scholarly journals COVID-19 and Public Transportation: Current Assessment, Prospects, and Research Needs

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Tirachini ◽  
Oded Cats

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a great challenge for contemporary public transportation worldwide, resulting from an unprecedented decline in demand and revenue. In this paper, we synthesize the state-of-the-art, up to early June 2020, on key developments regarding public transportation and the COVID-19 pandemic, including the different responses adopted by governments and public transportation agencies around the world, and the research needs pertaining to critical issues that minimize contagion risk in public transportation in the so-called post-lockdown phase. While attempts at adherence to physical distancing (which challenges the very concept of mass public transportation) are looming in several countries, the latest research shows that for closed environments such as public transportation vehicles, the proper use of face masks has significantly reduced the probability of contagion. The economic and social effects of the COVID-19 outbreak in public transportation extend beyond service performance and health risks to financial viability, social equity, and sustainable mobility. There is a risk that if the public transportation sector is perceived as poorly transitioning to post-pandemic conditions, that viewing public transportation as unhealthy will gain ground and might be sustained. To this end, this paper identifies the research needs and outlines a research agenda for the public health implications of alternative strategies and scenarios, specifically measures to reduce crowding in public transportation. The paper provides an overview and an outlook for transit policy makers, planners, and researchers to map the state-of-affairs and research needs related to the impacts of the pandemic crisis on public transportation. Some research needs require urgent attention given what is ultimately at stake in several countries: restoring the ability of public transportation systems to fulfill their societal role.

Author(s):  
David A. Faria ◽  
Wilma Smith

A study was done to develop various innovative transportation strategies to address the changing travel needs of Arlington, Texas, residents. The study was guided by the Arlington Community Transportation Study Committee. It developed the transportation niche concept: the ability to use alternative community transportation services to address specific needs of the community in different parts of the city. Five high-priority niches were studied in detail. The success of the individual niches in particular and the integrated transportation system in general will rely heavily on the cooperation and coordination between the public and the private sectors and the acceptance of the niche concept by the general public.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Perrine ◽  
Alireza Khani ◽  
Natalia Ruiz-Juri

Generalized Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) files have gained wide acceptance by transit agencies, which now provide them for most major metropolitan areas. The public availability GTFSs combined with the convenience of presenting a standard data representation has promoted the development of numerous applications for their use. Whereas most of these tools are focused on the analysis and utilization of public transportation systems, GTFS data sets are also extremely relevant for the development of multimodal planning models. The use of GTFS data for integrated modeling requires creating a graph of the public transportation network that is consistent with the roadway network. The former is not trivial, given limitations of networks often used for regional planning models and the complexity of the roadway system. A proposed open-source algorithm matches GTFS geographic information to existing planning networks and is also relevant for real-time in-field applications. The methodology is based on maintaining a set of candidate paths connecting successive geographic points. Examples of implementations using traditional planning networks and a network built from crowdsourced OpenStreetMap data are presented. The versatility of the methodology is also demonstrated by using it for matching GPS points from a navigation system. Experimental results suggest that this approach is highly successful even when the underlying roadway network is not complete. The proposed methodology is a promising step toward using novel and inexpensive data sources to facilitate and eventually transform the way that transportation models are built and validated.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 5875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trynos Gumbo ◽  
Thembani Moyo

There have been growing concerns with regards to the state public transportation systems, particularly in the cities of developing countries. Chief among these concerns has been the lack of well-coordinated, efficient, and reliable transportation systems. The city of Johannesburg, just like any other fast-growing municipality in developing and emerging economies, has not been spared with regards to incessant public transport challenges. Consequently, there have been collective efforts from both public and private stakeholders to invest immensely in both innovative rail and road transport systems in the past decade. This article sought to achieve twin objectives. First, the work identified the state of connectivity between the rapid rail transportation and rapid bus transit systems based on Geoweb 2.0 data. Second, the work visualized the level of connectivity between these two modes to develop and formulate policy frameworks in integrating public transit systems in cities of the developing world, learning from the metropolitan city of Johannesburg. A mixed-method approach consisting of spatial and quantitative aspects was used to examine the state of connectedness and the promotion of access and mobility between the two modes. The local Moran’s I index was used to compute node clusters within the public transport system. Results from the analysis demonstrated that both high-clusters and low-clusters exist in the public transportation network, which have a high degree of centrality. It was revealed that commuters navigate from these nodes/stops with relative ease due to the short walking radius. However, the work revealed that most rail networks and bus routes, as well as the stations and bus stops, are not connected and are not significant in the local Moran’s I index, thus, making it difficult for commuters to conveniently move from the Gautrain to the Rea Vaya bus. There are, therefore, gaps with regards to the sharing of infrastructure between the two public transport modes and systems.


1979 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgar O'Neal ◽  
Douglas Levine ◽  
James Frank

Postcards containing a message either high or low in importance, and either favorable or unfavorable for the recipient, were individually "lost" in the public transportation systems of Paris, Madrid, London, Geneva, and Frankfurt am Main. More postcards were returned when the message was favorable than when it was unfavorable, but only in the high importance conditions. This pattern of results occurred in each location except Madrid. The findings are discussed in terms of Rosen and Tesser's (1970) reluctance to bear bad news (MUM) effect.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (06) ◽  
pp. 1608-1617
Author(s):  
K. Sivakumar ◽  

A significant population of our country is folks with an average income who depend on public transportation to go about. But this method of transport has become one of the most chaotic and also has a high percentage of crime sites for numerous incidents. Hence this method has the most insecure position for the public and also pollution generating state. Out of the full population of India as of 2017, around 5.5 percent of the total GDP goes by road dependent on public transit. The aim of this work is to develop a Smart automatic Public transport System with improved security to provide convenience to passengers who are unaware of the complete information about the buses such as availability of seats, journey time, distance traveled, and to make sure they experience the same comfort as their personal vehicles.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 160156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Alessandretti ◽  
Márton Karsai ◽  
Laetitia Gauvin

Multimodal transportation systems, with several coexisting services like bus, tram and metro, can be represented as time-resolved multilayer networks where the different transportation modes connecting the same set of nodes are associated with distinct network layers. Their quantitative description became possible recently due to openly accessible datasets describing the geo-localized transportation dynamics of large urban areas. Advancements call for novel analytics, which combines earlier established methods and exploits the inherent complexity of the data. Here, we provide a novel user-based representation of public transportation systems, which combines representations, accounting for the presence of multiple lines and reducing the effect of spatial embeddedness, while considering the total travel time, its variability across the schedule, and taking into account the number of transfers necessary. After the adjustment of earlier techniques to the novel representation framework, we analyse the public transportation systems of several French municipal areas and identify hidden patterns of privileged connections. Furthermore, we study their efficiency as compared to the commuting flow. The proposed representation could help to enhance resilience of local transportation systems to provide better design policies for future developments.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Cook ◽  
Judson J. Lawrie ◽  
Andrew J. Henry

A research study developed recommendations for activities to consolidate single-county rural public transportation systems into regional multicounty transit systems in North Carolina. The study identified opportunities from regionalization of public transit services, examined barriers to integration and consolidation of transit systems regionally, evaluated best practices from case study sites, and made recommendations for programmatic and legislative changes to facilitate the implementation of regional transit systems in both metropolitan and rural areas of the state. Emphasis is on the rural component of the study, in summarizing regionalization issues and recommendations for the consolidation of rural single-county into multicounty transit systems. Consolidation of rural public transportation systems into regional entities is another step in further coordinating public transportation services in the state. However, there is a public transportation system now operating in all 100 North Carolina counties. Therefore, the thrust of regionalization will be to consolidate existing rural transportation systems into regional entities. There are key programmatic and legislative aspects of interest to state departments of transportation, transportation planners, and policymakers. Case studies also gathered information from associated state department of transportation staff, to include both the state and local perspectives on regional rural transportation systems.


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