Modeling the interaction between buses,passengers and cars on a bus route using a multi-agent system

This paper models part of a public transport network (PTN), specifically, a bus route, as a small-size multi-agent system (MAS). The proposed approach is applied to a case study considering a ‘real world’ bus line within the PTN in Auckland, New Zealand. The MAS-based analysis uses modeling and simulation to examine the characteristics of the observed system – autonomous agents interacting with one another – under different scenarios, considering bus capacity and frequency of service for existing and projected public transport (PT) demand. A simulation model of a bus route is developed, calibrated and validated. Several results are attained, such as when the PT passenger load is not close to bus capacity, this load has no effect on average passenger waiting time at bus stops. The model proposed can be useful to practitioners as a tool to model the interaction between buses and other agents.     

Predicting disruptions and their passenger delay impacts for public transport stops

Disruptions in public transport can have major implications for passengers and service providers. Our study objective is to develop a generic approach to predict how often different disruption types occur at different stations of a public transport network, and to predict the impact related to these disruptions as measured in terms of passenger delays. We propose a supervised learning approach to perform these predictions, as this allows for predictions for individual stations for each time period, without the requirement of having sufficient empirical disruption observations available for each location and time period. This approach also enables a fast prediction of disruption impacts for a large number of disruption instances, hence addressing the computational challenges that rise when typical public transport assignment or simulation models would be used for real-world public transport networks. To improve transferability of our study results, we cluster stations based on their contribution to network vulnerability using unsupervised learning. This supports public transport agencies to apply the appropriate type of measure aimed to reduce disruptions or to mitigate disruption impacts for each station type. Applied to the Washington metro network, we predict a yearly passenger delay of 5.9 million hours for the total metro network. Based on the clustering, five different types of station are distinguished. Stations with high train frequencies and high passenger volumes located at central trunk sections of the network show to be most critical, along with start/terminal and transfer stations. Intermediate stations located at branches of a line are least critical.

     

Managing with declining resources

Urban public transport has had broad political appeal and escalating financial support since the late 1960s. The preference has been for public ownership and operation of services with only limited private sector involvement in the provision of services in a highly regulated environment. The financial standing of public transport coupled with the likelihood of a sustained period of fiscal restraint, perhaps even a decline in available resources, has created an imperative for change. This paper argues that broad‐based acknowledgment of the financial realities, clear definition of quantifiable objectives and increased authority and control for public transport management is required if public transport agencies are to meet the challenge. A new balance between service, ridership and revenue is required. Managing with declining resources will require a financial planning approach, separation of policy and planning from operations, removal of restrictions on user choice and operator competition and increased involvement of the private sector. Substantial changes in internal organization, procedures and structures and a cost‐effectiveness orientation will be necessary.     

Changing roles and new perspectives: towards market orientation in public transport

The general international trend of increasingly subjecting the public transport industry to market principles has been concretized via various developments in many countries. In line with this trend, there is an increased interest in public procurement processes as a model for public service delivery. Sweden is one of the leading countries where public procurement is the prevailing model for delivering public services. In accordance with the general trend, efforts have been made to make Sweden’s public transport more sensitive to passenger needs, and to stimulate a competitive public transport system. For instance, a new Act, which came into effect on 1 January 2012, is aimed at fostering a customer-centric public transport system, with increased role clarity for the public transport actors. Since market-oriented strategies and public procurement processes are both receiving increased interest from the public transport industry, the market orientation of both public authorities and service providers in Sweden’s public transport has been studied. Since market orientation is a process of change, a longitudinal approach was whereby the first study was conducted in the spring of 2011 and the second in the spring of 2014. All of Sweden’s public transport authorities and the service providers that they stated as their major contract holders were asked to participate. In total, 184 respondents participated in the studies. The findings show that the industry as a whole has increased its organizational and inter-organizational efforts to both acquire knowledge of and respond to passenger needs. In particular, the public service providers have increased their involvement in market-oriented activities.     

Accessibility matters: Exploring the determinants of public transport mode share across income groups in Canadian cities

Planning for accessibility is increasingly considered in the development of equitable plans by transport agencies and it has also been shown to exert a positive influence on public transport use. However, this influence has not been examined across income groups and in different geographic regions of varying sizes. The present study measures the relationship between accessibility and mode choice for low- and higher-income groups in eleven Canadian metropolitan regions. Our results show that the impact of accessibility on public transport mode share is stronger and non-linear for the low-income group especially in the largest metropolitan areas, where increasing accessibility past a certain optimal value will lead to a decrease in public transport mode share. However, this point occurs at the 80th percentile of existing accessibility, so improvements in mode share are nonetheless expected with improved accessibility in most areas within these regions. Moreover, in regions where an optimal value is not readily observed, improved accessibility throughout the region would lead to increased uptake of public transport for both the higher- and to a greater extent, the low-income group. Findings from this paper can be of value to transport professionals working towards meeting ridership goals around the world as comparisons between groups and across regions highlight the variation in the impacts of accessibility on mode share.     

小件快运中的最短运输时间问题

小件快运经过多年的发展,已经成为公路客运一个新的经济增长点,越来越多的公路客运企业和汽车客运站加入到经营小件快运的行列,小件快运也逐渐由单个企业的独立运营发展到多个企业联合的网络化运营。对中转运输中多条运输线路进行分析,得到最短运输时间线路,从而提高运输效率。     

A Review of the Evolution of Shared (Street) Space Concepts in Urban Environments

Abstract

This paper aims to clearly establish the origin and evolution of the shared space concept from a New Zealand perspective by reviewing the literature in the disciplines of both urban design and transportation engineering. The review process involves investigating the use and function of a public road space in the context of the changing of public expectations and how this can relate to a number of interconnected street design approaches (e.g. traffic calming and self-explaining roads (SERs)). These approaches have been used to minimise the influence of motor vehicles since the beginning of the automobile era. The shared space concept, when applied in public road environments in activity centres, has increasingly been embraced by urban planners, transportation engineers and regulatory agencies. A shared space diverges from a conventional road where all road users are encouraged to legitimately occupy the same road space with little physical separation. To achieve this in a safe and efficient manner, the design aims to reduce the dominance of the motor vehicle by promoting pedestrian and cycling activity and utilising the road space as a ‘place’ in addition to its ‘transport’ mobility and access purposes. Given the fundamental conceptual differentiation between a traffic-calmed street and a shared space, the paper argues that there are certain design elements, constituting a shared space, and without them, it would be difficult for a public street to function as a genuine shared space for all road users.     

Transport in developing and emerging nations

One perspective on the allocation of transport investments by public authorities is offered by the so‐called ‘pork barrel’ model, whereby politicians and political parties allocate public investment spatially in such a way as to gain electoral support from localities so benefited. The paper introduces this model and discusses its attractions and problems in the case of the transport sector. A review of the modest number of published examples of this approach is offered before a detailed case study considers the case of railway investment in Nelson, New Zealand.     

广西农村客运公交化运营的思路与对策

文章针对广西农村客运现状,阐述了农村客运发展存在的问题,分析了农村客运公交化的必要性,并提出了实行农村客运公交化运营的思路与对策。     

钦州市城乡公交客运一体化初探

文章阐述了钦州市城乡公交客运发展现状及问题,分析了钦州市城乡公交客运一体化的必要性和可行性,提出了实现城乡公交客运一体化的具体措施。     

A comparative analysis of US toll policy

In the US, there is a long tradition of toll roads, beginning with the Lancaster Turnpike that was built at the end of the 18th century connecting Philadelphia and Lancaster. There are currently more than 300 toll facilities in the US, which is probably the largest number of toll facilities in the world. These facilities represent a wide range of conditions, from hypercongested facilities in large metropolitan areas such as New York City to toll highways in rural areas. The toll structures are equally diverse, ranging from multi-tier price structures with frequent user, carpool, and time of day discounts; to simpler structures in which the only differentiation is made on the basis of the number of axles per vehicle. The toll rates are typically set by the agencies that operate or own the toll facilities. The rules or formulas by which these tolls are determined are not generally available to the public, though it is safe to say that toll decisions are made taking into account technical considerations, as well as the all important criterion of political acceptability. However, data on toll rates and how they change by vehicle types and by some other attributes are readily available.The overall objective of this paper is to analyze the toll data from various facilities across the US to gain insight into the overall factors affecting the tolls. A more specific objective is to assess—though in a rather approximate fashion—if the tolls by vehicle type, relative to each other, are appropriate and consistent with economic theory. This is achieved by comparing tolls to approximate indicators of road space consumption and pavement deterioration. The literature review confirmed that this is the first time such research has been conducted which is an important first step toward an analysis of the efficiency of current toll policies.The analyses in this paper are based on a random sample of all toll facilities across the US. The toll dataset, which include toll rates for passenger cars, busses, and three different truck types, is assembled mainly from the available information on the web sites of various toll agencies. After cleaning the data, the authors used econometric modeling to estimate a set of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models that express tolls as functions of independent variables. Three families of models were estimated: linear models, models based on expansions of Taylor series, and models based on piece-wise linear approximations to non-linear effects. The resulting models were analyzed to identify the salient features of current toll policies towards different vehicle types.     

Do the organizational forms affect passenger satisfaction? Evidence from Chinese public transport service

This paper presents a discussion on the relationship between organizational forms (including the ownership structure and the contractual practices) and passenger satisfaction of Chinese public transport service. To test this proposition, an original rich data set covering 4702 respondents and 58 public transport operators of 13 cities for the period 2013–2014 is used. We firstly estimate the passenger satisfaction based on customer satisfaction theory and PLS-SEM, and then take into consideration the mixed logit model to assess the effect between them. Conclusions drawn from the study are summarized as follows: ① The effect of organizational forms on the passenger satisfaction of public transport service is confirmed. ② Public transport services franchised to public ownership offer higher passenger satisfaction than those franchised to private ownership and mixed ownership. ③ Public transport services regulated by the management contracts incite more passenger satisfaction than those regulated by net cost contracts and gross cost contracts.     

Assessing the financial and social costs of public transport in differing operating environments and with endogenous demand

This paper uses a previously developed spreadsheet cost model which simulates public transport modes operated on a 12-km route to analyse the total costs of different passenger demand levels. The previous cost model was a very powerful tool to estimate the social and operator costs for different public transport technologies. However, as the model is strategic, some basic assumptions were made which are relaxed in this paper. First, the speed-flow equation in the original spreadsheet model assumes that speed decreases according to the ratio of the current frequency and the lane capacity which is based on the safety headway without taking into account passenger boardings. However, this may vary in different operating environments. Therefore, the speed-flow equation is improved by moving from a linear equation to a piecewise equation that considers the features of different operating environments. Second, the model assumes that supply is sufficient to meet demand. However, when the level of demand is high for the lower-capacity public transport technologies, passengers may find the incoming vehicle full and therefore, they have to wait more than one service interval. This paper applies queuing theory to investigate the probability of having to wait longer than the expected service headways which will affect the average passenger waiting time. The extra waiting time for each passenger is calculated and applied in the spreadsheet cost model. Third, the original model assumed that demand was externally fixed (exogenous). To evaluate the differences after applying these equations, endogenous demand rather than exogenous demand will be investigated by using the elasticities for passenger waiting time and journey time.     

Inferring patterns in the multi-week activity sequences of public transport users

The public transport networks of dense cities such as London serve passengers with widely different travel patterns. In line with the diverse lives of urban dwellers, activities and journeys are combined within days and across days in diverse sequences. From personalized customer information, to improved travel demand models, understanding this type of heterogeneity among transit users is relevant to a number of applications core to public transport agencies’ function. In this study, passenger heterogeneity is investigated based on a longitudinal representation of each user’s multi-week activity sequence derived from smart card data. We propose a methodology leveraging this representation to identify clusters of users with similar activity sequence structure. The methodology is applied to a large sample (n = 33,026) from London’s public transport network, in which each passenger is represented by a continuous 4-week activity sequence. The application reveals 11 clusters, each characterized by a distinct sequence structure. Socio-demographic information available for a small sample of users (n = 1973) is combined to smart card transactions to analyze associations between the identified patterns and demographic attributes including passenger age, occupation, household composition and income, and vehicle ownership. The analysis reveals that significant connections exist between the demographic attributes of users and activity patterns identified exclusively from fare transactions.     

Validation of automatic passenger counting: introducing the t-test-induced equivalence test

Transportation - Automatic passenger counting (APC) in public transport has been introduced in the 1970s and has been rapidly emerging in recent years. Still, real-world applications continue to...     

Transport innovation and passenger needs — changing perspectives on the role of Dial‐a‐Ride systems

The changing role of Dial‐a‐Ride systems in the period 1969 to 1985 is reviewed as a case study in transport innovation. The first phase Dial‐a‐Ride systems were conceived and planned as transport services to complement and even replace conventional transit. However, their failure to attract any sizeable part of the public transport market combined with their high operating costs led to their demise in the mid‐1970s, to be superseded by the second phase Dial‐a‐Ride systems as paratransit services to the elderly and handicapped. These later systems were often initiated by community‐based transport agencies which have demonstrated their ability as transport innovators in meeting passenger needs. It is suggested that other transport services could learn valuable lessons from the experiences of community Dial‐a‐Ride, and that Dial‐a‐Ride itself will prove historically to be an important transitional agent in the reorganization of passenger transport services in the post‐deregulation environment of the late 1980s and 1990s.     

Optimal combinations of selected tactics for public-transport transfer synchronization

Handling efficiently and effectively real-time vehicle control is of major concern of public transport (PT) operators. One related problem is on how to reduce the uncertainty of simultaneous arrivals of two or more vehicles at a transfer point. Improper or lack of certain control actions leads to have missed transfers, one of the undesirable features of the PT service. Missed transfers result in increase of passenger waiting and travel times, and of passenger frustration. This work focuses on reducing the uncertainty of missed transfers by the use of control tactics in real-time operation. The developed model improves the PT service performance by optimally increasing the number of direct transfers and reducing the total passenger travel time. This model consists of two policies built upon a combination of two tactics: holding and skip-stop/segment, where a segment is a group of stops. The implementation of the concept is performed in two steps: optimization and simulation. The optimization searches for the best combination of operational tactics. The simulation serves as a validation of the optimal results under a stochastic framework. A case in Auckland, New Zealand is used. The results show that by applying the holding-skip stop, and holding-skip segment tactics the number of direct transfers are increased by about 100% and 150%, and the total passenger travel time is reduced by 2.14% and 4.1%, respectively, compared with the no-tactic scenario. The holding-skip segment tactic results with 47% more direct transfers than the holding-skip stop tactic for short headway operation.     

Choosing Public Transport—Incorporating Richer Behavioural Elements in Modal Choice Models

The development of behaviourally richer representations of the role of well-established and increasingly important influences on modal choice, such as trip time reliability and accounting for risk attitude and process rules, has moved forward at a fast pace in the context of automobile travel. In the public transport setting, such contributions have, with rare exception, not been considered. In this paper, we discuss and empirically illustrate the merits of advanced modelling developments aimed at improving our understanding of public transport choice, namely the inclusion of reliability in extended expected utility theoretic forms, to recognize risk attitude and perceptual conditioning, the consideration of passenger crowding and its inclusion in linear additive models, and the role of multiple heuristics in representing attribute processing as a way of conditioning modal choice. We illustrate the mechanics of introducing these behaviourally appealing extensions using a modal choice data set collected in Sydney.     

Accounting for emissions in the measurement of transit agency efficiency: A directional distance function approach

This paper uses a directional distance function approach to demonstrate the importance of considering a transit agency’s goal of reducing vehicular emissions as well as production of passenger or vehicle-miles, when measuring agency efficiency. This is especially critical given the increased emphasis policymakers may place on efficiency in the allocation of scarce public resources. The analysis includes 43 single mode US bus transit agencies for the year 2000. Results show only five agencies performing efficiently when emission abatement is not included in the analysis, but 22 firms are identified as efficient once emission abatement is considered. Consistent with previous studies, public agencies are found to be less efficient than private agencies, regardless of the efficiency measure used.     

Passenger route guidance system for multi‐modal transit networks

In many public transport oriented cities in the world, especially Asian cities, the public transport system has been developed extensively, to the extent that it has become increasingly difficult to navigate. Although inter‐modal transfers are common and often necessary, a complete set of the routes across transport modes is generally not presented in a form that is accessible to travelers, as each operator would only publish its own routes. Moreover, the common nonlinear fare tables together with inter‐modal fare discounts pose challenges to travelers in deciding their best routes. This study develops a multi‐modal passenger route guidance system, called eFinder, to aid travelers with their combined mode‐route choices. We discuss the architecture and features of this system in this study. This system forms a platform for disseminating public transit information and should complement further development and use of the public transport network by enabling travelers to make informed choices.