The taxi's role in urban America: Today and tomorrow

Changes in the economic and demographic characteristics of US cities over the past two decades have modified but have not diminished the need for extensive public transportation service in these areas. The vast bulk of trips to work, to shop, and for most other purposes within large American cities are still made by residents of those cities, a significant portion of whom do not own or have access to an automobile. Expensive and far-ranging programs to enhance surburban commutation to the central city by means of rail rapid transit do little to meet the needs of those who still must rely upon local, extensive service within the city.One form of public transport — the taxicab — offers the quality and flexibility of service which even those of limited means find well worth the price. As a consequence, fleet taxicabs serve almost 40 percent more passengers than all US rapid transit systems and about 60 percent as many passengers as all bus transit systems. Removal of archaic and restrictive regulations governing the number and use of taxicabs in major US cities would promote more effective and widespread use of this, the only form of public transit that still operates — at a profit — without public subsidy.     

Secrets of success: assessing the large increases in transit ridership achieved by Houston and San Diego transit providers

This paper summarizes and updates the findings from an earlier study by the same authors of transit systems in Houston (all bus) and San Diego (bus and light rail). Both systems achieved unusually large increases in transit ridership during a period in which most transit systems in other metropolitan areas were experiencing large losses. Based on ridership models estimated using cross section and time series data, the paper quantifies the relative contributions of policy variables and factors beyond the control of transit operators on ridership growth. It is found that large ridership increases in both areas are caused principally by large service increases and fare reductions, as well as metropolitan employment and population growth. In addition, the paper provides careful estimates of total and operating costs per passenger boarding and per passenger mile for Houston's bus operator and San Diego's bus and light rail operators. These estimates suggest that the bus systems are more cost-effective than the light rail system on the basis of total costs. Finally, the paper carries out a series of policy simulations to analyze the effects of transit funding levels and metropolitan development patterns on transit ridership and farebox recovery ratio.     

Toward criteria in the development of urban transportation systems

Improved criteria are necessary to aid in determining awards of federal funds for metropolitan transit projects. Commuting is the main use for public transit. Thus a primary objective of an urban transit system should be to provide a flexible and balanced set of options to the workers in the metropolitan area for their journey to work. This paper discusses various facets of an appropriate balance among the three modes: rapid rail, bus, and automobile. Three cities are selected for further analysis: Baltimore, Kansas City, and Phoenix. These cities represent different stages in economic-transportation development, and also present different spatial patterns of residence and employment. The applicability of rapid rail transit to each city is examined in view of central city worker concentration and recent trends.     

Significant characteristics of the urban rail renaissance in the United States: A discriminant analysis

In the rebirth of light-rail in the US, there has been little quantitative work detailing the differences between cities that have built rail transit and those that have not. In this study, 18 independent variables measuring a variety of characteristics that might promote or hinder rail transit construction are examined for 13 cities that built rail and 22 that did not, but considered it. After isolating the most significant variables, a two-group discriminant analysis generates a function from a randomly chosen set of 25 cities, and then cross-validates it on a separate set of 10. That model attempts to classify the cities into their respective groups. A model with three significant independent variables is generated that correctly classifies 33 of the 35 cities. The results indicate that cities which chose to build rail already had relatively well-used bus systems. There also appears to be an image and economic development aspect associated with rail construction.     

Analysis of light rail rider travel behavior: Impacts of individual,built environment,and crime characteristics on transit access

This paper analyzes factors that influence the mode choice for trips between home and light rail stations, an often neglected part of a person’s trip making behavior. This is important for transit planning, demand modeling, and transit oriented development. Using transit survey data describing St. Louis MetroLink riders in the United States, this study found that some of the factors associated with increased shares of walking relative to other modes were full-time student status, higher income transit riders, and trips made during the evening. It was also found that crime at stations had an impact. In particular, crime made female transit riders more likely to be picked-up/dropped-off at the station. Females are more likely to be picked-up or dropped-off at night. Bus availability and convenience showed that transit riders that have a direct bus connection to a light rail station were more likely to use the bus. Private vehicle availability was strongly associated with increased probability of drive and park, when connecting to light rail.     

Refining light rapid transit typology: a UK perspective

Abstract

Recent developments in the light rapid transit sector have introduced transit modes that are attempting to imitate the performance of others, e.g. buses with tram-like characteristics. The boundaries between existing definitions of what is a bus, tram or train are becoming blurred. For transport studies and practice this requires a review of how we define modes. This is not just a matter of semantics, but has safety and competition regulation implications for system operators. This paper proposes a structure to produce rail- and bus-based transit mode definitions and typology that are appropriate for modern use. A decision tree is used to classify and define the transit modes as guided-bus, trolley-bus, light rail and tram-train and is provided with example systems. The paper provides a robust definitional framework that allows transit system promoters, operators and other interested parties to have a consistent basis of reference when specifying and comparing rapid transit systems.     

Transit system evaluation: Guideway bus vs. light rail transit

This paper describes a set of specialized spreadsheets that model the cost and performance of transit system options including light rail transit, guideway bus, express bus, and ride sharing. These spreadsheets are demonstrated by comparing a guideway bus (GWB) transit system and a light rail transit (LRT) system proposed for construction in an active rail corridor. The comparisons for assumed levels of transit ridership include guideway geometry, travel time, headways, vehicle requirements, grade crossing protection, and capital and operating costs. The planned GWB system runs on an exclusive dual guideway in the rail right-of-way, and the alternative LRT system operates on the existing rails with new bridges and track as needed for a dual guideway system. The analysis compares the two options for mode splits between 0.5% and 50%. Results show that while both options have approximately the same travel time, the GWB system costs approximately 30% less than the LRT system. The cost difference results primarily from lower GWB vehicle purchase and operating costs. The spreadsheets are available through the McTrans Center at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.     

Appropriate mass transit for developing cities

This paper is concerned with the majority of developing nations who lack large resources for public sector projects. It questions the basis of much mass transit planning and attempts to put forward a more efficient way of reaching decisions. It calls extensively on experience of Metro Manila, capital of the Philippines, where an innovative system of metropolitan planning and administration is throwing a new light on ‘appropriate’ investment in such developing cities.

Mass transit systems as currently conceived in such developing cities—fully segregated rail‐based systems—are unlikely to be affordable (at least for many years) and in consequence scarce resources should not be devoted to developing and evaluating them. Rather, the principal objective should be to provide low‐cost, affordable mass transit—affordable to governments and to passengers. This almost certainly points to road‐based systems, or predominantly at‐grade light rail transit (LRT) systems, which are usually regarded as ‘obviously unworkable’ in developing city environments.

This judgement is questioned and it is suggested the potential of LRT to provide appropriate low‐cost mass transit is not being realized. An approach to determining its potential applicability is proposed. If feasible it should be evaluated against road‐based systems before decisions to implement new mass transit systems are taken.

While circumstances vary between countries the central message of this paper—that public sector resources have a very high opportunity cost which make all but the lowest‐cost mass transit systems very difficult to justify—will hold in all but the higher‐income developing economies.     

Modeling transit technology selection in a linear transportation corridor

This paper proposes an analytical model for investigating transit technology selection problem from a perspective of transit authority. Given a transit technology alternative (e.g., metro, light rail transit, or bus rapid transit), the proposed model aims to maximize the social welfare of the transit system by determining the optimal combination of transit line length, number of stations, station location (or spacing), headway, and fare. In the proposed model, the effects of passenger demand elasticity and capacity constraint are explicitly considered. The properties of the model are examined analytically, and a heuristic solution procedure for determining the model solution is presented. By comparing the optimized social welfare for different transit technology alternatives, the optimal transit technology solution can be obtained together with critical population density. On the basis of a simple population growth rate formula, optimal investment timing of a new transit technology can be estimated. The proposed methodology is illustrated in several Chinese cities. Insightful findings are reported on the interrelation among transit technology selection, population density, transit investment cost, and transit line parameter design as well as the comparison between social welfare maximization and profit maximization regimes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Light rail transit in Canada

This paper describes current light rail transit planning and operation in Canada's major cities and smaller communities. There are ten urban areas in Canada with 250,000 or more people. Two of these have light rail systems in operation, three have lines under construction and nine others are planning LRT systems.     

Organization of urban mass transport in developing countries

The supply of mass transport has not kept pace with the demand in cities in developing countries due to rapid urbanization and severe resource constraints. Developing countries would benefit from a study of the experience in developed countries regarding organization of mass transport and may adopt a few of the successful techniques. Examples include: unified transport authority; intermodal transfer facilities; subsidy to public transport; light rail transit; and redevelopment of the area around main rail terminals. Developing countries would be able to implement most of these techniques. The possible contribution of developed countries to developing countries lies mainly in the area of rolling stock and advanced signalling for rail based urban transport and in training highly skilled manpower for operation and management.     

On the financial viability of mass transit development: the case of Hong Kong

Mass transit projects are often a top contender of many cities to meet their increasing demand for travel. Despite the global trend of privatization, mass transit services, as public goods, remain largely being provided and operated by the public sector. Hong Kong is one of the few exceptions that all mass transit services are commercially operated. Both rail and bus services in Hong Kong are reputable for their quality and profitability, often serving as benchmarks for new projects. In this study, we investigate the factors contributing to this success. In particular, we ascertain the quality of transit service provision by the private sector over the past two decades. Then, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the account books of leading railway and bus operators in Hong Kong so as to shed light on their financial viability. Through this study, we hope to present crucial factors for providing financially viable private transit services.     

Mapping minibuses in Maputo and Nairobi: engaging paratransit in transportation planning in African cities

ABSTRACT

Often called paratransit because of their flexible stops, schedules and routes, minibuses make up the bulk of public transport in African cities. Despite their ubiquity and importance, these systems are poorly understood by transportation planners who tend to focus on large-scale urban infrastructure projects such as highways, commuter rail or bus rapid transit systems. The assumption within much of this planning is that these minibus systems are barriers to change and will become at most secondary “feeder” buses within large-scale projects, but structured plans detailing this vision are lacking. This paper argues that frequent failure to collect data and value important paratransit systems as a critical part of transportation in their own right is deeply problematic from the point of view of equity, access and inclusive and effective planning. We ask whether the growing number of bottom up mapping projects of minibus systems can disrupt this status quo. By comparing two mapping projects, Digital Matatus in Nairobi and the Mapa Dos Chapas in Maputo, we find that inclusive, collaborative mapping can help render these minibuses more visible in planning and provoke more grounded and inclusive “planning conversations” on multi-modal integration, passenger information and minibus upgrading, all key but relatively marginalised aspects of creating accessible, low emission, high quality and safe public transport in African cities.     

Coordinating buses and rapid rail in the San Francisco Bay Area: The case of Bay Area Rapid Transit

This paper examines attempts by planners and policy makers to analyze and bring about the coordination of rail and bus transit in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on studies and plans before and after the creation of the rapid rail system BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the author points to technical, analytical and political problems in attempts to link BART and buses. Some options and cautions are presented for planners considering route coordination, feeder buses, transfers and institutional arrangements to manage bus and rail services.     

Light rail transit in the United States

In recent years interest in light rail transit has grown substantially in the United States. The concept of LRT is increasingly viewed as a possible answer to the search for a less costly rail transit technology that could reduce America's dependency on the private automobile and put the country on the road to a more secure, self-sufficient energy future. The paper reviews recent LRT developments in four American cities, two of which have undertaken to rehabilitate and upgrade their existing surface street railway systems, and the other two have embarked upon construction of entirely new light rail systems.     

Identifying preferences for public transport investments under a constrained budget

As urban areas face increasing demands for new transport infrastructure to promote a sustainable future with an increasing reality of constrained government budgets, the debate on whether we should focus on rail or bus-based investments continues unabated in many jurisdictions. Associated with the debate is an emotional (or ideological) bias by communities in favour of one mode, especially rail, which carries much sway at the political level as if there is no budget constraint. This paper presents a stated choice experiment to investigate this context as two unlabelled options described by 20 potential drivers of community preferences for improved public transport, where each choice scenario is conditioned on an estimated construction cost and a total annual transport infrastructure budget for the relevant geographical jurisdiction. This is followed by a labelling of each alternative to reveal whether the option is bus rapid transit (BRT) or light rail (LRT) and to establish whether this additional information influences preference revision. Data is collected in all eight capital cities of Australia in mid 2014. Mixed logit models with heteroscedastic conditioning in terms of the cost of the project infrastructure and whether the alternative is labelled BRT or LRT, provide new evidence on the nature and extent of community modal bias in a budget-constrained choice setting. The conclusions are twofold. On the one hand, if a fully compensatory choice rule is assumed (as is common in all previous modal comparison studies), LRT is predominantly preferred over BRT despite budgetary constraints, similarities in quality of service attributes and the opportunity to choose a greater network coverage for a given construction cost. However, when we allow for attribute non-attendance (a semi-compensatory choice rule), the modal bias is no longer a significant driver of preferences.     

Joint optimization of a rail transit line and its feeder bus system

A model is developed for jointly optimizing the characteristics of a rail transit route and its associated feeder bus routes in an urban corridor. The corridor demand characteristics are specified with irregular discrete distributions which can realistically represent geographic variations. The total cost (supplier plus user cost) of the integrated bus and rail network is minimized with an efficient iterative method that successively substitutes variable values obtained through classical analytic optimization. The optimized variables include rail line length, rail station spacings, bus headways, bus stop spacings, and bus route spacing. Computer programs are designed for optimization and sensitivity analysis. The sensitivity of the transit service characteristics to various travel time and cost parameters is discussed. Numerical examples are presented for integrated transit systems in which the rail and bus schedules may be coordinated.     

轨道交通接运公交专线现状特性分析

文章通过对广州市地铁接运公交专线现状的调研,分析了我国大城市轨道交通接运公交的现状特性及影响其运营性能的各种因素,探讨了提高运营性能的方法,为类似城市轨道交通接运公交专线的规划提供参考。     

Factors affecting car ownership and mode choice in rail transit-supported suburbs of a large Chinese city

As Chinese cities continue to grow rapidly and their newly developed suburbs continue to accommodate most of the enormous population increase, rail transit is seen as the key to counter automobile dependence. This paper examines the effects of rail transit-supported urban expansion using travel survey data collected from residents in four Shanghai suburban neighborhoods, including three located near metro stations. Estimated binary logit model of car ownership and nested logit model of commuting mode choice reveal that: (1) proximity to metro stations has a significant positive association with the choice of rail transit as primary commuting mode, but its association with car ownership is insignificant; (2) income, job status, and transportation subsidy are all positively associated with the probabilities of owning car and driving it to work; (3) higher population density in work location relates positively to the likelihood of commuting by the metro, but does not show a significant relationship with car ownership; (4) longer commuting distance is strongly associated with higher probabilities of riding the metro, rather than driving, to work; (5) considerations of money, time, comfort, and safety appear to exert measurable influences on car ownership and mode choice in the expected directions, and the intention to ride the metro for commuting is reflected in its actual use as primary mode for journey to work. These results strongly suggest that rail transit-supported urban expansion can produce important positive outcomes, and that this strategic approach can be effectively facilitated by transportation policies and land use plans, as well as complemented by timely provision of high quality rail transit service to suburban residents.