THE INFLUENCE OF LAND USE ACTIVITIES TOWARDS MASS RAPID TRANSIT (MRT) FEEDER BUS SERVICE RIDERSHIP

The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) feeder bus service is a complementary public transport service provided to encourage ridership of MRT rail services in Malaysia. In brief, this feeder bus service plays a role in connecting people to and from MRT stations. The objective of this study is to determine the passenger volume generated at each MRT feeder bus stop location in the study area, and relate it to surrounding land use activities. Using the rule of thumb in public transportation systems, 200 m and 400 m radial buffers were identified as catchment areas of the bus stops. The key finding from this study is the relationship between volume of passenger and land use activities. This study concludes that land use activities influence MRT ridership, and that the presence of shelters or waiting poles is important to encourage ingress or egress.

Public Transportation Development in Surakarta City in Partnership Governance Perspective

Transportation plays an important role in mobility in urban areas. Surakarta City provides Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) transportation system, Batik Solo Trans. This research aims to find out the partnership performed by Surakarta City in public transportation development in partnership governance perspective. Data collection was conducted through interview and documentation. Analysis was conducted using Successful Collaborative Partnership principle from Agarwal, Caiola, and Gibson (2015). The research took place in Surakarta City, particularly in PT. Bengawan Solo Trans, PT. Trans Global Mandiri, Transportation Office, and Technical Executive Unit for Transportation as the organizer of feeder along with Bersama Satu Tujuan Cooperative. The research method used here was qualitative one with descriptive approach. The result of research shows that the principle of Successful Collaborative Partnership is analyzed based on 4 principles: (1) Clear Goals: to improve public service safely, comfortably, and affordably to the public; (2) Clear Roles: Government contributes to formulating policy, funding “buy the service” program, licensing, and providing public transportation infrastructure. The private is the operator responsible fully for public transportation management; (3) Trust: Surakarta City government trusts fully the private to perform cooperation, to provide and to manage Batik Solo Trans and feeder bus service; and (4) Commitment: Government and Private are committed mutually to providing transportation infrastructure, managing, maintaining, and operating public transportation.

ASSESSING MRT FEEDER BUS SERVICES PERFORMANCE THROUGH PASSENGER’S SATISFACTION LEVEL IN THE SELECTED STATIONS OF KLANG VALLEY, MALAYSIA

Resultant impacts of mobility increase within the Klang Valley, for example, congestion, parking problem and air pollution have highlighted the reason for a move towards the use of more sustainable transport modes within the cities. Hence the need for effective and reliable public transport. It is perceived that Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) feeder buses hold the guarantee of easing the growing congestion in Klang Valley if they are managed efficiently and sustainably. For this reason, this research expands the exploration of the MRT feeder bus services quality by evaluating the passengers' level of satisfaction. A quantitative approach was employed for this study by administration of the questionnaire. A total of 303 survey forms were collected through convenience sampling. The study's findings confirmed the efficiency and effectiveness of services provision. Surveys showed that most riders (62.7%) were females with the majority possessing a bachelor’s degree and above (64.4%). Also, a large proportion of the riders fell into the age group category between 20 and 29 years (69.0%), with less than half of the respondents earning an average monthly income of above RM 6,000 (45.9%). Most of the respondents were satisfied with the overall quality (above 80% satisfactory) but punctuality, waiting and travel times as well as services frequency of this first and last mile connection (FLM) had left a lot to be desired. The study also found significant relationships between gender and the fear of crime as well as conditions of bus stops. Thus, it recommends overall enhancement of service with safer environment for female riders and an increase in the service frequency of the MRT feeder buses to retain the existing users and attract more new users.

Quantitative Assessment of the Newly MRT System from the Rider’s Perspectives

New rail systems developed in many cities have received significant attention from public transportation researchers globally and regionally. One such system is the Mass Rapid Transit system in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The quality of services’ perception has been captured through the questionnaire survey. Preliminary analysis showed that passengers were satisfied and indicated a great willingness to repeat usage. Likewise, dissatisfaction was only expressed on the feeder bus system services to and from the rail stations. This research explains the rationales for the disproportionately high satisfaction levels and betterment of the support infrastructure, including the feeder services. Keywords: high satisfaction, passengers, public transport, rail system eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i16.2602

Improved Huff Model for Estimating Urban Rail Transit Station Catchment Areas considering Station Choices

Estimating urban rail transit station catchment areas is of great significance to deepening our understanding of Transit-Oriented Development in Chinese megacities. This study investigated station choices of residents and considered that residents may not only pay attention to the proximity to stations when the URT system develops into a relatively mature network. An improved Huff model was proposed to calculate the probability of residents’ station choice, which considered the station attractiveness. The station attractiveness is measured by three variables: walk score, public transport accessibility level, and service and facility index. The additive form based on multicriteria decision is adopted to incorporate experts’ opinions on the importance of three variables. In this study, extended catchment areas that can be accessed by cycling and feeder bus services are adopted to replace the conventional pedestrian-oriented catchment areas. A case study of Xi’an, China, was used to validate the applicability of the proposed methodology. The results revealed that the methodology effectively solved the problem. The findings could be used as a reference and provide technical support to policymakers and city planners with regard to the transport facilities configuration for URT station catchment areas, which contributes to facilitating transit-oriented development.

Impact of Automated Vehicles on Optimal Demand-Responsive Feeder Transit Network Design

This article aims to examine the economic benefits of automating flexible demand responsive feeder transit systems using a developed feeder bus routing optimization algorithm. The objective function of the algorithm is to minimize total passengers' and operating costs of the system. The results showed that when unit operating costs decline, total operating costs, and total costs obviously decline. Furthermore, when unit operating costs decline, the average passenger travel distance and total passenger travel costs decline while the ratio of total operating costs per unit operating costs increases. That means if unit operating costs decrease, the portion of passenger travel costs in the total costs increases, and the optimization process tends to reduce passenger costs more while reducing total costs. Assuming that automation of the vehicles reduces the operating costs, it will reduce not only total operating costs and total costs, but also total passenger travel costs.

Route Design Model of Multiple Feeder Bus Service Based on Existing Bus Lines

The feeder bus, as an important component of urban public transportation systems, is capable of filling the existing service gap left by urban rail transit to satisfy feeder demand. Two challenges to taking advantage of the feeder bus are identified. The first challenge is to identify the service gap, and the second one is to strengthen the coordination of multilevel urban traffic modes. Given these two challenges, this paper established a route design model that introduced a feeder bus demand coefficient to quantify feeder demand for each bus stop. To assist the design of feeder bus routes, an optimization approach based on the tabu search algorithm was proposed. Considering the sizeable combinational optimization problem, the algorithm decomposed this problem into three phases: feeder area partition, candidate stop selection, and route design problem. In the first phase, the entire area was partitioned into several subareas and the specific boundary nodes were moved into an adjacent subarea. Then, the stops with the minimum overall travel cost from every subarea were chosen as candidate ones under the limit of operating costs. The last step was to find the shortest circular route to visit each candidate stop and determine the operating direction. The proposed optimization had been implemented in a downtown area of Suzhou, China, in order to verify its effectiveness through the performance in terms of the quality of optimal solutions and computing efficiency. In addition, a possibility of simplifying a multiple circular route design problem to a single route design problem utilizing spatial clustering is provided to enhance the computing efficiency in a large-scale network.