Posts in category English
How lightrail may enable enhanced service reliability
The introduction of lightrail in The Hague enabled a leap in service quality. The key challenge in other projects is how to incorporate these expected effects into decision making. In Utrecht we succeeded to calculate the expected service reliability impacts and incorporated them into the cost benefit analysis.
Read more: Presentation Danske Bane Konference
Quality improvement by implementing light rail: case RandstadRail
After the introduction of RandstadRail in The Hague, the level of service reliability increased substantially. An integrated package of planning and control instruments was designed and applied to achieve that objective.
Read: UITP Magazine p 1-2 and UITP Magazine p 3
Big data supports light rail business case
Transport planners are starting to consider how “big data” retrieved from passenger smart cards, computers and mobile phones could improve the design of urban rail networks and timetables, and improve operations by predicting ridership. Niels van Oort, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, and consultant at Goudappel Coffeng, explains how big data was utilised to support the business case for a proposed light rail line in Utrecht.
Read the full article: Internation Railway Journal (URL) or Internation Railway Journal (PDF)
Success and failure aspects of light rail planning
The report ‘Light Rail in Nederland, een studie naar de succes- en faalfactoren over de ontwikkeling van light rail-projecten in Nederland’, was performed by twelve students from the Technichal University of Delft, supervised by Rob vd Bijl and Niels van Oort. They investigated which factors could make or break a light rail project. During the last decades, the term light rail became a very known concept. As a hybrid mode with the best characteristics of train, tram and metro combined, light rail became an important and desired mode of transportation.
Nonetheless, several important light rail-projects failed. Some of these project were in a preliminary stage, whilst others were already quite advanced. One project so advanced, operation trials were already performed. Five cases on light rail projects in the Netherlands
and France (reference project) were extensively investigated. Not only the internal parts of the project were investigated (plan and development stages), but in particular the external context is set out. Political context and sustainability and urban development are
important external factors.
The investigation of five cases- Uithoflijn (Utrecht), RandstadRail (Rotterdam and The Hague), Regiotram (Groningen), RijnGouweLijn (Gouda and Leiden) and Straatsburg (France) – led to an overview of factors that will make or break a light rail-project. Important success factors can be found in the project organization, the political context and (external communication). Dangerous fail factors are found in the political domain, the project organizations and the decision-making process. Often, the success and risk factors which are involved in a light rail-project are a truism. It seems quite obvious that these factors are taken into account. Nevertheless, the failure of several important light rail-projects proves that –unfortunately- these factors are underestimated.
Read the summary here: Light rail research
Robust public transport from a passenger perspective
MSc.Thesis by Menno Yap (full report: HERE )
Summary:
Disturbances in public transport are an important issue for passengers, public transport operators and infrastructure managers. After the occurrence of large disturbances, there is often a strong call from passengers and society to make the public transport network less vulnerable – and therefore more robust – against these types of events. Despite the mentioned importance of considering robustness, the next limitations can be formulated regarding the way robustness of public transport networks is currently considered:
When evaluating and improving robustness of public transport networks against large non-recurrent disturbances, a passenger perspective is not included to its full extent. There is a strong focus on independent network levels operated by a single public transport operator, instead of considering the integral, multi-level public transport network available for passengers.
In general, limited quantitative data is available about disturbances which occur on multi-level public transport networks and about the effects of these disturbances on passengers. Also there is limited knowledge about the robustness performances of different network levels relative to each other. Given these limitations, the following main research question is formulated:
What methodology can be developed to evaluate the robustness of multi-level public transport networks and to evaluate robustness effects of measures for the case study network between Rotterdam and The Hague?
In this study, robustness is related only to major discrete events: large, non-recurrent events which affect infrastructure availability. In line with this, the next definition of robustness is used in this study:
‘Robustness is the extent to which the network is able to maintain the function it was originally designed for under circumstances which strongly deviate from plan’.
In this study, a methodology is developed which enables the evaluation of the current robustness of multi-level public transport networks, as well as the evaluation of proposed robustness measures. The case study shows that it is worth to consider another network level as back-up in case a certain network level is blocked. The result of the case study indicates that from a societal point of view, there is still room to improve the robustness of multi-level public transport networks.
The developed methodology can especially be developed further by incorporating en-route route choice possibilities in the transit assignment model. Further research is recommended especially to gain more knowledge about the behaviour of passengers in case they are confronted with major discrete events and in case they are confronted with crowded vehicles.
Big data opportunities to enhance public transport
New promising Big Data sources are becoming available in the Public Transport industry, via for instance Intermodal Transport Control Systems (ITCS). This data provides insights into both passenger flows and vehicle performance and is of great help to optimize public transport services. The data enables to evaluate ridership and compare it with use of other modes as car and bike traffic. In addition, whatif- predictions are possible to gain insights into expected level of cost coverage, service and ridership and to finally optimize the services.
Read more: ITCS and Big Data (IT TRANS2014)
Service reliability in a network context: impacts of synchronizing schedules in long headway services
This paper presents research on synchronization of transfers and its impact on service reliability from a passenger perspective. Passenger reliability is analyzed for the case of a multi-operator transfer node. A method is developed to calculate the passenger centered reliability indicators: additional travel time and reliability buffer time, using scheduled and actual vehicle arrival and departure times as an input. Five major factors are identified as affecting reliability at a particular transfer: scheduled transfer time, distributions of actual arrivals of the first and second line, headways, transfer walking time, and transfer demand. It is demonstrated in a real network case that changing a specific transfer has effects on other transfers from the transfer point. This method can be applied in a cost benefit analysis to identify the benefits and costs of reliability for different groups of passengers, thereby supporting proper decision making.
This paper won the Best Paper Award of all submissions by the TRB Committee on Transit Capacity and Quality of Service.
Read more: Paper Lee TRB 2014
Incorporating unreliability of transit in transport demand models: theoretical and practical approach
Nowadays, transport demand models do not explicitly evaluate the impacts of service reliability of transit. Service reliability of transit systems is adversely experienced by users, as it causes additional travel time and unsecure arrival times. Because of this, travelers are likely to perceive a higher utility from higher reliable transport systems. In order to mimic and measure the impacts of service reliability on a transit demand model a three-step approach is proposed using intelligent transport systems data. The approach consists of determining the probabilistic distribution of transit trip times, defining demand patterns and estimating the average impacts of unreliability per passenger. This approach was successfully tested on the model of the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands. By adding service reliability as a variable parameter of transit systems the results of the demand model improved showing that the absolute difference between the observed and the estimated demand decreased by 18%. In addition, the proposed approach allows measuring the effects of expected changes in level of service reliability on traveler behavior. Finally, the authors have identified future research topics required to improve the estimation of those effects
Read more: TRB 2014 Paper Van Oort
Incorporating service reliability in public transport design and performance requirements
Public transport passengers consider service reliability a key quality aspect. However, in
most countries, actual services are not perceived as very reliable. To gain insights in how
public transport authorities deal with (improving) service reliability and planning, an
international survey was performed. This survey showed that there is little attention paid to
service reliability during the design of the network and the timetable. In addition, it illustrated that little consistency exists in approaches. In addition, a second survey in The Netherlands was performed, showing how public transport authorities deal with service reliability in relation to concession requirements and incentive regimes. The main findings are that consistency is lacking on this topic, even within the Netherlands, and that little attention is paid to passenger impacts of service reliability in concession requirements. This may result in services that do not match the (implicitly) required level of service reliability.
These surveys also demonstrated that there is no consistency in the definition of service reliability. We illustrated that this may lead to different levels of quality concerning these indicators, while actual quality is constant. In this paper, recommendations are presented to improve concession requirements as well as the design of network and timetable, both aiming at enhanced service reliability.
Read more: Thredbo 2013 paper Van Oort
Optimizing Public Transport Planning and Operations Using Automatic Vehicle Location Data: The Dutch Example
There is a growing pressure on urban public transport companies and authorities to improve efficiency, stemming from reduced budgets, political expectations and competition between operators. In order to find inefficiencies, bottlenecks and potentials in the public transport service, it is useful to learn from recorded operational data. We first describe the state of publicly available transit data, with an emphasis on the Dutch situation. The value of insights from Automatic Vehicle Location data is demonstrated by examples. Finally, a software tool is described that makes quick comprehensive operational analysis possible for operators and public transport authorities, and was able to identify several bottlenecks when applied in practice.
Read more: Paper MT ITS Dresden Van Oort