Estimating bus run times for new limited-stop service using archived AVL and APC data

In recent years, several transit agencies have been trying to be more competitive with the automobile to attract choice riders. Transit agencies can only be competitive if they can provide services that are reliable, have a short access and egress time, and have run times that are comparable to automobiles. Several transit agencies try to be competitive through offering faster service, such as limited-stop (express) bus service. This study uses AVL and APC data, in addition to a disaggregate data obtained from a travel behavior survey, to select stops and estimate run times for a new limited-stop service that will run parallel to a heavily used bus route (67 Saint-Michel) in Montréal, Canada. Three different scenarios are developed based on theory and practice to select stops to be incorporated in the new limited service. The time savings for each scenario are then evaluated as a range and a fourth scenario is developed. A limited-stop service is recommended based on selecting stops serving both directions of the route, major activity points and stop spacing. This study shows that implementing a limited-stop service would yield substantial time savings for both, the new limited service and the existing regular service running in parallel.     

An analysis of public bus transit performance in Indian cities

Maintaining and enhancing public transit service in Indian cities is important, to meet rapidly growing mass mobility needs, and curb personal motor vehicle activity and its impacts at low cost. Indian cities rely predominantly on buses for public transport, and are likely to continue to do so for years. However, the public bus transit service is inadequate, and unaffordable for the urban poor. The paper explores the factors that contribute to and affect efforts to improve this situation, based on an analysis of the financial and operational performance of the public bus transit service in the four metropolitan centres and four secondary cities during the 1990s. Overall, there were persistent losses, owing to increasing input costs and declining productivity. The losses occurred despite rapidly increasing fares, and ridership declined. The situation, and the ability to address it, is worse in the secondary cities than the metropolitan centres. We suggest a disaggregated approach based on the needs and motivations of different groups in relation to public transit, along with improved operating conditions and policies to internalize costs of personal motor vehicle use, to address the challenge of providing financially viable and affordable public bus transit service.     

打折的公共汽车票--闲话"外宾"

改革开放初期的时候,我和几个年纪稍长的朋友在一起聊天.那哥儿几个下海特早,按当时的标准看,已经可以被称作大款了.不知道是谁先抻的茬儿,说起砍价这件事儿来了.其中有个朋友年纪最大,见多识广,嘴上俏皮话也多.他为砍价这个话题作了一个精辟的总结,"如今这年月,除了公共汽车票不能砍价,剩下的全都能砍价儿."     

论班车客运的区域特许经营

国外城市公共旅客运输竞争机制的启示 在发达国家,城市公共旅客运输业的竞争一般分为两类:一类是运输企业通过参与投标竞争,取得在一定期限内和一定区域内独享的经营权利,即为取得独享的市场权利的竞争,简称"竞争市场";另一类是运输企业在遵守一些有关交易及经营行为规则的前提下,在同一市场中相互竞争,简称"市场竞争".在"市场竞争"中,经营者始终面对竞争对手的压力,从而有助于降低成本和提高服务质量;不过在有些情况下,在一定的经营期限内,由唯一的经营者提供指定的服务是一种比较好的选择,如出于技术原因、规模经济考虑,或为避免多个经营者竞争而损害"公共利益"的行为.特许经营便是"竞争市场"的一种主要方式.     

The limits of analyzing service quality data in public transport

In recent years, management and academics have increasingly focused on quality management in public transport. In particular, many public transport operators regularly monitor their service quality over time and use these data to assess quality performance (e.g., for performance-based quality contracts) and to determine managerial decisions (e.g., budget allocations for service improvements). However, despite the widespread applications of service quality data in practice, it is unclear whether cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data provide valid insights for quality management purposes. In this study, we investigate the usability of cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data by conducting an empirical study that tracked a panel’s perceptions of the service quality of public transport and its choice over the course of three consecutive years. The results demonstrate that cross-sectional analyses provide valid insights for quality management. However, cross-temporal comparisons should be interpreted carefully because the results of these comparisons are surprisingly unreliable. In fact, we find that service quality data do not provide reliable results over time and therefore conclude that cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data must be interpreted with caution for quality management in public transport.     

ITS applications in public transport: Improving the service to the transport system

This paper examines all the disparate technologies and techniques capable of smoothing the integration of public transport modes and services at both the urban and interurban scale. The paper focuses on the application of information technology and telematics solutions which have been designed to create as seamless a journey as possible from the point of view of the transport system user. The scope of the paper is therefore deliberately wide‐ranging and includes an examination of measures as apparently unconnected as smartcard ticketing, bus priority systems, automatic vehicle locationing, trip planning and on‐board information systems as well as new public transport services offering demand responsive travel and integration with taxi services. The paper intends to show how such technological solutions can be used to increase the attractiveness and competitiveness of fixed public transport networks in comparison to the door‐to‐door flexibility of the private car.     

Efficiency of the public and private bus transport sectors in Sri Lanka

The public and private bus sectors are in direct competition in most bus routes in Sri Lanka. Consequently, Sri Lanka is an ideal location to study their relative efficiencies. Five dimensions of transit performance are analyzed for comparing the relative efficiencies of the two sectors: cost efficiency, labour efficiency, input efficiency, revenue generation and safety. Productivity ratios are utilized for measuring the dimensions of transit performance. The productivity ratios for cost efficiency, labour efficiency in terms of total staff, input efficiency, revenue generation and safety in terms of accidents per bus showed the private bus transport sector to be more efficient than the public bus transport sector.     

Evaluation of a public transportation level of service concept

The level of service of a bus line is evaluated by its operational characteristics, particularly by the ratio between average bus travel time on a given route and the average passenger car travel time on the shortest distance between the origin and the destination of the bus in question. It is shown that the level-of-service measure may be predicted by such independent variables as route length, average distance between bus stations, number of signalized and unsignalized intersections, and the ratio between such intersections. It is hypothesized that use of other independent variables such as boarding and alighting passengers, or volume to capacity ratio on the route concerned, could improve the predictive power of the suggested models. Further research is recommended on the effect of these latter variables and other operational variables which might influence bus level of service, and also on the comparison between direct bus lines and lines which use transfer points.     

A fuzzy multicriteria model to evaluate the privatization of the public bus operations

A double model based on fuzzy synthetic decision and a fuzzy multicriteria decision is presented for this study. In a basic level decision, we use a fuzzy synthetic decision to reduce the sub-criteria calculation work. In a higher level decision, the approximation reasoning allows the decision maker to make his best choice. These methods are more in accordance with the thinking processes of the human mind when complex issues are involved. Therefore, this paper will use a fuzzy linguistic approach, instead of the traditional approach to avoid the interference of the numerical estimates for weight and performance of alternatives. In the end, a heuristic algorithm for the evaluating process is developed and demonstrated in a case study.     

Level of public transport service evaluation: A fuzzy set approach

The success of any enterprise, in a market-oriented economy, depends upon it's quality. This paper describes the results of a survey of commuters on the quality of services and their relative weights, and of the attributes that determine the service level of bus transport undertakings. The model uses the theory of fuzzy sets to process the information obtained. A composite index, called level-of-public transport-service (LOPTS), is defined and used to measure the service qualities. This approach is presented with guidelines for rating the quality of services, fuzzy-set representations of the linguistic grades, definition of LOPTS and its use in a public transport quality data base. An example is presents how the approach can be employed to analyse data bases generated from a quality survey. This approach is compared with the numerical rating approach with single number representation.     

The economics of bus deregulation in Britain

This paper reviews some of the arguments which have been put forward on the economics of bus deregulation, particularly the paper by Gwilliam and others. It argues that the experience of road haulage licensing is relevant. The evidence there suggests that liberalization has not had the adverse effects that many predicted and that in most respects one could expect bus deregulation to have no less favourable consequences. The main difference between buses and road haulage is over how far bus drivers might revert to the old practices of the 1920s of chasing, tailing, etc. which were said at the time to be a major cause of consumer dissatisfaction. The paper reviews the economics of some of these practices and suggests which might be discounted and which need further attention.     

公共物流信息数据交换服务平台需求及设计

公共物流信息数据交换服务平台则是各方信息的汇集处理点,解决了物流企业间信息孤岛的问题,实现企业与平台、企业与企业之间的物流信息数据交换,为物流平台所有相关的信息资源提供安全、可靠、高效的数据存储和数据访问服务。     

The effects of ozone action day public advisories on train ridership in Chicago

Ground level ozone is a criteria pollutant that is significantly affected by transportation patterns. Ozone action day advisories represent one type of voluntary ozone-abating program operating in urban areas where ozone pollution is concentrated. When forecasts predict that ground level ozone will exceed healthy levels, public advisories urge citizens to voluntarily choose public transportation as a means of eliminating automobile trips and reducing mobile emissions. To obtain credit for emission reductions spurred by voluntary programs, states must provide verifiable reduction estimates. This paper applies a fixed effects regression model to a panel of hourly Chicago Transit Authority train ridership data to evaluate the potential effects of Ozone Action Day advisories in Chicago from 2002 to 2003. Findings show that while the overall effect of ozone action days on ridership is not significant, there are statistically significant changes in hourly ridership patterns that indicate a more complex relationship between the public advisories and travel behavior.     

The vehicle emissions and performance monitoring system: analysis of tailpipe emissions and vehicle performance

This paper describes tailpipe emission results generated by the Vehicle Performance and Emissions Monitoring system (VPEMS). VPEMS integrates on‐board emissions and vehicle/driver performance measurements with positioning and communications technologies, to transmit a coherent spatio‐temporally referenced dataset to a central base station in near real time. These results focus on relationships between tailpipe emissions of CO, CO₂, NO_x and speed and acceleration. Emissions produced by different driving modes are also presented. Results are generally as one would expect, showing variation between vehicle speed, vehicle acceleration and emissions. Data is based upon a test run in central London on urban streets with speeds not exceeding about 65 km/h. The results presented demonstrate the capabilities of the system. Various issues remain with regard to validation of the data and expansion of the system capability to obtain additional vehicle performance data.     

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.     

The effect of crowding on public transit user travel behavior in a large-scale public transportation system through modeling daily variations

In this paper, the crowding effect in a transit vehicle is modeled in a time-expanded network that considers the daily variation in passenger flows. The study models the daily variation of in-vehicle crowding in a real large-scale transit system. A transit assignment for this real network is modeled and implemented by constructing a crowding cost function that follows the valuation of crowding and by using the reliable shortest path finding method. The direct application of the crowding model to a real network for the Utah Transit Authority indicates that crowd modeling with multi-user classes could influence public transportation system planning and affect the revenues of transit agencies. Moreover, the addition of the disutility factor, crowding, does not always appear to cause an increase in disutility for transit users.     

Structural equation modeling of user satisfaction of bus transit service quality based on stated preferences and latent variables

Few studies have been conducted on the service quality (SQ) of bus transit in developing countries. This paper presents a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to identifying the relationships among major attributes that affect the SQ of bus transit in the city of Dhaka in Bangladesh. Specifically, 22 bus transit SQ attributes, drawn from 655 questionnaires, are used to develop different SEM models for the city. Along with stated preferences, the effect of three latent variables on SQ is analyzed. Among the developed models, the best model is selected by using different statistical approaches. With the best model, selected attributes are rated according to their relative importance on SQ. Acknowledging limited resources of a developing nation, this study gives a clear way ahead to planners, operating companies and transport managers to design appropriate transport policies which will ensure more effective services to current bus users as well as attracting new passengers.     

高端品牌相得益彰安凯悄然改变风景名胜区旅游观光车格局

前几年,旅游观光车的概念还不太清晰,许多景区是使用一般的普通客车或高档客车,在景区为游客代步。这一局面的改变,始于安凯股份公司自主开发的豪华旅游观光车成功进入九寨沟风景区,时为2004年6月。九寨沟是世界闻名的自然风景区,对景区内观光车的要求全面而严格。安凯客车股份有限公司根据景区的要求,从外形设计到配置等方面为他们量身定造。客户对产品质量和性能都非常满意,目前,该景区已有100多辆安凯旅游观光车为游客提供服务。