面向公交优先的城市道路分级配置体系研究

在道路分级时充分考虑公交优先的需求对落实公交优先有着重要的意义。本文在对公交线路分类和城市道路功能分级的基础上,分析了公交线路分级与城市道路分级的互动反馈关系,考虑公交优先对城市道路的要求,将城市道路划分为四级八类,并确定相应的技术标准。     

城市公交调度优化模型及算法研究

基于公交线路各站点的客流情况,同时考虑到公交公司的发车能力,建立适合于优化公交调度的数学模型。该发车间隔优化模型兼顾了乘客和公交运营公司的双方利益,将乘客的等待时间转化为乘客付出的广义费用来衡量乘客的利益,以运营公司全天的发车所需费用来衡量公交运营公司的利益,同时,以公交车平均满载率和全天总发车次数作为约束。所得优化结果,既减少了公交公司的运营成本,又节约了乘客的候车时间,能较好地兼顾乘客及运营公司的利益。     

城市公交企业商业模式探讨——以深圳公交为例

结合深圳公交当前的产业体制,基于特许经营政策稳定、成本规制政策连续、公交市场需求稳定三个假设条件,提出深圳公交企业”特许经营、政府补贴、合同管理、考核兑现”的商业模式,探讨了公交企业商业利润的实现途径,阐述了深圳公交企业商业模式创新的三个路径选择：建设智能公交、发展新能源战略、整合公交资源。     

试论城市公共交通法的以人为本原则

文章对城市公共交通法的基本原则的进行界定、选择,确定了城市公共交通法的基本原则。然后对城市公共交通法的以人为本原则进行论述,就城市公共交通以人为本原则的内涵各个方面进行分析,对城市公共交通法的立法、执法具有一定指导意义。     

A volatile relationship: The effect of changing gasoline prices on public support for mass transit

The determinants of public opinion toward public transit is a little-researched topic, though a better understanding of what makes consumers willing to support transit may reveal which attributes of transit consumers value most. One determinant of people’s willingness to support investments in mass transit may be the price of fuel for transit’s principal competition, the private automobile. In this paper, I examine the relationship between the cost of gasoline and stated willingness to invest public money in mass transit improvements. I hypothesize that fuel price volatility—in addition to price itself—is a determinant of support for more mass transit funding, controlling for other factors. As the price of gasoline becomes more uncertain, the public should, all else equal, support investment in mass transportation, a form of transportation that may provide some measure of protection from the price of fuel. Results suggest a strong effect of price volatility on consumers’ willingness to support transit expenditures.     

Driving to save time or saving time to drive? The enduring appeal of the private car

Use of the private car is often viewed as highly problematic. It is regularly associated with global physical, social and ecological harms such as climate change and the high incidence of lifestyle diseases, including heart disease. Attempts to address these problems generally include provision for day-to-day physical mobility based on alternatives to the private car. Labelled alternative transport, these modes include public transport, walking and cycling. Yet the private car continues as the preferred way to travel in many cities. A deeper understanding of this preference can reveal under explored sites of resistance to alternative transport modes.This paper contributes to these understandings by examining the role the car as a time saving device plays in sustaining automobility. Its central proposition is that individual decisions to drive are not necessarily motivated by the desire to save time. The paper draws on empirical evidence on the journey to work in Australia’s largest city, Sydney. Using a systematic process of trip substitution analysis, a group of people were identified who could use alternative transport to get to work in the same amount of time it currently takes them to drive. These people then participated in a series of in-depth interviews where deeper attachments and motivations for private car use were explored.This approach has enabled development of the multi-layered understanding that informs the central proposition that individual decisions to drive are not necessarily motivated by the desire to save time. Instead, automobility is sustained by appeals to flexibility and autonomy, as well as the interminable pull of the sensory experience provided by the cocoon of the car. This way of thinking about resistance to alternative transport exposes a series of inconsistencies between the expectations of those planning for, and those anticipated to one day use, alternative transport.     

Competition and public service obligations in European aviation markets

This paper analyzes the effect of universal service policies on the airline markets of five European Union countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) in the period 2002–2010. Results show that airfare discount schemes for island residents raise demand and positively affect competition and the number of flights at the route level. These effects are evident in France and Italy, but are particularly marked in Spain. By contrast, public service obligations (PSOs) reduce competition on the protected routes, while their effect on the number of flights differs depending on national regulations. In Spain, routes protected with PSOs have greater flight frequencies than those on unprotected routes of similar characteristics, but in France, Italy and the UK the opposite result is found. The empirical model also finds that on routes with low-cost airlines market concentration is smaller and there is a larger number of flights. This result is relevant for the design of universal service policy, since in recent years low-cost airlines have entered a number of thin routes and have increased access to air transportation.     

Evaluating the effects of bus design on passenger flow: Is agent-based simulation a feasible approach?

In this paper, we propose an agent-based simulation approach that is capable of simulating the flow of passengers on board buses and at bus stops. The intention is that it will be applied during vehicle development to analyze how vehicle design affects passenger flow, and thus also how it affects system performance such as dwell time. In turn, this could aid the developers in making design decisions early in the development process. Besides introducing the simulation tool itself, the paper explores the realism of the data generated by the tool. A number of passenger flow experiments featuring a full-scale bus mockup and 50 participants were carried out. The setup of these experiments mirrored a number of ‘bus journeys’ (regarding vehicle design, number of passengers boarding/alighting at each stop and so on) that had previously been simulated using the simulation tool. When the data from the simulations were compared with the data from the passenger flow experiments, it could be concluded that the tool is indeed able to generate realistic passenger flows, although with some errors when a large number of passengers board/alight. The simulated dwell times were rationally affected by the tested bus layout aspects. It was concluded that the tool makes it possible to evaluate how variations in bus layouts affect passenger flow, providing data of sufficiently high quality to be useful in early phases of vehicle design.     

User perspectives in public transport timetable optimisation

The present paper deals with timetable optimisation from the perspective of minimising the waiting time experienced by passengers when transferring either to or from a bus. Due to its inherent complexity, this bi-level minimisation problem is extremely difficult to solve mathematically, since timetable optimisation is a non-linear non-convex mixed integer problem, with passenger flows defined by the route choice model, whereas the route choice model is a non-linear non-continuous mapping of the timetable. Therefore, a heuristic solution approach is developed in this paper, based on the idea of varying and optimising the offset of the bus lines. Varying the offset for a bus line impacts the waiting time passengers experience at any transfer stop on the bus line.In the bi-level timetable optimisation problem, the lower level is a transit assignment calculation yielding passengers’ route choice. This is used as weight when minimising waiting time by applying a Tabu Search algorithm to adapt the offset values for bus lines. The updated timetable then serves as input in the following transit assignment calculation. The process continues until convergence.The heuristic solution approach was applied on the large-scale public transport network in Denmark. The timetable optimisation approach yielded a yearly reduction in weighted waiting time equivalent to approximately 45 million Danish kroner (9 million USD).     

Resolving the property right of transportation emissions through public–private partnerships

The application of public–private partnerships (P3’s) in the transportation sector has grown in popularity worldwide. Despite this important shift in the provision of transportation service, there are clear gaps in knowledge about the impacts of P3 projects, especially on emissions from transportation systems as a whole. Not only should policy makers evaluate the emissions impacts from P3 projects, but they should also think about innovative models that address or charge for emissions into P3 contracts. This addition to P3 contracts could provide a new solution to the long-existing property right paradox: who owns (is responsible for) emissions from transportation systems? This study attempts to fill the research gap by analyzing these innovative models. Using the road network of Fresno, California, as our case study, we offer a number of interesting insights for policy makers. First, average peak emissions costs range from 1.37 cents per mile (the do-nothing case) to 1.20 cents per mile (profit-maximizing cases) per vehicle. Although emissions costs from the P3 projects are lowest for the profit-maximizing cases, the system-wide emissions costs of these cases are highest because of spillover effects. Second, charging project owners for the emissions costs of P3 projects is not an effective way to reduce emissions or the total costs of travel, especially on a VMT basis. Instead, the public sector should implement emissions-included social cost-based price ceilings. When employing these limits, project owners could still be charged for the emissions costs. Finally, using total travel time as the only objective function for evaluating P3 projects can be misleading. Several P3 projects have shown better outcomes using total travel cost with the inclusion of emissions and fuel consumption costs, instead of using total travel time as the only objective function.