scholarly journals Urban public transport in informal settlements: Experiences from Kisumu City, Kenya

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (40) ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
George Mark Onyango

AbstractKisumu has had a massive growth of informal settlements forming a belt around the urban core. These settlements house more than half of the city’s population. Because of the unplanned nature of these areas there has been very poor road infrastructure development, with narrow, unpaved roads constituting the road infrastructure. This situation has limited the opportunities for regular urban transport minibuses providing transport for the majority of the urban poor who live in these settlements. The coping mechanism and the development of alternative coping strategies are explored and assessed to see how effective they are in providing public transport for this majority of unserviced urban population.

Author(s):  
Sonnam Jo ◽  
Liang Gao ◽  
Feng Liu ◽  
Menghui Li ◽  
Zhesi Shen ◽  
...  

Robustness studies on integrated urban public transport networks have attracted growing attention in recent years due to the significant influence on the overall performance of urban transport system. In this paper, topological properties and robustness of a bus–subway coupled network in Beijing, composed of both bus and subway networks as well as their interactions, are analyzed. Three new models depicting cascading failure processes on the coupled network are proposed based on an existing binary influence modeling approach. Simulation results show that the proposed models are more accurate than the existing method in reflecting actual passenger flow redistribution in the cascading failure process. Moreover, the traffic load influence between nodes also plays a vital role in the robustness of the network. The proposed models and derived results can be utilized to improve the robustness of integrated urban public transport systems in traffic planning.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (13) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Joanna Piechucka

The present article discusses economic issues related to the design of optimal regulatory contracts on the example of the urban public transport industry. It highlights the importance of the design of efficient regulatory contracts in the context of changes facing the urban transportation industry in the European Union. Furthermore, it provides an overview of the main issues put forward in economic literature related to the design of regulatory contracts. It discusses several problems relevant in this context such as informational asymmetries, transaction costs, and regulatory capture. It also comments on a selection of views presented in economic literature dealing with these issues. Finally, the article presents the regulatory framework, contractual practices and characteristics of the French urban public transport industry. France is well known for its long standing tradition of contracting between the State and the private sector in transportation. The analysis of the French example may help to prove useful insights in this regard.


Author(s):  
Yulin Lee ◽  
Jonathan Bunker ◽  
Luis Ferreira

Public transport is one of the key promoters of sustainable urban transport. To encourage and increase public transport patronage it is important to investigate the route choice behaviours of urban public transit users. This chapter reviews the main developments of modelling urban public transit users’ route choice behaviours in a historical perspective, from the 1960s to the present time. The approaches reviewed for this study include the early heuristic studies on finding the least-cost transit route and all-or-nothing transit assignment, the bus common lines problem, the disaggregate discrete choice models, the deterministic and stochastic user equilibrium transit assignment models, and the recent dynamic transit assignment models. This chapter also provides an outlook for the future directions of modelling transit users’ route choice behaviours. Through the comparison with the development of models for motorists’ route choice and traffic assignment problems, this chapter advocates that transit route choice research should draw inspiration from the research outcomes from the road area, and that the modelling practice of transit users’ route choice should further explore the behavioural complexities.


Author(s):  
Smart Dumba

Background: Literature on the negative socio-economic and environmental externalities generated by informal public transport (IPT) in developing countries is vast, vibrant and growing fast. These externalities include but are not limited to noise, air and land pollution, accidents and, more importantly, a source of congestion (human and vehicular) because of poor driver behaviour. In this article, the research does not seek to reinstate these, but rather, it argues that poor driver behaviour is a dependent variable to some regulatory policy stimuli. Yet, an extensive literature survey has shown that the driver behaviour and urban transport regulation linkage remain little explored.Objective: The purpose of this article was to unpack the relationship between informal public transport driver behaviour and the prevailing regulatory framework.Method: Based on a case study of Harare, Zimbabwe, the researcher adopted a mixed-methods paradigm and interrogated the prevailing urban public transport regulatory regimes and applied professional judgement, oral interviews backed by some quantitative data and relate these to obtaining IPT driver behavioural characteristics.Results: Poor driver behaviour exhibited by IPT were generated, exacerbated and or eased by the prevailing regulatory policy. This is well depicted through an IPT driver behaviour and regulation loop reinforcing diagram.Conclusion: Following this argument, the article cautions policy makers and urban managers alike that direct approaches and interventions when trying to regulate IPT poor driver behaviour and its secondary negative effects will be futile as long as the regulatory policy remains the same. Failure to recognise and connect the dots between IPT driver behaviour and policy partly explains why globally, the IPT sector has proved difficult in prohibiting, restructuring or even formalising it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 121 ◽  
pp. 211-222
Author(s):  
Damian Lach ◽  
Elżbieta Macioszek

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are a set of tools that enable better and more efficient use of existing road infrastructure. They support the operation of transport systems in selected areas. ITS services are not only related to the improvement of cars traffic conditions but also to the functioning of urban public transport in the area of their impact. Thanks to the available ITS functions, supervision over the functioning of urban public transport has become easier and allows to achieve the intended effects in the form of increasing the importance of urban public transport (UPT) in transport systems of cities and agglomerations. Establishing transport priorities for UPT vehicles, closing streets for cars, supervising the movement of UPT vehicles, dynamic passenger information systems or immediate response to emergency situations is one of many available ITS functions in public transport. The article presents an analysis of the functioning of selected ITS services supporting the functioning of urban public transport in selected areas of the Silesian Voivodeship.


2012 ◽  
Vol 452-453 ◽  
pp. 705-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Sheng Wang ◽  
Hao Zhi Zhang ◽  
Yu Lin Jiang ◽  
Jiang Ping Wang

To provide policy recommendations for deepening implementation of the national public transport priority strategy, authors analyzed the status quo of China’s urban transport, and pointed out that the deteriorating traffic environment, lack of related laws, unlimited increase of car ownership and improper management system are the main problems severely restraining sustainable development of the urban public transport. Based on research on causes of the problems, authors put forward the relevant policy recommendations, from the view points of law construction, smooth traffic projects, car use guidance and reform of administration system. These policy recommendations are quite necessary and significant to promote sound development of China’s urban public transport.


The article describes the practical and theoretical aspects of using GIS technologies with respect to urban transport networks, as well as considers the developed generalized algorithm for GIS-processing technology of the urban transportation network parameters. The authors suggest the algorithm of information models of urban transport network elements taking into account the importance of set tasks and the developed method to optimize parameters of the elements of GIS of urban transport network in terms of optimization of urban public transport operation parameters, as well as the structure of the standard information model of the urban transport network element named "Urban public transport route".


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongtao Yuan ◽  
Huizhen Zhang ◽  
Minglei Liu ◽  
Cheng Wang ◽  
Yubiao Pan ◽  
...  

Abstract As an effective method of improving the attractiveness of urban public transport and alleviating urban traffic congestion, bus lanes play an important role in the urban public transport system. The research on the capacity of bus lanes is conducive to improve the operation efficiency of urban bus roads and improve the service level of urban public transport. To obtain the maximum capacity of the bus lane, on one hand, the empirical formula can be used for theoretical calculation, and on the other hand, the simulation model can be established for analysis and verification. Based on the idea of simulation, a method using Vissim is proposed, called MTCS (Minimum Traffic Capacity Substitution Method). The method divides the bus lane into different sections by intersections and stops, establishes simulation model of the bus lane to calculate the traffic capacity of each section such as vehicle speed and flow and select the minimum traffic capacity of the sections as the traffic capacity of the bus lane, which is verified by using the road saturation. The simulation process uses the actual travel speed and traffic flow of the bus lane as evaluation indicators, with the aim of maximizing the road traffic flow while the actual speed of vehicles on the road is close to the desired speed, thus achieving the desired road traffic state. To verify and improve the effectiveness of the method, its analysis results are compared with the empirical formula, and various methods of enhancing traffic capacity are quantitatively simulated. The parameters of the simulation model are set by the actual bus lane example, and the experimental results show that by the methods of modifying the stop-station mode and the signal-lamp cycle, 10% and 14% improvements can be achieved, respectively. This has a good reference value for the construction of bus lanes and the adjustment of road facilities.


Author(s):  
M. K. Alafiev ◽  

The article discusses the main activities of state authorities, labor collectives of transport enterprises in Western Siberia to improve the operation of urban public transport in the region during the eighth five-year plan (1966-1970). During the study period, the increase in the level of transport services for urban residents was directly related to measures to develop and strengthen the material and technical base of passenger transport enterprises, technical re-equipment of automobile and tram rolling stock, and construction of a new type of public transport in Western Siberia – the urban trolleybus. The author comes to the conclusion that during the eighth five-year plan, urban public transport enterprises in the region received significant material and technical development, which became the basis for increasing the volume of passenger traffic and improving the quality of transport services for the urban population of the West Siberian region


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
Przemysław Żukiewicz

AbstractIn this article, we compare the solutions which the largest Polish cities apply to effectively manage and administer public urban transport. We pay attention to the legal, administrative, and political limitations of current activities; we also analyse public transport strategies in terms of plans for the future. We state that large Polish cities prefer to entrust public transport services to fully dependent companies, do not seek to diversify service providers and do not allow the coexistence of public and private operators. Our research is the first comparative study which has used the eleven largest Polish cities as a research sample. Its results are important not only for decision-makers, but also for entrepreneurs in the transport industry. Not only does our analysis prove that, currently, urban transport in the largest Polish cities is carried out mostly by companies which fully belong to cities, but also that the future strategies of the target state will not be determined by political decision makers at all, or no significant changes are foreseen. In the largest Polish cities in the future, the tramway sector will be fully controlled by municipal companies; in the bus transport sector, private carriers will be able to count on a maximum of 20–30% share of transport work while the railway sector will remain under the control of regional administration, not local urban administration.


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