traffic.Abbreviations Centro West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive - K&R Kiss and ride - LRT Light Rail Transit - PT Public Transport - RT Rapid Transit - TRRL Transport & Road Research Laboratory, UK