Towards An Intelligent Public Transport System

Public transport systems in urban regions are changing and require innovation for the future. New options for passengers go beyond transport by bus, metro and tram; they include options like ride-sharing, services such as Uber and Mobility as a Service. Such personalized and self-organized solutions reflect changes in the economy and ways of urban life. In addition, traditional public transport with fixed bus, metro and tram lines are becoming less feasible in some cases. Can we make public transport more intelligent and responsive to needs?

SCRIPTS

Smart cities and regions need to facilitate demand-driven hybrid transportation systems in order to increase the vitality of urban regions and the governance that comes with it. The “Smart Cities Responsive Intelligent Public Transport Systems” (SCRIPTS) program analyses the performance of the current system when fixed and flexible public transport systems co-exist while offering competing services. The program consists of three integrated academic and applied projects:
1) New activity-based models of travel demand
2) Modeling optimized service provision and service performance
3) Governance of innovative public transport in smart cities.

Each project delivers a proposed model system to predict the demand for hybrid public transport systems by involving demand responsive transport services. Responsive transport services are flexible in route and schedule and self-organized, for instance, by using ICT platforms and simulation of their performance.

The SCRIPTS program is a collaboration between universities and professional organizations. The research program team will network with international academic and professional stakeholders to discuss strategies and solutions since governance and institutional factors determine whether the implementation of proposed systems and services will be successful. A game theory and an adaptive planning approach will be taken.

SCRIPTS’ Goals

The program aims to develop contours of future demand-driven transport for smart cities/regions[Office1] Resulting key concepts, design principles and decision tools shall consider the roles and needs of the different stakeholders and reflect the trend towards a sharing economy. The response to such highly flexible demand will be unconventional transport mode chains.

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Elements of the research

Intermediate Findings/Results

Intermediate analysis has shown that the increase in fleet size caused an overall increase in mode share for flexible public transport. Also, the effect on waiting times of passengers by increasing fleet size is more pronounced when an individual taxi-like door-to-door service is offered. The variation of relative cost ratios showed a steady decline of mode share for flexible public transport with increasing cost. The results also showed that at higher relative cost ratios, the flexible public transport that operate without sharing becomes less attractive than the one with sharing.