Planning

This document is based on a set of lecture notes prepared in 2007-2010 for a University of California, Berkeley graduate course, Public Transportation Systems, a course targeted to first year graduate students with diverse academic backgrounds. Systems are examined in order of increased complexity so that generic insights evident in simple systems can be put to use as knowledge building blocks for the study of more complex systems. The document is organized in eight modules: five on planning (general, shuttle systems, corridors, two dimensional systems, and unconventional transit); two on...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) carsharing employs privately owned vehicles made temporarily available for shared use by an individual or members of a P2P carsharing network. Expenditures, such as insurance, are generally covered by the P2P operator during the access period. In exchange for providing the service, operators keep a portion of the usage fee. Members can access vehicles through a direct key or combination transfer from the owner or through operator-installed technology that enables “unattended access.” Although P2P carsharing is more commonplace in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany...

Bus systems are naturally unstable. Without control, the slightest disturbance to bus motion can cause buses to bunch, reducing schedule reliability. Holding strategies can eliminate this instability. However, the conventional schedule-based holding method requires too much slack time, which slows buses. This delays on-board passengers and increases operating costs. This paper studies a family of dynamic holding strategies that use the current state of all buses, as well as a virtual schedule. The virtual schedule is introduced whether the system is run with a published schedule or not. We...

This paper examines three types of pedestrian volume models in light of their usefulness for estimating pedestrian exposure for pedestrian safety research. The need for pedestrian flow data as part of pedestrian exposure and safety analysis is outlined, and the background of each type of model is discussed. It then selects the space syntax network analysis model to estimate pedestrian volumes for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It was found that the model was able to accurately predict pedestrian flows (r-squared 0.81, p-value < 0.0001) after incorporating distance to transit...