Guidelines for programming local public transport services
Overview
Background & policy context:
According to European legislation, Italian regulations concerning local public transport developed over the years towards an increasing decentralisation of responsibilities in favour of regional and local authorities. Local authorities have been delegated the tasks of programming (regional and) local public transport services. Such tasks consist of a set of administrative functions giving rise to the relevant technical functions.
To comply with legal requirements, the authorities concerned need tools in order to support the various functions that have to be performed. In this context, it becomes necessary to be supported by models and methods for simulating public transport systems which allow to simulate the effects of decisions to be taken within the planning context. Mathematical models offer the opportunity to simulate variations in the current mobility and transport system, predicting the effects which would be generated by a given intervention.
Programming and management techniques had an enormous improvement in recent years. The results of applied research have led to Decision Support Systems (DSS), both at strategic (programming) and at tactical (management) levels. Moreover, technology in the field of transport systems and in control systems provided a great contribution to improve transport supply.
This project aims to define guidelines to be followed by local authorities, transport operators and consultants in programming local public transport services.
Objectives:
The objectives of this project are the following:
- to define a general methodology for programming local public transport services, consisting of five inter-related activities:
- definition of available resource allocation;
- definition of design scenarios of the services;
- simulation of design scenarios and estimation of effects;
- calculation of costs and revenues;
- evaluation of design scenarios.
- to define guidelines for programming local public transport, consisting of the following four parts:
- formulation of the three-year local public transport plan in terms of objectives to be pursued, constraints to be respected, elaboration of the plan and resource allocation among areas;
- a methodology for the network and service design by simulation providing criteria and methods for constructing design scenarios (routes, frequencies) in relation to mode fare integration, criteria for using technology for control and information to users, methods of structuring and treating data relative to planned and/or simulated services;
- methods for simulating the effects of the three-year plan including analysis of travel demand, transport supply models, behaviour models for simulating path choice, public transport network assignment (dynamic), and private transport network assignment;
- a methodology for evaluating performances including calculation of costs and revenues, efficiency indicators, effectiveness indicators, evaluation of social impacts, and evaluation and scenario comparison.
- to apply and validate the defined methodology (application of methodology for the network and service design, application of methods for simulating the effects of the three-year plans, application of methodology for scenario evaluation).
The expected outcomes are:
- a document containing guidelines for programming local public transport services;
- two volumes containing respectively the description of the methodology for applying the guidelines and of the applicative experiences;
- a special session organised at European Transport Conference in 2002, where the research results have been presented (see proceedings of ETC Conference 2002);
- a volume presenting models and metho
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