M.Com. (Business Management) / The purpose of the study is to examine the current state of public passenger transport in the area of Ekurhuleni and to make recommendations to improve the situation and in order to fulfil this, the assignment assesses current national, provincial and local government public transport plans. The primary objectives of the study are to illustrate the current scenario of public passenger transport in the area of Ekurhuleni and to make recommendations for the improvement thereof. The secondary objectives are to undertake research in the area to help establish the general sentiment of the public transport users towards public passenger transport. Primary and secondary research methodologies were applied in the research process. The primary research methodology encompassed personal interviews conducted with members of the general public as well as public officials whilst secondary research methodology contributed in the form of published and unpublished data sourced from official reports, the internet and other sources. The study is based on road and rail primary modes of public transport. From the rail mode perspective the study discusses the role that Metrorail and Gautrain fulfil within the research area and from the road transport mode perspective the study reviews the role that is being fulfilled by the taxi and bus operations in the area. The survey investigation undertaken in the study is done for the purposes of gaining an indication of the modal split by usage as well as passenger sentiments on the levels of service the study modes are offering. It must be mentioned though that the researcher is aware of other similar surveys that have been conducted and the intention of conducting this survey is for validation purposes. The survey conducted was done so in areas where due to the proximity of services there was an equal opportunity for a random sample selecting a road and/or rail public transport user for interviews. From the survey conducted as mentioned above the current situation is that there are noteworthy areas of improvement that need to be considered. These areas of improvements stem from both road and rail modes transport. In order to make sizeable improvements from the current state of affairs it is important according to world-renowned public transport expert Vukan R. Vuchic to “understand the inherent characteristics of different modes and that one must free oneself from those real-world...

The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) programs offered a multitude of useful analysis tools for a variety of purposes in the transit industry. One of the significant contributions that GIS offers is the ability to manage and spatially display transit data and then overlay these layers to perform analyses. This paper focuses on how GIS can be used in mass transit planning to understand and analyze basic ridership characteristics. Mass transit is gaining a lot importance in recent years because of the growing concern over the impact of automobiles on our environment and specifically on the quality of life in the urban areas. This paper attempted to use GIS to investigate the ridership characteristics of the transit system in Greater London and the D.C. Metropolitan region.<p> In this paper, ridership characteristics essentially refer to the mode of transportation of the working population and their socio-economic characteristics. The ridership characteristics help us understand generalized travel patterns and the preferred mode of transportation; whether the people prefer public transportation to private transportation. My analysis supported the concept that there is often a nexus between the choice in the mode of transportation, and the socioeconomic conditions of the working population. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

1 / SPK / archives@tulane.edu

Tel Aviv is a rapidly changing city. Since its establishment only a century ago, the city has developed into an innovation hub, rich with culture and architectural history. Part of its hasty evolution from the land of sand dunes to the current metropolis was the construction of the Tel Aviv New Central Bus Station, the largest bus station in the world at the time of completion. Almost three decades after Israeli Architect Ram Karmi designed the station, it opened in 1993, already nicknamed the “white elephant” due to its scale and lack of integration into the surrounding neighborhood of Neve Sha’anan. The New Central Bus Station never met the architect’s intended vision of “a city under a roof” and has significantly transformed over the years, as an attempt to create purpose within the large mass. Neve Sha’anan, in south Tel Aviv, is the poorest area of the city, ridden with homelessness, prostitution and drug addiction. It is also the home to the majority of the African refugee and asylum seeker community i Israel, making up less than half a percent of the population of the country. The small community has been the target of recent refugee policy reforms, which frame them as “infiltrators” or “labor migrants.” 1 The New Central Bus Station fractures the urban environment of Neve Sha’anan and causes spatial disorientation of a community already faced with cultural marginalization. Through an analysis of the impact that top down decision making causing cultural conflict has on architecture and place making, this thesis sets to develop a solution for intervention, which considers the users and urban context as a source for re-configuring existing infrastructure. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Master of Science

Master thesis by the name of "Counter-terrorism in Georgia" aims at investigating antiterrorism environment in Post-Soviet Georgia. Thesis deals with the terrorist challenges faced by our country and implemented preventive measures. Moreover, it outlines geopolitical, regional processes in line with ongoing events in Georgia, showcases possible impacts of abovementioned events on the following regions: Pankisi Gorge, South-West of Georgia, border lines with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Also, our work demonstrates the statistics and ratio of terrorist activities performed in Georgia with the frequency of worldwide terrorist activities. Master thesis attempts to thoroughly cover terrorism and antiterrorism topics, which will greatly contribute to researchers interested in this field.

Modeling the transportation system is important because it provides a “common ground” for discussing policy and examining the future transportation plan required in practices. Generally, modeling is a simplified representation of the real world; however, this research added value to the modeling practice by investigating the asymmetric interactions observed in the real world in order to explore potential improvements of the transportation modeling. The Asymmetric Transportation Equilibrium Problem (ATEP) is designed to precisely model actual transportation systems by considering asymmetric interactions of flows. The enhanced representation of the transportation system by the ATEP is promising because there are various asymmetric interactions in real transportation such as intersections, highway ramps, and toll roads and in the structure of the transit fares. This dissertation characterizes the ATEP with an appropriate solution algorithm and its applications. First, the research investigates the factors affecting the convergence of the ATEP. The double projection method is applied to various asymmetric types and complexities in the different sizes of networks in order to identify the influential factors including demand intensities, network configuration, route composition between modes, and sensitivity of the cost function. Secondly, the research develops an enhancement strategy for improvement in computational speed for the double projection method. The structural characteristics of the ATEP are used to develop the convergence enhancement strategy that significantly reduces the computational burdens. For the application side, instances of asymmetric interactions observed in in-vehicle crowding and the transit fare structure are modeled to provide a suggestion on policy approach for a transit agency. The direct application of the crowding model into the real network indicates that crowd modeling with multi user classes could influence the public transportation system planning and the revenue achievement of transit agencies. Moreover, addition of the disutility factor, crowding, not always causes the increase of disutility from the transit uses. The application of the non-additive fare structure in the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) network addresses the potential of the distance-based fare structure should the UTA make a transition to this fare structure from their current fare model. The analysis finds that the zero base fare has the highest potential for increasing the transit demand. However, collecting less than $0.50 with a certain buffer distance for the first boarding has potential for attracting the users to UTA's transit market upon the fare structure change.

No description available.

Skellefteå befinner sig i en expansiv stadsutvecklingsfas vilket ställer högre krav på trafiksystemet. Studien syftar därmed till att undersöka den lokala planeringen av kollektivtrafik och hur den relaterar till ett Bus rapid transit (BRT)-system. Transit oritented development (TOD) som innebär en samplanering av kollektivtrafik och bebyggelse, utgör arbetets teoretiska ram och är nära kopplat till BRT. Metoden utförs genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer och dokumentanalys av policydokument från Skellefteå kommun. Studien visar att trafiknätet i centrala tätorten har en dålig framkomlighet, vilket kommunen vill åtgärda genom att bland annat utveckla sin kollektivtrafik med fördel framför bilen. I denna utveckling finns det aspekter som är lika ett BRT-system men även vissa delar som avviker från det. Det går även att urskilja tecken på TOD i den lokala planeringen, något som också underlättar en BRT-implementering. Det finns därmed tendenser och ansatser för en BRT-utveckling, men där andra likande alternativ övervägs. / Skellefteå is in an expansive urban development phase that causes higher demands on the traffic system. The study aims to investigate the local planning of public transport and how it relates to a Bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Transit-oriented development (TOD), which involves a co-planning of public transport and settlements, forms the theoretical framework of the study and is closely linked to BRT. The method consisted of semi-structured interviews and document analysis of policy documents from Skellefteå municipality. The study show that the traffic network in the central urban area consists of poor accessibility, which the municipality wants to solve by developing the public transport. In this development there are aspects that are similar to BRT, but some parts that deviate from it. It is possible to distinguish signs of TOD in the local planning, which also facilitates a BRT implementation. There are thus tendencies and approaches for a BRT development, but where other similar alternatives are considered.