Posts tagged demand responisve transit

Potential of on-demand services for urban travel (Flex-OV)

On-demand mobility services are promising to revolutionise urban travel, but preliminary studies are showing that they may actually increase the total vehicle miles travelled, thereby worsening road congestion in cities. In this study, we assess the demand for on-demand mobility services in urban areas,using a stated preference survey, to understand the potential impact of introducing on-demand services on the current modal split. The survey was carried out in the Netherlands and offered respondents a choice between bike, car, public transport and on-demand services. 1,063 valid responses are analysed with a multinomial logit and a latent class choice model. By means of the latter, we uncover four distinctive groups of travellers based on the observed choice behaviour. The majority of the sample (55%) are avid cyclists and do not see on-demand mobility as an alternative for making urban trips. Two classes (27% and 9% of the sample) would potentially use on-demand services: the former is fairly timesensitive and would thus use on-demand service if they were sufficiently fast. The latter class however is highly cost-sensitive, and would therefore use on-demand mobility primarily if it is cheap. The fourth class (9%) shows very limited potential for using on-demand services.

Read the paper by Nejc Geržinič HERE

‘Hubs, van belofte naar werkelijkheid’

Zijn hubs dé toekomst in de mobiliteit? Is het wel echt zo’n slimme oplossing zoals we de laatste tijd vaak horen, of is het eigenlijk alleen maar een hype? Hierover schreven Iris van Gerrevink, Roderick Tingen, Kees van Son (AT Osborne) en Niels van Oort (TU Delft) recent een artikel voor VNG Magazine en een vierdelige blogserie. Iedere blog focust op een ander type hub en geeft aanbevelingen aan beleidsmakers over hoe ze kunnen werken aan het waarmaken van de beloftes:

Artikel in VNG Magazine: “De Hubtopie”

Deel 1 door Iris van Gerrevink: Komt de hub in de buurt?

Deel 2 door Roderick Tingen: De boer op met de hub

Deel 3 door Kees van Son: De logistieke hub tegen een lading met lucht

Deel 4 door Niels van Oort: Google wat is een hub?

The future of public transport in the era of emerging modes

Due to societal and technological trends and developments, new modes (will) emerge. In this workshop at the Urbanism Next Europe conference, Maaike Snelder (TNO/TU Delft), Maria Alonso-Gonzalez (KiM) and Niels van Oort (TUDelft) shared their research findings about on-demand pooled services, autonomous shuttles and share bicycles and discussed about their contribution to the future of public transport.

Find the presentations, including references, here:

Introduction

On-demand pooled services

Autonomous shuttles

Shared bicycles

Workshop Future of Public Transport @Forum ISTS

Due to societal and technological trends, our mobility system and patterns might change. New modes are entering (and leaving) the market, while conventional modes are improved. In this workshop we looked to the future of public transport from the perspective of authorities and operators. The city of The Hague and the Dutch railways (NS) shared their visions on the public transport of the future.

Find the general workshop presentation HERE

Find the presentation of Emile Jutten (City of The Hague) on the national and regional vision on public transport HERE and an animation of the vision HERE

Find the presentation of Mark Oldenziel (NS) on the short term innovations and plans of the railways HERE and an animation of the vision HERE

Travellers’ preferences towards existing and emerging means of access/egress transport

This research elaborates on access/egress transport in further detail and aims to provide insights in the preferences of travellers for existing and new means of access/egress transport such as shared vehicles and on-demand ride services. In this research, a stated preference experiment was performed with Dutch train travellers. In addition to the modal preferences, the expected impacts on land use near train station were assessed.

Find the ETC presentation of Bas Stam HERE

Autonomous vehicles meet Public Transport: the future of automated vehicles in public transport

The technology of automated vehicles is developing rapidly and the vehicles offer a lot of benefits. They claim to be safer, more environmentally friendly and they can provide transport for everyone, including people who currently don’t have access to transportation. The focus seemed to be on the development of automated private vehicles, but the focus seems to shift from private transportation to automated public transportation.

The Netherlands has been pro-active in testing automated vehicles on public roads. This paper gives an overview of the projects and pilots with automated vehicles as public transport in the Netherlands as well as the remaining research questions. Also, preliminary results of passenger related studies regarding expected ridership and perception are discussed in this paper. Information was gathered by performing desk research and conducting interviews with twelve public transport authorities. During these interviews we spoke about threats and opportunities as well as feasibility, visions and knowledge gaps. Subsequently we spoke about what the future of public transport would look like and how we can anticipate on these upcoming technologies. Lastly we asked about (future) pilot locations with automated vehicles. These locations are included on a map of the Netherlands.

In many places in the Netherlands there is or has already been experiments with automated vehicles (3 – 4). These pilots, experiments or demonstrations are often focused on the technical aspects. However, the challenges regarding the deployment of an automated vehicle extends beyond the technical level. The interviewed parties indicate that it is important to focus, with the upcoming pilots, more on the traveler and the position of the vehicle within the existing public transport network. The interviewed parties stress that it is important to think about the long-term implementation.

The current public transport contracts as we know them, will likely change with the arrival of automated vehicles. Concessions are already becoming more flexible and space is created to experiment with new concepts such as automated vehicles. During a concession, it is possible to experiment alongside the established service and a transition path can be mapped out. Tendering an automated shuttle has not (yet) taken place in the Netherlands (5). The public transport authorities are clear about the future: automated vehicles in public transport do not come with a ‘big bang’ but will gradually find their way.

Check the ETC presentation of Reanne Boersma, Arthur Scheltes and Niels van Oort HERE

Impacts of replacing a fixed transit line by a Demand Responsive Transit system

The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of the demand-responsive transit (DRT). Mokumflex is a DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for 12 months. The close collaboration with the private enterprise that conducted the system but also with the local bus operator allowed the authors to have access to precise databases, giving this article empirical information for both the situation before and after the implementation. These insights help to understand DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and transit systems. A few indicators were chosen for the comparison: distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population’s perception. The ridership dropped, however, for being “demand-tailored”, the mileage per passenger reduced, improving the costs and GHG emissions. In regards to population’s perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.

Find the Thredbo presentation of Felipe Coutinho HERE and the paper HERE

Willingness to share rides in on-demand services for different market segments

The impact of on-demand urban transport services on traffic reduction will depend on the willingness to share (WTS) of individuals. However, the extent to which individuals are willing to share remains largely unknown. By means of a stated preference experiment, this study analyses the WTS of respondents by comparing their preferences towards individual and pooled rides. Urban Dutch individuals are the target population of this study. In our research, we: 1) quantify the WTS in on-demand services with different number of passengers to disentangle the sharing aspect from related time-cost considerations (e.g. detours); 2) investigate which distinct (latent) market segments exist in regards to the WTS and value of time (VOT) for these on-demand services, and 3) analyse which socioeconomic characteristics and travel patterns can help explain taste variations. Despite the large majority of current on-demand rides being individual, we found that less than one third of respondents have strong preferences for not sharing their rides. Also, we found
heterogeneity not only in the values of the WTS of individuals, but also in the way this disutility is perceived (per-ride or proportional to the in-vehicle time).

Find the Thredbo presentation of Maria Alonso-Gonzalez HERE

Does ride-sourcing absorb the demand for car and public transport in Amsterdam?

The emergence of innovative mobility services, is changing the way people travel in urban areas. Such systems offer on-demand service (door-to-door or stop-to-stop, individual or shared) to passengers. In addition to providing flexible services to passengers, past studies suggested that such services could effectively absorb the demand for private cars thereby reducing network congestion and demand for parking. This study investigates the potential of a ride-sourcing service to absorb the demand for public transport and private cars for the city of Amsterdam. Results indicate that a ride-sourcing vehicle could potentially serve the demand currently served by nine privately owned vehicles and that a fleet size equivalent to 1.3% and 2.6% of the total public transport trips, are required to provide door-to-door and stop-to-stop times comparable to those yielded by the current public transport system. Results from the modal shift indicate that most PT trips are substituted by active modes and most car trips are substituted by ride-sourcing service.

Find the MT-ITS paper and presentation of Jishnu Narayan HERE and HERE

Masterclass Toekomst van het OV Ministerie I en W

In de Masterclass van het Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat buigen Henk Meurs (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) en Niels van Oort (Technische Universiteit Delft) zich over ontwikkelingen in het openbaar vervoer. ‘Het is aan ons, wetenschappers, om de ontwikkelingen, effecten en kansen in het OV in kaart te brengen. IenW kan met pilots een aantal lessen leren om MaaS te stimuleren. IenW-ers moeten niet onderschatten welke voorbeeldrol ze vervullen.’

Bekijk het interview en de presentatie

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