Posted in 2018

UITP INDIA SEMINAR ON URBAN RAIL NETWORK – BUILDING SUSTAINABLE CITIES

Transport infrastructure is one of the most important factors for a country’s progress. To keep this faster pace, for moving people, urban rail projects are playing a crucial role not only as a transportation solution but as a means to transform cities. 52.8% of India’s population would be living in cities and towns by mid-century compared to 32.8% in 2015, i.e. more than 750 million inhabitants.
Urban rail networks are expanding in Indian cities, as these are becoming key lifeline for the cities. Currently, 490 km of metro lines are operational in 10 different cities in the country. More than 600 km of metro rail projects are under construction in various cities. Further, It is expected that more than 350 km of new construction will be started in the next few years as more and more cities are planning for expansion or new constructions of metro rail. The average budget outlay of Govt. of India is likely to increase to about INR 250 billion annually, apart from the investments envisaged by the state governments, private partners and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). Government of India has sanctioned at least INR 306.53 billion to Metro projects across the country between the periods of 2012-16.

Find my contributions here: Transit data and Transit system choice and lightrail

Automatische voertuigen; kans of een bedreiging voor het OV in Nederland?

Automatische voertuigen staan volop in de belangstelling en de techniek ontwikkelt zich snel. De mogelijkheden lijken rooskleurig; het verminderen van het aantal ongevallen, het bieden van vervoer voor iedereen en het verminderen van de uitstoot. In het beginstadium leek de focus met name te liggen op het ontwikkelen van automatische privé voertuigen, maar inmiddels staat ook automatisch OV volop in de belangstelling.

In Nederland zijn allerlei pilots ontwikkeld met automatische voertuigen/shuttles. Om een beeld te krijgen van de actuele ontwikkelingen, de plannen en de resterende onderzoeksvragen, is onderzoek uitgevoerd op basis van gesprekken met de OV-autoriteiten van Nederland. Tijdens deze gesprekken is gesproken over de kansen en bedreigingen van het Nederlandse OV en hoe zij denken dat automatische voertuigen daaropin kunnen spelen. Tevens is gesproken over de haalbaarheid, visies, risico’s en zijn kennishiaten achterhaald. Ten slotte zijn ook alle (potentiële) pilot locaties in kaart gebracht.

Lees het CVS paper met Reanne Boersma en Arthur Scheltes hier: PAPER en PRESENTATIE

Duurzame ontwikkeling van steden: Lessen uit 61 light rail projecten

Stedelijke openbaar vervoer, zoals light rail, draait om veel meer dan alleen ‘vervoer’, ‘vervoerswaarde’, of ‘snelheid’. In deze paper wordt gepoogd light rail (en ook hoogwaardige bus) in een omvattend, maatschappelijk perspectief te plaatsen, teneinde de bredere baten voor steden te kunnen achterhalen.

Lees meer in het CVS paper met Rob van der Bijl: paper en presentatie

E-bussen laden zorgt voor nieuw spanningsveld op busstations

Om de bijdrage van transport aan de opwarming van de aarde te minimaliseren en de leefbaarheid in onze woonomgeving te verbeteren groeit de wereldwijde vloot zero-emissiebussen snel. Zero emissiebussen dragen bij aan een duurzame en leefbare woonomgeving. Uit dit onderzoek blijkt echter dat inzet van zero emissiebussen ook gepaard gaat met hogere kosten en meer onbetrouwbaarheid van de dienstregeling voor de reiziger. De investeringskosten zijn hoger dan bij ‘oude vertrouwde dieselbussen’. Exploitatie met elektrische bussen is tot 70% goedkoper dan dieselbussen, maar deze winst is niet genoeg om de toename in investeringskosten te neutraliseren. Tot op heden is de capaciteit van batterijen onvoldoende om bussen van begin tot einde dienst zonder tussentijds laden in te zetten. Tussentijds laden in de garage kost echter tijd en extra voertuigbewegingen en is daarom onwenselijk. Om die reden is het aan te raden batterijen te laden op busstations.

Lees meer in het CVS paper met Max Wiercx en Raymond Huisman: Paper en Presentatie

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

Improving railway passengers experience: two perspectives

This paper describes two perspectives to improve the passenger experience. The passenger satisfaction pyramid is introduced, consisting of the base of the pyramid (dissatisfiers) focusing on time well saved and the top of the pyramid (satisfiers) aiming at time well spent. The challenge in planning and design of public transport services is to find the most efficient (set of) design choices. Depending on the context this might either mean focusing on the top or on the bottom of the pyramid. We found that influencing and enhancing the qualities of the satisfiers is far more important than traditional studies showed us. For stations, regression analyses show that dissatisfiers are responsible for explaining almost half of the total score of the station and satisfiers are responsible for the other half of the scores passengers give for the station. We still have to put a lot of energy in getting the basics right, starting in the planning phase, but then we are not allowed to lean back. We have to keep investing in qualities like ambience, comfort and experience which makes the customers truly happy at the end of the day.

Read our paper HERE and find the presentation HERE

Supervised learning: Predicting passenger load in public transport

For many Public Transport (PT) users, overcrowding in PT vehicles has a major decreasing effect on the comfort experience. However, most online routing applications still not take comfort regarding to crowdedness into account, but provide recommendations based on shortest distance, shortest travel-time, or number of interchanges.
Being able to include certain information on crowdedness, requires knowledge about the current and future level of passenger load. Increasing amount and complexity of data describing public transport services allows us to better explore the detection methods and analysis of different phenomena of PT operations. Some countries or operators provide the possibility to use Smart Card (SC) data for occupancy prediction. However, SC data is not available in real time, which makes it hard to incorporate it into real time recommendation models. In this work, we show that it is possible to predict the passenger load via supervised learning, eliminating the need for fare collection data beyond the set needed for training.

Find the CASPT presentation by Léonie Heydenrijk-Ottens HERE

Driver schedule efficiency vs. public transport robustness: A framework to quantify this trade-off based on passive data

More complex, efficient driver schedules reduce operator costs during undisrupted operations, but increase the disruption impact for passengers and operator once a disruption occurs. We develop an integrated framework to quantify the passenger and operator costs of disruptions explicitly as function of different driver schedule schemes. Since the trade-off between driver schedule efficiency and robustness can be quantified, this supports operators in their decision-making.

Read the CASPT paper by Menno Yap HERE and find the presentation HERE

Assessing disruption management strategies in rail-bound urban public transport from a passenger perspective

This paper provides a framework for generating and assessing alternatives
in case of disruptions in rail-bound urban public transport systems,. The proposed
framework considers the passenger perspective as well as the operator perspective,
for the often-used measures of detouring and short-turning. An application of the
framework demonstrates that currently used disruption management protocols often
do not lead to the optimal solution from the passenger perspective. Furthermore, the
optimal choice between alternatives from passenger perspective shows to be
dependent on the passenger flows.

Read the CASPT paper HERE and find the presentation HERE

Passenger Route Choice and Assignment Model for Combined Fixed and Flexible Public Transport Systems

The recent technological innovations have given rise to innovative mobility solutions. Public transport systems combining such services need novel models for the design of services. We develop a multimodal route choice and assignment model for combined use of line/schedule based public transport systems (fixed public transport) and demand responsive services (flexible public transport). The model takes into account the dynamic demand-supply interaction using an iterative learning model framework. Flexible public transport can be used to perform any part of the trip, ranging from a first/last mile service to an exclusive direct door-to-door connection. The developed model is implemented in an agent based simulation framework. The model is applied to the test network of Sioux Falls. Results, in terms of modal split, fleet utilization, and passenger waiting times are analysed for scenarios in which fixed and flexible public transport are offered as competing modes as well as potential complementing modes.

Find the CASPT presentation HERE

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