Posts tagged Passenger experience
Understanding the Modal Shift in Response to Bike-sharing Systems in the City of Delft
The introduction of bike-sharing systems has revitalized cycling in many cities around the world. In general, the bike-sharing systems operated worldwide can be divided into two categories: docked bike-sharing and dockless bike-sharing. In the docked bike-sharing system, users have to rent bicycles from designated docking stations and then return them to the available lockers in the docking stations. The dockless bike-sharing system is designed to provide more freedom and flexibility to travellers in terms of bicycle accessibility. In contrast to docked bike-sharing, riders are free to leave bicycles in both physical and geo-fencing designated parking areas provided in public space with or without bicycle racks.
As a greener travel mode, bike-sharing is competitive in short distance travel and people who have long commuting distance are more likely to choose public transit integration with it. Previous research has shown that bike-sharing reduces car and taxi useage and increases cycling in almost every city. Bike-sharing system has been shown to reduce trip demand of public transportation including train, metro and bus.
In Delft as a student city in the Netherlands, cycling is seen as the most important mode of transport within the city. There exist three different bike-sharing schemes in operations, including OV-fiets, Mobike and Swapfiets. OV-fiets was introduced in the Netherlands in 2003 [4]. The bicycles should always be brought back to the location where the rental started. At this moment, there are almost 300 rental locations consisting of 20500 bicycles. Mobike is a dockless bike-sharing service and is more flexible than the existing docked bike-sharing alternative. Mobike extended the operations to Delft in March 2018 with a focus on the university campus. Swapfiets, launched in 2014, is a bicycle-rental system on a subscription basis, can be used for regular private trips. Now it has over 50,000 customers in 38 cities in Europe. The coexistence of different bike-sharing schemes in Delft enables this city to be a test bed for bike-sharing research.
This paper aims to understand the modal shift dynamics and the factors influence travellers’ choices in response to different bike-sharing systems by conducting a survey targeting OV-fiets users, Mobike users and Swapfiets users and private-bike users.
Find the CRB presentation and abstract of Xinwei Ma: Presentation and ABSTRACT
Impact assessment of new North/South metro line in Amsterdam
Large infrastructural projects are usually evaluated ex-ante before the decision to build the project is taken. However, after construction and opening of such project a thorough ex-post analysis is rare. In this paper we present an overview of such an evaluation study conducted in Amsterdam, capital of The Netherlands, including some first results. Research themes in the study are public transport, mobility and accessibility, public space and liveability and spatial economics. In this paper we focus on effects on public transport.
The new north-south metro line in Amsterdam became operational in summer 2018. This was accompanied by changes to the existing bus and tram network to provide feeder services to the new line, as well as to remove duplicate routes. Apart from adding significant capacity to the public transport network, the new line and the accompanying changes to the network are expected to improve travel times, reliability, accessibility and comfort levels (at least on average; not for all individual travellers).
The changes in such service quality attributes is expected to lead to a change in travel behaviour in terms of public transport route choice, mode choice (between public transport and private modes or within public transport), destination choice, departure time choice or addition of new trips (induced demand).
The objective of this study is to identify the main effects of the new metro line on existing and new passengers. We pay attention to the following aspects:
– Passenger volumes.
– Travel times, where the following distinction can be made:
o in-vehicle time;
o waiting time at the first stop;
o transfer walking time;
o transfer waiting time.
– Number of transfers.
– Network flows / crowding in vehicles.
– Reliability: travel time variance on the journey level.
– Accessibility: number of inhabitants and jobs reachable within a travel time budget.
Data sources for the study are GTFS timetable data (open source), Smart card data (both from within the city of Amsterdam as for the regional feeder bus services) and Automated Vehicle Location data. To measure perceived quality of the PT network, a survey is conducted among inhabitants of Amsterdam. In this survey approximately 3.800 respondents were asked about the travel time perceptions of their last PT trip, both before and after opening of the metro line. Finally, for a sample of travellers the entire trip is followed by a GPS tracking app.
Bicycle and Transit: a Powerful Combination
Cities are facing mobility related problems such as traffic congestion and air pollution. The combination of bicycle and transit offers a sustainable alternative to individual motorized transport. It combines the benefits of both modes, namely speed, flexibility and accessibility. This paper merges several results of our recent studies in this combined mode. The bicycle and transit mode is at first reviewed from a governance point of view. After this top-down approach a shift to the actual bicycle and transit users is made. The objective of this paper is to understand the characteristics of the bicycle-transit combination. Understanding the bicycle-transit chain makes it possible to improve the design of the chain by adapting policies which enhances (further) growth of this sustainable transport mode.
Regarding the governance point of view: two metropolitan areas in the world where both bicycle and transit systems are highly developed are compared. The metropolitan region of Copenhagen and the Dutch Randstad conurbation. In the Netherlands the governance structure of spatial planning and transit planning has gradually been shifted from local and national level to provincial level. Furthermore, many provinces are a key stakeholder when developing so called bicycle highways. The combination of responsibilities for (i) spatial planning, (ii) transit, and (iii) bicycle planning has proven to be extremely successful when making the most out of the bicycle-transit combination. It is seen that the results of the integration of transit and spatial planning highly encourages citizens to use the bicycle and transit mode.
In addition to our policy-related analysis, the actual bicycle and transit user has been examined. It is seen that the current users of the combined mode are mainly middle-aged, male, full-time employees. Catchment areas of transit stops depends on multiple factors. One of these factors is quality of the transit supply. In comparison to low level services, high level services attract users from twice as far. While over 40% of the Dutch train traveller uses the bike to get from home to the station, modal shift might be possible regarding egress trips and from and to high level bus, tram and metro services. Dockless bikes are helpful regarding egress transport. In the city of Delft, approximately 15% of the MoBike dockless bike trips are related to the train stations.
Finally, it is concluded that the combination of bicycle and transit is a successful and sustainable transport combination. Both from a governance and user perspective, there are major opportunities regarding the egress side of the bicycle transit chain. Furthermore, the transition of low level transit to high level transit makes the bicycle-transit combination more attractive, transit authorities are therefore highly encouraged to facilitate bicycle parking and shared bicycle facilities at their transit stops.
Check the ETC presentation with Raymond Huisman 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
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
Walking and bicycle catchment areas of tram stops: factors and insights
Pollution and congestion are important issues in urban mobility. These can potentially be solved by multimodal transport, such as the bicycle-transit combination, which
benefits from the flexible aspect of the bicycle and the wider spatial range of public transport. In addition, the bicycle can increase the catchment areas of public transport stops. Most transit operators consider a fixed 400m buffer catchment area. Currently, not much is known about what influences the size of catchment areas, especially for the bicycle as a feeder mode.
Bicycles allow for reaching a further stop in order to avoid a transfer, but it is not clear whether travelers actually do this.This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by assessing which factors affect feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Data are collected by an on-board transit revealed preference survey among tram travelers in The Hague, The Netherlands. Both regression models and a qualitative analysis are performed to identify the factors that influence feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Results show that the median walking feeder distance is 380m, and the median cycling feeder distance is 1025m. The tram stop density and chosen feeder mode are most important in feeder distance. For feeder mode choice, the following factors are found to be influential: tram stop density, availability of a bicycle, and frequency of cycling of the tram passenger. Furthermore, the motives of respondents for choosing a stop further away are mostly related to the quality of the transit service and comfort matters, of which avoiding a transfer is named most often. In contrast, the motives for cycling relate mostly to travel time reduction and the built environment. Three important barriers for the bicycle-tram combination have been discovered: unavailability of a bicycle, insufficient and unsafe bicycle parking places. Infrequent users of the bicycle-tram combination are more inclined to travel further to a stop that suits them better.
Find the MT-ITS paper and presentation of Lotte Rijsman HERE and HERE
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.