The Movingo integrated ticket: seamless connections across the mälardalen region of Sweden

ABSTRACT

The need for improved public transport (PT) ticketing in ever-growing deregulated PT markets has made well-designed integrated ticketing systems a priority area of intervention for PT service providers around the world. Yet, very little practical evidence of its impacts are reported in Sweden and in the world at large. The focus of this study was the impacts of the Movingo integrated ticketing scheme in terms of PT patronage, user satisfaction and the perceived quality of the ticketing set-up. Three travel surveys were conducted along the Stockholm-Uppsala route. Methods including logistic regression and correlated t-tests were used to analyse the samples. The findings suggest that the scheme made rail commuting more attractive resulting in an overall increase of about 24% in ticket sales with 3% – 15% car commuters reporting that they patronised PT services after the project. The scheme also resulted in increased rail commuter satisfaction. The overall perceived quality of the ticketing set-up did not however improve due to interoperability challenges. Service providers’ uncertainty about equitable distribution of revenue among the participating service providers, interoperability challenges and the lack of interest among most of the participating service providers to sell Movingo tickets are some issues to be addressed.     

A stated preference examination of time of travel choice for a recreational trip: An addendum

A paper was published in the immediately previous issue of this journal describing a stated preference experiment examining how people are influenced in the selection of a departure time for a hypothetical trip to see a movie. The title was ‘A stated preference examination of time of travel choice for a recreational trip’, Volume 30(3):17–44. Numbers were used to indicate references in the text of the paper and in Table 1 accompanying the text, but these numbers were omitted from the list of references at the end of the paper - making it very difficult to identify specific citations. The list of references from the paper is reprinted below with the reference numbers included. This provides a listing that can be used in conjunction with the text of the paper and Table 1 as published to identify specific citations as intended.     

Basic Analytical Study of Pantograph-catenary System Dynamics

For a high speed electrical rail system, good dynamic performance of the pantograph-catenary system is vital for smooth and continuous current collection. It has been known for many years that to achieve this the head of the pantograph should be made as light as possible and the average stiffness of the catenary should be high. These conclusions, however, have been reached by numerical modelling and operational experience. In this paper the pantograph-catenary system is modelled as a time-varying, single degree-of-freedom system to facilitate an analytical investigation of the system dynamics. Although the model is very simple, it allows physical insight into the dynamic behaviour of the system, and because the excitation is parametric it also allows the stability of the system to be investigated. The finite element method is used to determine the catenary characteristics and Floquet theory is used to analyse the behaviour of the coupled system.     

The marine electronic highway in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore—an assessment of costs and key benefits

The Straits of Malacca and Singapore are an important trade route linking the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. They are also rich in resources and support a range of activities that benefit the economies of the littoral states (Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore). This important shipping route is a very congested waterway and the authorities are keen to improve navigation facilities to promote ship safety and reduce the risk of groundings, collisions and accidents. This will also help to protect the marine environment from the effects of pollution and hence reduce its damaging impact on activities related to the Straits, e.g. fisheries and tourism. The Marine Electronic Highway (MEH) is an attempt to bring together maritime safety technologies and environmental management systems. The paper examines the costs of providing such a highway and considers some of the benefits which could accrue from its implementation. The analysis, conducted in the form of a cost-benefit study, clearly shows the economic viability of the scheme.     

Exact Equations for Tractrix Curves Associated with Vehicle Offtracking

Vehicle offtracking behavior at low speeds is closely approximated by a geometric entity called a tractrix. This paper presents differential equations for generalized coordinates of a planar multibody vehicle model based on tractrix behavior. The equations are exact, can be used with any type of input path, are valid for forward and backward movements, and are much simpler than previously published formulations used to compute transient offtracking. The differential equations can be integrated using conventional numerical integration algorithms to obtain plots of the low-speed tracking performance of articulated vehicles. The equations were formulated symbolically by a computer program used to analyze the kinematic and dynamic behavior of multibody systems. Example numerical results are plotted.     

Impact of information technology on public transport fares data

The work described was undertaken as part of the CASSIOPE project in the EC DRIVE programme. A range of fare collection procedures in public transport is described, and the importance of these for data collection by operators is stressed. It is suggested that such data management could be standardized and to this end four case studies were carried out in different European cities. Data models were built for each city, and these models are merged into a preliminary version of a generalized model. The need and uses for such a fare collection data model is explained.     

Effects of information in road transport networks with recurrent congestion

This paper aims to gain more insight into the implications of information provision to drivers on the performance of road transport networks with recurrent congestion. For this purpose, a simulation program consisting of three components has been written. The first component is the traffic simulation model, the second component is the information provision mechanism, and the third component monitors the behavioural decision-making process of the drivers, which is modelled using a utility-based satisficing principle. Three types of information provision mechanisms will be considered: information based upon own-experience, after-trip information and real-time en route information. The findings in this paper, obtained in a hypothetical context, underline the important relationship betweenoverreaction, thelevel of market penetration and thequality of the information. High quality information allows a high level of market penetration, while low quality information, even when provided at low levels of market penetration, induces overreaction. Furthermore, real-time en route information is in particular beneficial during the process leading to a steady state; it reduces the variance in travel time considerably. The paper concludes with a discussion on the market potential of motorist information systems when commercially marketed.     

Systematic variability in repetitious travel

The focus of this paper is the degree to which day-to-day variability in the individual's travel pattern has a systematic, or nonrandom, component. We first review the different sources of variability in travel, emphasizing the difference between between-individual and within-individual variation and the implications of this difference for travel analysis. After discussing the impact of measurement (i.e. the way in which travel behavior is measured) on the study of repetition and variability, we use the Uppsala data to examine the level of systematic variability in an individual's longitudinal travel record. The analysis focuses on two questions:

- How well does observation over one week capture longer-term (five-week) travel behavior; in other words, is behavior highly repetitive from week to week?

- How systematic is within-individual variability; in other words, are certain stops distributed over the five-week record in a nonrandom, that is either regular or clustered, fashion?

Using measures of travel that include more than one stop attribute (e.g. activity, mode, time of day, and location), we found that:

- A seven-day record of travel does not capture most of the separate behaviors exhibited by the individual over a five-week period, but it does capture, for most people, a good sampling of the person's different typical daily travel patterns.

- Whereas a considerable portion of intraindividual variability is systematic (nonrandom), clustering is a more important source of nonrandom variation than is regularity.

The results suggest that behavior does not follow a weekly cycle closely enough for a one-week travel record to measure the longer-term frequency with which the individual makes certain stops or to assess the level of day-to-day variation present in the individual's record. Because these results are likely to reflect the particular measures of behavior we used, one conclusion of this study is the need for other studies that replicate the aims of this one but use a variety of other travel measures. Only through such additional work can we truly assess the sensitivity of our findings to measurement techniques.     

Regional impacts of new transport infrastructure: a multisectoral potentials approach

This is the second of two background papers sponsored for the Symposium by the Administrative Commission for the north of the Netherlands. Its purpose is to provide an indication of the effects of the proposed high speed rail line between Amsterdam, Groningen and Hamburg on employment in the corridor. The authors first review the techniques of forecasting these effects discussed in the literature. The potentials approach is adopted for their analysis, the mathematics and underlying assumptions of which are presented. Finally, this model is run to provide an estimate of the impact on regional employment of three variants of the proposed rail line.