Reliability Assessment And Improvements Along A Bus Corridor

Author : Ehab Diab
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (922 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Urban Public Transportation Systems written by Ehab Diab and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Public transit systems offer essential services to the sustainability and livability of any city. My PhD research aims to develop ways of addressing the fundamental questions about how transit service improvement strategies can provide users with a better and reliable service that is positively perceived by the public. In light of these, this dissertation sets out to address several research questions:What are the areas of overlap and disconnect in understanding between the transit agencies and passengers perspectives regarding service reliability and the impacts of service improvement strategies? What are the benefits of implementing more than one improvement strategy for transit agencies? What will the passengers' immediate response to those strategies be? What are the impacts of implementing various improvement strategies on bus transit service variation? How do passengers' responses to those strategies change over time in terms of their estimation of their time savings? How can these findings be used to improve public transport planning and decision-making in the future?These questions are addressed through four studies using mixed-methods of research design and multi-stage approach. The mixed-methods design includes qualitative analysis and several forms of quantitative research. The multi-stage approach is based on the idea of each stage (or chapter) building on the previous one. A literature review that simultaneously addresses passengers' and transit agencies' perspectives on service reliability and the impacts of improvement strategies in an integrated manner is presented. Reviewing these two parts together provides a needed contribution to the literature from a practical viewpoint since it allows for the identification of gaps in the public transit planning and operations field in the area of reliability and the impacts of improvement strategies. In response to the identified gaps in the literature, I have conducted several investigations using a unique case study from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the Saint-Michel bus corridor. Saint-Michel is a heavily used bus corridor located to the east of Montreal's central business district. In an attempt to improve transit service on the island, Société de transport de Montréal (STM), the transit provider on the island of Montréal, has implemented a series of strategies over a period of three years. These strategies include using smart card fare collection, introducing limited-stop bus service, operating reserved bus lanes, using articulated buses, and implementing transit signal priority (TSP). This dissertation contributes to knowledge in four key ways:It identifies the gaps and overlaps between passengers' and transit agencies' perspectives regarding transit service reliability and the impacts of service improvement strategies, as well as a set of indicators and approaches that capture users' reactions to transportation planning decisions.It develops methodologies to deepen understanding of the collective effect of strategies and the synergies between them on the performance of transit systems.It develops methodologies to understand the impact of various strategies and their synergies on transit system variation.It deepens understanding of how people respond to these strategies and to what extent they overestimate their time savings, and how these estimated savings can change over time.By addressing these issues, this work explores an important gap in the current understanding of the relationship between passengers' perceptions and transit agencies' perspective and their implemented strategies." --