Public Transport

Public transport may be defined as any form of passenger or freight transport that is available for hire and reward. In practice, it usually refers to land-based passenger transport and in particular bus and train services and variants thereof. It is this narrower definition that is used in this article. The academic study of public transport has tended to be an interdisciplinary affair – geographers have studied public transport in conjunction with engineers, economists, planners, and others. These studies have focused on three themes. The first theme is that of public transport operations as a spatial system worthy of study in, and of, itself. The second theme focuses on the economics of public transport systems, in terms of demand, supply, prices, investment, subsidy, regulation, and ownership. It emphasizes elasticities, returns to scale, and welfare optimization. The third theme highlights the ways that public transport interacts with the wider economy and promotes social inclusion, as well as the impact of public transport on the environment, its interaction with private transport, and its contribution to sustainable development. Key work in these three areas is described.

Abstract

Public transport is an effective tool to address multiple societal challenges, regarding mobility, sustainability and livability. When looking at typical public transport projects and traditional appraisal methods, the main type of benefits that are considered for public transport projects are passenger travel time savings, additional revenues due to increased ridership or a new fare policy and timetable savings (due to shorter trip times and less timetable hours). These current approaches provide insights into the expected performance and benefits of public transport to some extent, but they often disregard many other (positive) effects. This is partly due to a limited focus, but also due to a lack of a framework and knowledge. In this chapter, we present a framework, the 5E model, that supports the assessment of the broader benefits of public transport projects. Specifically, we show how to quantify and monetize the improvements of service reliability, robustness and crowding relief.

4.3.4 Public transport

Public transport can either use general vehicle signals or have its own signals (cf. Section 1.2), if a separate lane exists. Dynamic public transport stops can be created for trams or buses on a central lane by stopping vehicles during passenger service time in front of the bus stop with two signals (yellow-red-dark). These signals can be coordinated with a subsequent intersection, thus reducing the delay for both public transport and vehicles.

As described for cyclists, “bus locks” can be deployed for buses traveling on the right on a separate lane, but having to turn left at the intersection (Fig. 4.8).

Distance to public transport

Distance to public transport is the fifth ‘D’. Ewing and Cervero (2010) showed how having public transport stops nearby might stimulate walking, as well as encourage people to use public transport. If ‘nearness to public transport’ is associated with other variables discussed in this section, its power is enhanced. For example, access distances to stops and stations are reduced by high intersection densities, whilst diversity of land uses makes trip chaining—such as picking up some groceries on the way home from the train station—more feasible. Moreover, Campoli (2012, p. 16) has referred to ‘the virtuous cycle of density and transit’, whereby concentrating people and jobs next to public transport increases ridership, which facilitates enhanced frequencies, which in turn make public transport more attractive and driving less necessary.

6.6 Other cases: Integrate with other big data

TRIPS has helped Seoul and other cities in South Korea develop mature and dynamic data-driven policies based on real data collected by smart cards. To further the usefulness of the tool, especially for cities where fares are not based on distance and the type of data available is different because users do not tag out when exiting a mode of transport, TRIPS is working with telecom operators to bring the same kind of data-driven solutions used in Seoul. TRIPS has developed an alighting location estimation algorithm which has shown more than 90% accuracy within two stops.

Also, TRIPS has a forecasting function that uses AI technology integrated with land use data. It can estimate the expected number of users by origin-destination for new bus stops. This function can be used in areas of new development to help public transportation operators create more efficient operations plans.

Although not created through the TRIPS tool but using similar methodology, an example of how Seoul is combining data sources to create policy to improve the lives of citizens is the Owl Bus, a late-night city bus operating in Seoul since 2013. It is not part of the regular Seoul transport network but has routes between principle areas of the city from midnight to 5 a.m. The routes were determined through analysis of taxi data and mobile phone data during these late-night hours to cover transport demand during the hours when the Seoul metro is closed. Responding to a clear need in the city, the data-driven service was awarded both the “Best Policy” award by citizens and the Presidential Award after its first year of service.

7.3.1 Public transport signals

Public transport signals are under local legislation. Most contain four white dots. Sometimes, a fifth dot is used for priority-call feedback. Fig. 7.1A shows the lamp combination for “red.” Fig. 7.1B–D shows the lamp combination for “green.” They specify the green turning direction, that is, turning either left or right, turning only right, and turning only left, respectively. Fig. 7.1E shows “red” with an additional feedback lamp on the top that indicates whether a priority call has been registered. Sometimes this lamp is blue, and sometimes this lamp might blink corresponding to a “red-yellow” state, that is, giving some preparation time to the public transport vehicle.

Figure 7.1. Possible signal combinations for public transport.

Exploitation of Land Resources

Public transport systems typically own significant parcels of very valuable land in an urban area. The monetary value of these is immense. Yet they are inadequately used. Innovative ways of commercially exploiting this land, especially the air rights above this land, have been able to generate significant revenues. Commercial and residential properties built on these land resources would command a premium price due to easy access to the public transport system. Besides, it would encourage greater use of public transport by offering easy access to it.

In Hong Kong, the MRT company earned an amount of HK$23.73 billion from its properties as compared to HK$17.66 billion from its transport operations during 2016 [25]. Similarly, SMRT, the dominant metro rail operator in the city earned about S$492 million from its rental and advertising activities out of its total earnings of S$1300 million during 2016 [26]. Out of its total earnings of INR38.1 billion (approx. US$640 million) during 2015–16, the Delhi metro earned INR4.4 billion (approx. US$73 million) from rentals and leasing of property [27].

35.5 Conclusion

Quality public transport is public transport that creates value for a wide variety of stakeholders: various types of travelers, but also the workers, the neighbors, and the wider civil society the services cater for. We see that in the variety of public values related to public transport, from quality of service, to safety for the workers, to limitations of noise nuisance for the neighbors, to reduction of emission of greenhouse gasses for future generations, and much more. Governance of public transport is the ruleset that helps those deciding about public transport services to create that wider value.

This chapter looked at the way in which governance has conditioned the decision-making on COVID limitations for public transport and the way in which these had to be reflected in the choices to reduce services in a specific jurisdiction. This chapter looked at how the jurisdiction is organized, in terms of funding and direction, and the way in which the contract between the authority and operator is set up, and how these aspects are expected to have an influence on the decision-making.

We saw that different countries which clearly have different governance of public transport showed different results. Hypothetically, these results could be traced to the governance and the existing role of public transport in the modal split. We added a case, showing on a more detailed level how decision-making in the Amsterdam case was driven by the roles of the national and regional governments in decisions on funding public transport.

When we look through the case at the governance landscape of public transport, it seems that for long the focus has been on finding a larger role for private operators and market mechanisms in the governance. A key take-away seems to be that in a crisis like COVID, governments were again asked to dampen the risks of the private sector. This seems to be a strengthening factor in a rethink of extent of the role of the private sector in public transport.

COVID decision-making simplified the focus on the one hand, as keeping the services afloat was the key challenge. On the other hand, improvisation had to be undertaken, something that a lot of governance systems are not necessarily good at. It will be interesting to see how governance will condition the way in which the reopening of public transport and upscaling of the services will take place. We see two scenarios in that regard for operators and authorities. In a first scenario, they might take the risk to go back to pre-2020 levels of service to attract people back and find funding to bridge a temporary lull in demand. In a second scenario, they could avoid that risk of overservicing and keep services reduced longer, with the risk that now travelers will be attracted more to private modes and patronage will stay lower. Which of those will play out in a specific jurisdiction obviously is related to the governance of public transport and the way in which the ruleset allows for risk taking and long-term focus.