Public Transportation

Environmental Life-cycle Assessment of Passenger Transportation: A Detailed Methodology for Energy, Greenhouse Gas and Criteria Pollutant Inventories of Automobiles, Buses, Light Rail, Heavy Rail and Air v.2

Chester, Mikhail
Horvath, Arpad
2008

The passenger transportation modes of auto, bus, heavy rail, light rail and air are critical systems relied upon for business and leisure. When considering their environmental effects, most studies and policy focus on the fuel use of the vehicles, and ignore the energy and other resource inputs and environmental outputs from the life cycles of necessary infrastructures, fuels, and vehicles. The goal of this project is to develop comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) models to quantify the energy inputs and emissions from autos, buses, heavy rail, light rail and air transportation in...

Bus Rapid Transit Impacts on Land Uses and Land Values in Seoul, Korea

Cervero, Robert
Kang, Chang Deok
2009

More and more cities are turning to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as a way of cost-effectively expanding public transit services to help relieve traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions, and increase mobility options for the poor. Because of the inherent flexibility advantages of rubber-tire buses – e.g., unlike rail systems, the same vehicle that functions as a line-haul carrier can also morph into a neighborhood feeder -- BRT is especially suited for many lower density and non- CBD settings.Some of the most advanced and widely heralded BRT services today are found in Latin America, such as...

Allocating city space to multiple transportation modes: A new modeling approach consistent with the physics of transport

Gonzales, Eric J.
Geroliminis, Nikolas
Cassidy, Michael J.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2008

A macroscopic modeling approach is proposed for allocating a city’s road space among competing transport modes. In this approach, a city or neighborhood street network is viewed as a reservoir with aggregated traffic. Taking the number of vehicles (accumulation) in a reservoir as input, we show how one can reliably predict system performance in terms of person and vehicle hours spent in the system and person and vehicle kilometers traveled. The approach is used here to unveil two important results: first, that restricting access to a city’s congested areas can improve mobility for all...

Urban Densities and Transit: A Multi-dimensional Perspective

Cervero, Robert
Guerra, Erick
2011

This paper investigates the relationship between transit and urban densities in the United States. An analysis of light rail systems finds that a residential density of about 30 people per gross acre near stations is needed to in order to make them among the top 25 percent of rail transit investments in terms of cost effectiveness; for heavy rail systems, the density is 45 people per gross acre. Increasing density around stations would greatly increase ridership, particularly when jobs are located within one-quarter mile of the stations and housing is located within one-half mile....

Deploying Underutilized Bus Lanes at Key Nodes in a Road Network

Guler, Ilgin
Cassidy, Michael
2010

The authors of this working paper explain that the operation of buses in mixed traffic flow can be impeded by congestion, leading to unreliable and slow service. Similarly, buses that stop frequently for passengers interfere with the flow of general traffic. Dedicated lanes provide a means for buses to bypass car queues, but in cases where bus flow is low, converting a general purpose lane to a bus-only lane will delay car traffic. The authors describe innovative schemes for deploying bus lanes to serve low bus demand intermittently. Strategies to deploy underutilized bus lanes will be...

Direct Ridership Model of Bus Rapid Transit in Los Angeles County

Cervero, Robert
Murakami, Jin
Miller, Mark A.
2009

A Direct Ridership Model (DRM) for predicting Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) patronage in Southern California is estimated. Attributes of bus stops and their surroundings constitute the data observations of the DRM, enabling a fairly fine-resolution of analysis to be carried out on factors that influence ridership. The best-fitting DRM revealed that service frequency strongly influences BRT patronage in Los Angeles County. High intermodal connectivity, with both feeder bus routes and rail-transit services, also significantly induces BRT travel. Population densities also contribute to BRT...

China's Urban Transportation System: Issues and Policies Facing Cities

Cherry, Chris
2005

China is the most populous country in the world. With a population of 1.3 billion, meeting the housing and transportation needs of this vast country are on the forefront of the political and academic agenda in China and throughout the world. China has experienced phenomenal economic and social growth and as a result the Chinese have desired more mobility and living space. The effects of these desires are beginning to be seen in new auto oriented ex-urban developments that have larger living spaces than the traditional urban centers and whose road infrastructure is developed to support high...

Structure of Competitive Transit Networks

Daganzo, Carlos F.
2009

This paper describes the network shapes and operating characteristics that allow a transit system to deliver a level of service competitive with that of the automobile. To provide exhaustive results for service regions of different sizes and demographics, the paper idealizes these regions as squares, and their possible networks with a broad and realistic family that combines the grid and the hub-and-spoke concepts. The paper also shows how to use these results to generate master plans for transit systems of real cities.The analysis reveals which network structure and technology (Bus, BRT...

Innovative Bus-Lane Deployments in Amman: Proposed Field Experiments

Guler, Ilgin
Cassidy, Michael
2010

Innovative strategies for deploying bus lanes are proposed for field tests in Amman, Jordan. The objective is to reduce delays to buses in the network while minimizing delays to other vehicular traffic. The proposed strategies may be far better options than conventional, static bus lanes, given the test site’s large car demand and low bus frequency. The experiment is designed to be conducted in simple, safe ways, without the need for investment in permanent infrastructure.

A Dynamic Holding Strategy to Improve Bus ScheduleReliability and Commercial Speed

Xuan, Yiguang
Argote, Juan
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2011

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...