Risk and reward in public transportation contracting

The workshop discusses and documents a number of countries’ experiences regarding risk and reward in the delivery of public transport and determines the way in which competitive pressures actually work (or not) to deliver efficient and effective services. Papers are grouped into three main themes, i.e., public versus private management; negotiated versus competitively tendered contracts; and measures to improve performance. This chapter begins with a brief overview of each of the eight papers. This is followed by a section that out the discussions that emanated from the papers. Finally, the main policy and research recommendations are presented.     

Alternative financing for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT): The case of Porto Alegre, Brazil

In the 1970s, Brazil was leading the implementation of high-flow bus priority schemes, but now cities are less capable of financing public infrastructures. This paper explores the private sector participation in the provision of transit infrastructure based on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The Porto Alegre BRT contemplates interchange terminals planned to accommodate retail and service activities. It is expected that these areas shall generate enough revenues to remunerate private investors, under a PPP scheme, for the construction of terminals and part of the infrastructure required to upgrade some sections of the existing busways to BRT standards.     

Overview of public transport policy developments in South Africa

In South Africa, a restructuring of the public transport system is currently under way. In the bus industry the tender for contract system is being implemented, the commuter rail sector is being recapitalised and the minibus taxi industry recapitalization programme is in its early stages. Progress with policy implementation across the modes of transport, modal split trends and issues that hamper the full development of the public transport industry are discussed in this paper. Medium to long term policy and strategy initiatives that will further inform the development of the industry are also highlighted in this chapter.     

一种PCI-485通讯卡固件的设计方案

设计了一款基于PCI总线的485通讯卡固件程序.其主要功能是对上位机的数据处理并下传给下位机;对下位机进行扫描,看有否数据上传,并将上传的数据传输给上位机.程序主要分五个模块:主程序模块、初始化模块、下发数据模块、上传数据模块和呼叫上传模块.该通信卡实现了上传下达的功能,避免了传输过程中的同步传输问题.     

郑州市公交场站复合利用策略研究

公交场站是公共交通网络的关键节点,其复合利用模式可影响公交服务质量。本文从理论基础及应用策略两个层面对城市公交场站复合利用模式进行梳理,对公交场站复合利用的意义、模式及方法进行研究,建立集约高效的公交场站复合利用模式。以郑州市为例,验证了本文提出的公交场站复合利用模式能够适应这个时期的城市用地发展特征,提高公交场站服务能力,同时可减轻政府财政压力,发挥投资效益,可为政府部门制定公交场站复合利用模式提供参考。     

Real-time bus route state forecasting using particle filter and mesoscopic modeling

In the absence of system control strategies, it is common to observe bus bunching in transit operations. A transit operator would benefit from an accurate forecast of bus operations in order to control the system before it becomes too disrupted to be restored to a stable condition. To accomplish this, we present a general bus prediction framework. This framework relies on a stochastic and event-based bus operation model that provides sets of possible bus trajectories based on the observation of current bus positions, available via global positioning system (GPS) data. The median of the set of possible trajectories, called a particle, is used as the prediction. In particular, this enables the anticipation of irregularities between buses. Several bus models are proposed depending on the dwell and inter-stop running time representations. These models are calibrated and applied to a real case study thanks to the high quality data provided by TriMet (the Portland, Oregon, USA transit district). Predictions are finally evaluated by an a posteriori comparison with the real trajectories. The results highlight that only bus models accounting for the bus load can provide valid forecasts of a bus route over a large prediction horizon, especially for headway variations. Accounting for traffic signal timings and actual traffic flows does not significantly improves the prediction. Such a framework paves the way for further development of refined dynamic control strategies for bus operations.     

Eco-driving training of professional bus drivers – Does it work?

The drive to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is one shared by both businesses and governments. Although many businesses in the European Union undertake interventions, such as driver training, there is relatively little research which has tested the efficacy of this approach and that which does exist has methodological limitations. One emerging technology employed to deliver eco-driving training is driver training using a simulator. The present study investigated whether bus drivers trained in eco-driving techniques were able to implement this learning in a simulator and whether this training would also transfer into the workplace. A total of 29 bus drivers attended an all-day eco-driving course and their driving was tested using a simulator both before and after the course. A further 18 bus drivers comprised the control group, and they attended first aid courses as well as completing the same simulator drives (before-after training). The bus drivers who were given the eco-driving training significantly improved fuel economy figures in the simulator, while there was no change in fuel economy for the control group. Actual fuel economy figures were also provided by the bus companies immediately before the training, immediately after the training and six months after the training. As expected there were no significant changes in fuel economy for the control group. However, fuel economy for the treatment group improved significantly immediately after the eco-driving training (11.6%) and this improvement was even larger six months after the training (16.9%). This study shows that simulator-based training in eco-driving techniques has the potential to significantly reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the road transport sector.     

Solving a discrete multimodal transportation network design problem

This paper investigates the multimodal network design problem (MMNDP) that optimizes the auto network expansion scheme and bus network design scheme in an integrated manner. The problem is formulated as a single-level mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC). The decision variables, including the expanded capacity of auto links, the layout of bus routes, the fare levels and the route frequencies, are transformed into multiple sets of binary variables. The layout of transit routes is explicitly modeled using an alternative approach by introducing a set of complementarity constraints. The congestion interaction among different travel modes is captured by an asymmetric multimodal user equilibrium problem (MUE). An active-set algorithm is employed to deal with the MPCC, by sequentially solving a relaxed MMNDP and a scheme updating problem. Numerical tests on nine-node and Sioux Falls networks are performed to demonstrate the proposed model and algorithm.     

Using survival models to estimate bus travel times and associated uncertainties

Transit agencies often provide travelers with point estimates of bus travel times to downstream stops to improve the perceived reliability of bus transit systems. Prediction models that can estimate both point estimates and the level of uncertainty associated with these estimates (e.g., travel time variance) might help to further improve reliability by tempering user expectations. In this paper, accelerated failure time survival models are proposed to provide such simultaneous predictions. Data from a headway-based bus route serving the Pennsylvania State University-University Park campus were used to estimate bus travel times using the proposed survival model and traditional linear regression frameworks for comparison. Overall, the accuracy of point estimates from the two approaches, measured using the root-mean-squared errors (RMSEs) and mean absolute errors (MAEs), was similar. This suggests that both methods predict travel times equally well. However, the survival models were found to more accurately describe the uncertainty associated with the predictions. Furthermore, survival model estimates were found to have smaller uncertainties on average, especially when predicted travel times were small. Tests for transferability over time suggested that the models did not over-fit the dataset and validated the predictive ability of models established with historical data. Overall, the survival model approach appears to be a promising method to predict both expected bus travel times and the uncertainty associated with these travel times.     

快速公交预感应信号优先协调控制策略

提出了一种考虑交叉口协调控制的预感应公交信号优先策略,包括两个部分:信号配时优化和协调控制.假设公交车行驶时间已知的情况下,该策略通过按绿信比分配理想时间差和基于公交车站点时空距离转换的改进数解法来实现交叉口的配时优化和协调控制.为了获得该策略的实施效果,以常州市通江南路两相邻交叉口的单个方向为例,设计了四种信号控制情景(无优先、传统优先、预感应优先和预感应协调优先),并利用微观仿真软件VISSIM进行仿真分析.结果表明,四种情景中预感应协调优先策略大大减小了公交在交叉口的延误,提升了公交服务的可靠性,并且对社会车流的干扰最小.