A new street connectivity indicator to predict performance for feeder transit services

This paper defines a novel street Connectivity Indicator (C.I.) to predict transit performance by identifying the role that street network connectivity plays in influencing the service quality of demand responsive feeder transit services. This new C.I. definition is dependent upon the expected shortest path between any two nodes in the network, includes spatial features and transit demand distribution information and is easy to calculate for any given service area. Simulation analyses over a range of networks have been conducted to validate the new definition. Results show a desirable monotonic relationship between transit performance and the proposed C.I., whose values are directly proportional and therefore good predictors of the transit performance, outperforming other available indicators, typically used by planners.     

Efficiency measurement in public transport: Are findings specification sensitive?

The need to measure transit system performance along with its various dimensions such as efficiency and effectiveness has led to the development of a wide array of approaches and vast literature. However, depending upon the specific approach used to examine performance, different conclusions are oftentimes reached. Using data from 15 European transit systems for a ten year time period (1990-2000), this paper discusses three important transit performance questions; (i) Do different efficiency assessment methodologies produce similar results? (ii) How are the two basic dimensions of transit performance, namely efficiency and effectiveness, related? and (iii) Are findings regarding organizational regimes (public operations, contracting and so on) sensitive to the methodological specifications employed? Results clearly indicate that efficiency scores and associated recommendations are sensitive to the models used, while efficiency and effectiveness are - albeit weakly - negatively related; these two findings can have far reaching policy implications.     

Performance indicators for transit management

Transit performance can be evaluated through quantitative indicators. As the provision of efficient and effective transit service are appropriate goals to be encouraged by federal and state governments, these goals are used to develop performance indicators.Three efficiency and four effectiveness indicators are described, together with two overall indicators. These nine indicators are analyzed for comparability utilizing operating and financial data collected from public transit agencies in California.Performance indicators selected for this study should not be viewed as final. Twenty-one performance indicators proposed by previous studies were reviewed. Theoretical considerations and unavailability or unreliability of data caused omission of several useful measures like passenger-miles. Circumstances such as improved data, emphasis upon goals other than efficiency and effectiveness, and local conditions might warrant the inclusion of indicators deleted from this research.This paper is based on work conducted for the Urban Mass Transportation Administration under University Research and Training Grant CA-11-0014, Development of Performance Indicators for Transit. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the University of California or the United States Government. We are indebted to John Feren for assistance with the statistical processing and data gathering.     

A test of inter-modal performance measures for transit investment decisions

Choices among alternative transit capital investments are often complex and politically controversial. There is renewed interest in the use of performance indicators to assist in making rational and defensible choices for the investment of public funds. To improve the evaluation of rail and bus performance and provide more useful information for transit investment decision-makers, it is important to use performance indicators that fairly and efficiently compare different transit modes. This paper proposes a set of inter-modal performance indicators in which service input, service output, and service consumption are measured by total cost, revenue capacity miles/hours, and unlinked passenger trips/miles respectively based on economic principles and evaluation objectives. The proposed improvements involve the inclusion of capital as well as operating costs in such comparisons, and the recognition of the widely varying capacities of transit vehicles for seated and standing passengers. Two California cases, the Los Angeles – Long Beach Corridor and the Market/Judah Corridor in San Francisco, are used for testing their usefulness in the evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of rail and bus services. The results show substantial differences between performance indicators in current use and those proposed in this study. The enhanced inter-modal performance indicators are more appropriate for comparing the efficiency and effectiveness of different modes or a combination of transit modes at the corridor and system levels where most major investment decisions are made. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Procurement methods for automated guideway transit systems

Procurement of an Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) system is a relatively new process for many procuring agencies worldwide. Outside of large airports, no single transit market sector has enough experience to establish well proven procurement methodologies for innovative transit technologies. Several methods, however, have emerged recently which, together with more conventional approaches, make the decision making process quite complex. The objective of this article is to review currently used and recently considered procurement methods and recommend a methodology for their selection depending on specific project requirements.     

Transit scheduling

This paper provides an overview of the transit operational planning process with an emphasis on certain aspects of new methodologies in scheduling. The transit scheduling system usually consists of three interelated components: (1) creation of timetables; (2) scheduling vehicles to trips; and (3) assignment of drivers. These three components are described, but with a focus on the first component because of its importance from the user's perspective. The design of a transit timetable is discussed from both a practical and an analytical viewpoint. A methodology is presented on the construction of alternative computerized public timetables, based on procedures that improve the correspondence of vehicle departure times with passenger demand. The vehicle scheduling procedure is viewed through the minimization of the number of vehicles required to carry out a fixed or variable timetable. Finally, different approaches to the crew assignment component are briefly discussed. The overview and methodologies presented in the paper suggest that most scheduling tasks can be performed automatically or in a conversational man-computer mode. The adoption of new scheduling procedures will undoubtedly increase the efficiency of each of the three components of the transit scheduling system.     

A methodology for choosing between fixed‐route and flex‐route policies for transit services

Flex‐route transit brings together the low cost operability of fixed‐route transit with the flexibility of demand responsive transit, and in recent years, it has become the most popular type of flexible transit service. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to help planners make better decisions regarding the choice between a conventional fixed‐route and a flex‐route policy for a specific transit system with a varying passenger demand. A service quality function is developed to measure the performance of transit systems, and analytical modeling and simulations are used to reproduce transit operation under the two policies. To be closer to reality, two criteria are proposed depending on the processing of rejected requests in the assessment of the service quality function for flex‐route services. In various scenarios, critical demand densities, which represent the switching points between the two competing policies, are derived in a real‐world transit service according to the two criteria. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transit performance evaluation in the U.S.A.

Performance of transit agencies in the United States improved during the 1980s. At the beginning of the decade, Americans had become disenchanted with transit; legislation was passed that required agencies to report performance and accept regular audits. Theory underlying these policies is examined in four components: dimensions for policy objectives, indicators, information systems and incentives. Three programs are examined: federal triennial reviews that monitor compliance with planning and grant requirements, California performance audits that analyze goals and track performance on five indicators and the Los Angeles program that encourages improvement by offering incentive payments for better-than-average performance. The California audits have been the most successful.     

Incorporating sustainability assessment in transportation planning: an urban transportation vehicle-based approach

Environmental assessments are on the critical path for the development of land, infrastructure and transportation systems. These assessments are based on planning methods which, in turn, are subject to continuous enhancement. The substantial impacts of transportation on environment, society and economy strongly urge the incorporation of sustainability into transportation planning. Two major developments that enhance transportation sustainability are new fuels and vehicle power systems. Traditional planning ignores technology including the large differences among conventional, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles and buses. The introduction of alternative fuel vehicles is likely to change the traditional transportation planning process because different characteristics need to be taken into account. In this study a sustainability framework is developed that enables assessment of transportation vehicle characteristics. Identified indicators are grouped in five sustainability dimensions (Environment, Technology, Energy, Economy and Users). Our methodology joins life cycle impacts and a set of quantified indicators to assess the sustainability performance of seven popular light-duty vehicles and two types of transit buses. Bus Rapid Transit receives the highest sustainability index and the pickup truck the lowest. Hybrid electric vehicles are found to have the highest sustainability index among all other passenger vehicles. A sensitivity analysis shows the proposed sustainability dimensions produce robust sustainability assessment for several weighting scenarios. The results are both technology and policy sensitive, thus useful for both short- and long-term planning.     

Subsidy and public transit performance: A factor analytic approach

The need to measure and evaluate transit system performance has led to the development of numerous performance indicators. However, depending upon the indicator, we oftentimes reach different conclusions regarding transit system performance. The research reported in this paper uses factor analytic methods to generate a set of underlying attributes (factors) that capture the performance of public transit systems in Indiana. Similar to what is reported in the literature, this study finds three attributes that best describe transit system performance: efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance. Based upon systemsÕ factor scores, the study finds that systems scoring highly on one attribute generally perform well on the remaining attributes. Further, there is an inverse relationship between system performance and subsidies, a finding that supports performance based subsidy allocations.     

Jointly optimizing cost, service, and environmental performance in demand-responsive transit scheduling

In certain fleet systems, the environmental impacts of operation are, to some extent, a controllable function of vehicle routing and scheduling decisions. However, little prior work has considered environmental impacts in fleet vehicle routing and scheduling optimization, in particular, where the impacts were assessed systematically utilizing life-cycle impact assessment methodologies such as those described by the Society of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Here a methodology is presented for the joint optimization of cost, service, and life-cycle environmental consequences in vehicle routing and scheduling, which we develop for a demand-responsive (paratransit or dial-a-ride) transit system. We demonstrate through simulation that, as a result of our methodology, it is possible to reduce environmental impacts substantially, while increasing operating costs and service delays only slightly.     

Planning of integrated transit network for bus and LRT

An integrated approach is suggested for the planning and evaluation of mass transport systems which includes a bus network and LRT/RTS in urban areas. This approach involves a simplified procedure for determining mass transit demand, bus route network generation and evaluation, light or rapid transit corridor identification and its patronage determination in the presence of bus networks. Scheduling of a mass transportation system based on marginal ridership concept is also suggested for a given fleet size. All the three major components (demand estimation, route network generation and scheduling) iterate and interact each other with a feedback mechanism for the desired optimal solution in terms of performance indicators. Necessary interactive software packages for all the above subsystems have been developed.     

“Comparing guideway transit implementation plans,including the impact on road traffic”

A methodology for comparing phased implementation plans for a new fixed guideway transit system in an urban area is presented. Four assumptions are made: (1) the guideway system replaces existing or planned bus service, (2) superior service on the new system results in increased ridership when compared to buses; (3) presence of the guideway facility redirects outward urban growth resulting in additional ridership, and (4) conversely, the absence of any action on the new guideway facility reinforces a diffuse urban growth pattern that creates an irreversible loss of transit ridership. The economic comparision of alternative plans includes total as well as “relative” inflation of principal cost components. A key feature of the proposed methodology is including in the comparisons the costs of private automobile mileage that could have been replaced by transit. These costs are expressed as “fuel” and “all other” automobile costs; favorable transit system implementation schedules can then be identified as a function of parametrically assumed values for these two unit costs. A hypothetical example demonstrates the proposed method.     

Transit-network design methodology for actual-size road networks

The main purpose of this study is to design a transit network of routes for handling actual-size road networks. This transit-network design problem is known to be complex and cumbersome. Thus, a heuristic methodology is proposed, taking into account the major concerns of transit authorities such as budget constraints, level-of-service standards and the attractiveness of the transit routes. In addition, this approach considers other important aspects of the problem including categorization of stops, multiclass of transit vehicles, hierarchy planning, system capacity (which has been largely ignored in past studies) and the integration between route-design and frequency-setting analyses. The process developed starts with the construction of a set of potential stops using a clustering concept. Then, by the use of Newton gravity theory and a special shortest-path procedure, a set of candidate routes is formed, categorized by hierarchy (mass, feeder, local routes). In the last step of the process a metaheuristic search engine is launched over the candidate routes, incorporating budgetary constraints, until a good solution is found. The algorithm was tested on the actual-size transit network of the city of Winnipeg; the results show that under the same conditions (budget and constraints) the proposed set of routes resulted in a reduction of 14% of total travel time compared to the existing transit network. In addition the methodology developed is compared favorably with other studies using the transit network of Mandl benchmark. The generality of the methodology was tested on the recent real dataset (pertaining to the year 2010) of the larger city of Chicago, in which a more efficient and optimized scheme was proposed for the existing rail system.     

Bus running time prediction using a statistical pattern recognition technique

Abstract

Given that real-time bus arrival information is viewed positively by passengers of public transit, it is useful to enhance the methodological basis for improving predictions. Specifically, data captured and communicated by intelligent systems are to be supplemented by reliable predictive travel time. This paper reports a model for real-time prediction of urban bus running time that is based on statistical pattern recognition technique, namely locally weighted scatter smoothing. Given a pattern that characterizes the conditions for which bus running time is being predicted, the trained model automatically searches through the historical patterns which are the most similar to the current pattern and on that basis, the prediction is made. For training and testing of the methodology, data retrieved from the automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter systems of OC Transpo (Ottawa, Canada) were used. A comparison with other methodologies shows enhanced predictive capability.     

The net incidence of transit subsidies: a case study

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the net incidence of government subsidies to a transit system (i.e., the net impact of who pays and who benefits from transit subsidies). Rather than considering the U.S. transit subsidy program in the aggregate, the net incidence of subsidies to a particular transit system — Tidewater Regional Transit (TRT) — is analyzed. The paper concludes that the net incidence of the TRT subsidy program is progressive. Furthermore, the paper provides a methodology that can be used for investigating the net incidence of government subsidies to other transit systems.     

Emissions of demand responsive services as an alternative to conventional transit systems

The environmental performance of public transport plays a key role in improving air quality in urban areas. An important way of improving existing transit services is to use innovative propulsive systems; however, this needs considerable financial resources that are not always available. Here we assess how the organizational form of the transit system may impact the environment relying on a new methodology that permits comparisons in terms of distance traveled between a traditional fixed-route and a demand responsive transit service. We apply an emission model to find the least polluting transit system under a broad range of scenarios with different road networks, service quality levels and demand densities. Results indicate that demand responsive transit services minimize emissions for high quality service level and low demand density scenarios. Furthermore, the possibility of employing smaller vans with lower emission factors guarantees additional substantial benefits in terms of atmospheric pollution for demand responsive transit services, thereby giving them a competitive advantage in virtually every case.     

Performance indicator analysis: A management tool for the improvement of bus transit operation in Bangkok

This paper intends to demonstrate that the performance indicator analysis technique can be successfully used as a diagnostic tool to identify operational inefficiency and ineffectiveness at the route level of transit operation. The technique has been applied on 14 bus routes of Bangkok Mass Transit Authority to reveal the inter-route differences in operational efficiency and effectiveness. Twenty performance indicators relating to costs of services, fuel consumption, staff ratio, crew productivity, fleet utilization, service output per bus, daily revenues, etc., were selected to represent the resource efficiency, resource effectiveness and service effectiveness of the bus system. Results of the analyses revealed that considerable variations existed across the routes against many of these 20 selected indicators. These included variations in terms of labor and capacity utilization, maintenance expenditure, etc., many of which can be improved through suitable managerial measures. Based on these findings, specific recommendations have been made for improvement in the deficient areas that are considered to be within the operator domain. These indicators also provide a basis for comparison over time, with other operators and standards. A ranking scale was also developed to determine the over all attractiveness of the routes.     

Investigating transit production and performance: a programming approach

Although efficiency and productivity are closely related issues, they have been generally examined separately in the transit literature. Using an extensive panel data set, this analysis extends prior research in two directions. First, efficiency rankings and efficient subsets of transit systems are obtained through data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming based methodology. Second, based on the results of the DEA analysis, globally efficient frontier production functions, in the context of transit operations in the United States, are built. The results indicate that when jointly considered, there is an improvement on both the theoretical and empirical aspects of examining efficiency and production in transit systems. Further, the results indicate that efficiency and returns to scale findings differ substantially depending on the evaluation methodology used.     

Polycentricity and transit service

This paper focuses on the two related issues of employment distribution and access to transit services. Using the 2001 census tract level economic activities and transit routes within the county, a number of analyses were performed to determine the location of major employment centers in Los Angeles County and how these localities may be understood within the context of a transit service operation in a polycentric metropolitan area. The identified economic subcenters contain one-third of the county employment and its firms, collectively. While these economic nodes are networked by the existing bus routes, the connection between employees and their place of work appears to be inadequate. This has created a less than optimal condition in many sections of the metropolitan area. This paper suggests methodologies for encountering this shortcoming.