Transportation systems analysis

Lecture notes in Transportation Systems Engineering

November 4, 2011

Goal of Transportation System Analysis

In the last couple of decades transportation systems analysis (TSA) has emerged as a recognized profession. More and more government organizations, universities, researchers, consultants, and private industrial groups around the world are becoming truly multi-modal in their orientation and are as opting a systematic approach to transportation problems. I have added stuff here.

Characteristics

1. Multi-modal: Covering all modes or transport; air, land, and sea and both passenger and freight.
2. Multi-sector: Encompassing the problem,s and viewpoints of government, private industry, and public.
3. Multi-problem: Ranging across a spectrum of issues that includes national and international policy, planning of regional system, the location and design of specific facilities, carrier management issues, regulatory, institutional and financial policies.
4. Multi-objective: National and regional economic development, urban development, environment quality, and social quality, as well as service to users and financial and economic feasibility.
5. Multi-disciplinary: Drawing on the theories and methods of engineering, economics, operation research, political science, psychology, other natural and social sciences, management and law.

Context

1. Planning range: Urban transportation planning, producing long range plans for 5-25 years for multi-modal transportation systems in urban areas as well as short range programs of action for less than five years.
2. Passenger transport: Regional passenger transportation, dealing with inter-city passenger transport by air, rail, and highway and possible with new modes.
3. Freight transport: routing and management, choice of different modes of rail and truck.
4. International transport: Issues such as containerization, inter-modal co-ordination.

Goal of TSA

In spite of the diversity of problems types, institutional contexts and technical perspectives their is an underlying unity: a body of theory and set of basic principles to be utilizes in every analysis of transportation systems. The core of this is the transportation system analysis approach. The focus of this is the interaction between the transportation and activity systems of region. This approach is to intervene, delicately and deliberately in the complex fabric of society to use transport effectively in coordination with other public and private actions to achieve the goals of that society. For this the analyst must have substantial understanding of the transportation systems and their interaction with activity systems; which requires understanding of the basic theoretical concepts and available empirical knowledge.

Role of TSA

The methodological challenge of transportation systems is to conduct a systematic analysis in a particular situation which is valid, practical, and relevant and which assist in clarifying the issues to debated. The core of the system analysis is the prediction of flows, which must be complemented by the predication for other impacts. Refer Fig. 1 Predication is only a part of the process of analysis and technical analysis is only a part of the broader problem, and the role of the professional transportation system analysis is to model the process of bringing about changes in the society through the means of transport.

Figure 1: Role of transportation system analyst

Influence of TSA: Applications

Transportation system analysis can lead to different application specialties and they include:

1. highway engineering
2. freight transportation
3. marine transportation
4. transportation management
5. airport planning
6. port planning and development
7. transportation regulation
8. transportation economics
9. environmental impacts

Influence of TSA: Methodologies

Transportation system analysis can also lead to different methodological specialties and they include:

1. Demand analysis, estimation and forecasting
2. transportation system performance like delays, waiting time, mobility, etc.
3. policy analysis and implementation
4. urban planning and development
5. land-use management

Influence of TSA: Methodologies

Finally, transportation system analysis can lead to different professional specialties and they include:

1. technical analyst
2. project managers
3. community interaction
4. policy analyst

The Scope of TSA

Background: A changing world

The strong interrelationship and the interaction between transportation and the rest of the society especially in a rapidly changing world is significant to a transportation planner. Among them four critical dimensions of change in transportation system can be identified; which form the background to develop a right perspective.

1. Change in the demand: When the population, income, and land-use pattern changes, the pattern of demand changes; both in the amount and spatial distribution of that demand.
2. Changes in the technology: As an example, earlier, only two alternatives (bus transit and rail transit) were considered for urban transportation. But, now new system like LRT, MRTS, etc offer a variety of alternatives.
3. Change in operational policy: Variety of policy options designed to improve the efficiency, such as incentive for car-pooling, road pricing etc.
4. Change in values of the public: Earlier all beneficiaries of a system was monolithically considered as users. Now, not one system can be beneficial to all, instead one must identify the target groups like rich, poor, young, work trip, leisure, etc.

Basic premise of a transportation system

The first step in formulation of a system analysis of transportation system is to examine the scope of analytical work. The basic premise is the explicit treatment of the total transportation system of region and the interrelations between the transportation and socioeconomic context.

P1

The total transportation system must be viewed as a single multi-modal system.

P2

Considerations of transportation system cannot be separated from considerations of social, economic, and political system of the region.

This follows the following steps for the analysis of transportation system:

• S1 Consider all modes of transportation
• S2 Consider all elements of transportation like persons, goods, carriers (vehicles), paths in the network facilities in which vehicles are going, the terminal, etc.
• S3 Consider all movements of movements of passengers and goods for every O-D pair.
• S4 Consider the total tip for every flows for every O-D over all modes and facilitates.

As an example consider the the study of inter-city passenger transport in metro cities.

• Consider all modes: i.e rail, road, air, buses, private automobiles, trucks, new modes like LRT, MRTS, etc.
• Consider all elements like direct and indirect links, vehicles that can operate, terminals, transfer points, intra-city transit like taxis, autos, urban transit.
• Consider diverse pattern of O-D of passenger and good.
• Consider service provided for access, egress, transfer points and mid-block travel etc.

Once all these components are identified, the planner can focus on elements that are of real concern.

Interrelationship of T&A

Transportation system is tightly interrelated with socio-economic system. Transportation affect the growth and changes of socio-economic system, and will triggers changes in transportation system. The whole system of interest can be defined by these basic variables:

$T$

The transportation system including different modes, facilities like highways, etc.

$A$

The socio-economic activity system like work, land-use, housing, schools, etc. Activity system is defined as the totality of social, economic, political, and other transactions taking place over space and time in a given region.

$F$

The flow pattern which includes O-D, routes, volume or passenger/goods, etc.

Three kinds or relationships can be identified as shown in Fig. 2 and can be summaries as follows:

• $F$ is determined by $T$ and $A$.
• Current $F$ will cause changes over time in $A$ through the pattern of $T$ and through the resources consumed in providing $T$.
• Current $F$ will also cause changes over time in $T$ due to changes in $A$

Note that $A$ is not a simple variable as it looks. Also note that transportation is not the sole agency causing changes in $A$.

Figure 2: Relationship between $T$, $A$ and $F$

Intervening TAF system

The mode of fulfilling the objective of intervening the system of TAF is important. The three major player in the TAF system are:

• User The users of the transportation system will decided when where and how to travel.
• Operator The operator of a particular facility or service operator will decide the mode of operation, routes, schedule, facilities, etc.
• Government Government will decided on taxes, subsidies, construction of new facilities, governing law, fares, etc.

Their intervention can be in either transportation or activity system. The transportation options available to impart changes in the system are:

1. Technology (eg. articulated bus, sky bus, etc.);
2. Network (eg. grid or radial);
3. Link characteristics (eg. signalized or flyover at an intersection);
4. Vehicles (eg. increase the fleet size);
5. System operating policy (eg. increase frequency or subsidy); and
6. Organizational policy (eg. private or public transit system in a city).

On the other hand, some of the activity options are:

1. Travel demand which is the aggregate result of all the individual travel decisions. The decision can be travel by train or bus, shortest distance route or shortest travel time route, when (time) and how (mode) to travel, etc.
2. Other options Most of the social, economic, and political actors in the activity system decide when, how, or where to conduct activities. For example, the choice of school is affected by the transportation facility, or the price of real estate influenced by the transportation facilities.

The impacts of the transportation and activity options mentioned above diverse impact as illustrated in fig. 3

Figure 3: Impact of TAF system

Prediction of flows

Any proposed change in transportation system will trigger a change in system activity which needs a procedure to predict the impacts. The impact depend upon the pattern of flows resulting from particular flows. The core of any TSA is th prediction of changes in flows which is the most significant impact of change in transportation system. Consider present transportation system $T$ and activity system $A$. A particular change in transportation system will be defined in terms of changes in $T$.

$$T' = T\pm\Delta{T}$$

$$A' = A\pm\Delta{A}$$

$$\Rightarrow F\rightarrow{F'}$$ (1)

Initially, $T$, $A$, and $F$ exist in an equilibrium, i.e., specification of transportation system $T$ at any point in time and of activity system $A$ implies the pattern of flows, $F$. The basic hypothesis underlying this statement is that there is a market for transportation which can be separated out from other markets. This is type 1 relationship and can be separated out from type 2 and type 3 relationships (Fig. 2). Introducing two more variables, the first indicated the service characteristics expressed by $F$ like travel time, fare, comfort, etc. which is denoted as $S$ and the volume of flow in the network denoted as $V$, following relations can be stated.

1. Specification of transportation system $T$ establishes service function $f_j$ which indicate how the level of service varies as a function of the transportation option and the volume of flows; i.e.

   $$S=f_j(T,V)$$ (2)

   
   

2. Specification of the activity system options, $A$ establishes demand function, $f_d$, which gives the volume of flow as function of activity system and level of service; i.e.

   $$V=f_d(A,S)$$ (3)

   
   

3. The flow pattern $F$ consists of the volume $V$ using the system and level of service $S$; i.e.

   $$F=(V,S)$$ (4)

   
   

for a particular $T$ and $A$, the flow pattern that will actually occur can be found by the solution of service function and demand function:

$$S = f_j(T,V)$$

$$V = f_d(A,S)$$

$$\Rightarrow (V^{o},S^{o}),   {i.e.}$$

$$(T,A) \Rightarrow (f_j,f_d)$$

$$\Rightarrow [f(A,T)$$

$$\Rightarrow V^{o},S^{o}$$

The above relations are shown in Fig. 4.

Figure 4: Graphical representation of flow prediction

Bibliography

1 M L Manheim. Fundamentals of transportation systems analysis Vol.1. MIT Press, 1978.