Editorial - Potential Applications in Practice
Guest Editors:
This is the second of two special issues on public transportation, following a Workshop on Public Transportation held during December 1999 in Hong Kong that acted as a forum for the exchange of expertise, knowledge, and experience among overseas and local experts and researchers. Whilst the first special issue emphasized recent methodological advances in public transportation modeling and analysis (Wong and Lam, 2001), this issue focuses on their potential applications and case studies, particularly in Asia where most of the people rely on public transportation for their daily travel. Six papers are included in this issue, and they are presented as follows.
Bell uses the Curitiba model in Brazil to discuss the potential contribution of transport telematics to the enhancement of bus operations in terms of service quality and carrying capacity. He also highlights the potential applicability of the model to China in the context of toll road construction.
Lo and Yip develop a multinomial logit model to examine four scenarios of fare deregulation for transit services in a competitive market. They analyze the impacts of deregulation on three related parties – service providers, travelers, and society – each of which has distinct objectives (revenue, travel utility, and congestion, respectively). They use Hong Kong as a case study and show that a socially acceptable regulatory environment is likely to involve difficult tradeoffs among these parties.
William H.K. Lam is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, P.R. China, and Editor, Journal of Advanced Transportation.
S.C. Wong, is in the Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, P.R. China.
Yang et al. review the recent development of a network model for taxi services and suggest directions for future research on this topic. They begin by summarizing previous work on model development and solution algorithms. To assess the practical applicability of their approach, the network model is calibrated and validated using Hong Kong as a case study. Further extensions of the model to service area regulation and multi-period equilibrium with endogenous service intensity are discussed.
Wang and Po consider the spatial configuration and pattern of transit routes in examining the relationship between the conflicting objectives of users and system providers, using both a hypothetical and a real case study to illustrate their results.
Asakura and Hato review the recent development of intelligent transportation system (ITS) technologies for application to the public transportation operations in Japan. They demonstrate the potential use of mobile communication systems in monitoring the behavior of public transport users through tracking individual travel activities with an instrument called PEAMON. Field test results are reported to illustrate the effectiveness of the instrument.
Luk and Yang review transit-based ITS measures in Singapore, and report a wide range of ITS initiatives that have been or will be implemented which impact upon public transport systems in terms of delay reduction, comfort enhancement, productivity gains, and better network accessibility.
The editors trust that this special issue will supplement the first by discussing the potential advantages and practicability issues of public transportation through several case studies, and form a bridge between theory and practice for the modeling of public transportation systems.
Reference:
Wong S.C. and Lam W.H.K. (2001) Public Transportation I: Recent Methodological Advances. Journal of Advanced Transportation, 35 (2).
 Return to Journal Listing |
Return to HomePage |