Thesis (MComm (Logistics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The current subsidy system, designed to make South Africa’s public transport more affordable, has instead contributed to a worsening of the existent neglected state of affairs. Although subsidy policies are in place, misdirected allocation renders them mostly ineffective. The implementation of the new integrated public transport systems for metropolitan areas affords an opportunity to adopt a broad spectrum approach and initiate a redesigned and improved subsidy system. The purpose of this study is to assess the South African urban public transport industry with the aim of finding by means of a system-based process a subsidy approach that will overcome the remaining inequalities of the past. This study will consequently evaluate different subsidy theories and determine which one(s) will be best suited to the demands of a specific period. The final objective is to design a product which offers government a systembased process that will help it determine, every few years, whether the subsidy regime being applied at that juncture is still relevant to the requirements of the market and/or what (new) approach is necessary to achieve social and economic wellbeing. Commuter transport in South Africa is currently in a transition phase where new public transport infrastructure is being implemented in the metropolitan cities. The current economic recession (making people’s demand more elastic to prices) present a good time to conduct the system-based process necessary for transition of the public transport system and determine an optimal subsidy approach for the new system. The first step in the system-based process was to determine the scope of work and the overall objectives that should be reached. The main public transport shortcomings are the lack of accessibility to affordable transport for the poor and increasing private transport ownership by the rich, which increases congestion and forms the second step of the systembased process. The third step stated the action plan of strategies on how the objectives could be reached. These three steps also form the basic measurement criteria against which the different subsidy approaches needed to be tested. The fourth step in the system-based process to a better subsidy approach was to evaluate different theoretical subsidy approaches. The review of different subsidy approaches has indicated that some approaches work better than others, but an optimal subsidy system is almost never found.

South Africa provides a fascinating interface between the developed and the developing world and poses a multitude of opportunities for enhancing the sustainable development of local cities. The concept of City Logistics is concerned with the mobility of cities, and entails the process of optimizing urban logistics activities by considering the social, environmental, economic, financial, and energy impacts of urban freight movement. Vehicle routing and scheduling has the potential to address a number of these key focus areas. Applying optimization to vehicle routing and scheduling results in a reduced number of trips, better fleet utilization, and lower maintenance costs; thereby improving the financial situation of the fleet owner. Improved fleet utilization could have a positive environmental impact, while also improving the mobility of the city as a whole. Energy utilization is improved while customer satisfaction could also increase through on-time deliveries and reliability. The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a well-researched problem in Operations Research literature. The main objective of this type of problem is to minimize an objective function, typically distribution cost for individual carriers. The area of application is wide, and specific variants of the VRP transform the basic problem to conform to application specific requirements. It is the view of this dissertation that the various VRP variants have been researched in isolation, with little effort to integrate various problem variants into an instance that is more appropriate to the South African particularity with regards to logistics and vehicle routing. Finding a feasible, and integrated initial solution to a hard problem is the first step in addressing the scheduling issue. This dissertation attempts to integrate three specific variants: multiple time windows, a heterogeneous fleet, and double scheduling. As the problem is burdened with the added constraints, the computational effort required to find a solution increases. The dissertation therefore also contributes to reducing the computational burden by proposing a concept referred to as time window compatibility to intelligently evaluate the insertion of customers on positions within routes. The initial solution algorithm presented proved feasible for the integration of the variants, while the time window compatibility decreased the computational burden by 25%, and as much as 80% for specific customer configurations, when using benchmark data sets from literature. The dissertation also improved the quality of the initial solution, for example total distance traveled, by 13%. Finding an initial solution is the first step in solving vehicle routing problems. The second step is to improve the initial solution iteratively through an improvement heuristic in an attempt to find a global optimum. Although the improvement heuristic falls outside the scope of this dissertation, improvement of the initial solution has a significant impact on the quality of improvement heuristics, and is therefore a valuable contribution. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / MEng / Unrestricted

Rapid growth in suburb-to-suburb commuting has created a problem for transit providers: the dispersed commuting patterns are very difficult to serve with transit, and are characterized by low transit use. This thesis aims to determine which markets have the best potential for transit, and what factors could increase this potential. Surrey, B.C. is typical of the rapidly growing areas where suburb-to-suburb commuting is most prevalent. Commuting between Surrey and other suburban areas has increased sharply in recent years. A detailed examination of commuting patterns within Surrey revealed the highly dispersed nature of the work trip flows; the only flows which were concentrated to any degree were those between nodes with relatively high population and employment densities. A correlation was found between density, especially employment density, and transit use. Inter-nodal trips, which already have the greatest transit use among suburb-to-suburb trips, will be a key market for transit in the suburbs. Inter-nodal express service would help to address complaints that suburb-to-suburb transit service is too slow and indirect. Trips to and from the nodes will also be an important market. Intra-nodal trips, which presently have low transit use, form another key market which could possibly be served by a paratransit shuttle service. In Surrey, efforts have begun to address the issue of suburb-to-suburb transit in a comprehensive manner, but there has been little substantive progress to date. The case study results were used to develop a conceptual framework for suburb-to-suburb transit planning which could then be applied to other suburban areas facing similar problems. The framework calls for a wide array of transit and paratransit services, each filling a different market niche, which can be combined to create an integrated but flexible system. This system must be reinforced with land use strategies to promote greater densities, and more pedestrian and transit friendly design. Transportation demand management must also be used to encourage transit use by increasing the costs of driving an automobile. This three-pronged, comprehensive approach should allow transit to compete successfully in some suburban markets. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

A mixed integer optimization model is developed to determine both the optimal location of transit centres to serve BC Transit's Lower Mainland route network and the optimal allocation of buses to those centres. The existing five transit centres are explored as well as five candidate facilities. The model considers nonrevenue transportation cost (deadhead), capital cost of constructing candidate transit centres and the salvage values of existing centres. A linear regression is generated to produce the travel times from the terminus of a route to potential transit centre locations. The optimal solution is determined, resulting in potential annual savings of over $560,000 compared to the current location-allocation strategy. Various experiments are performed to examine the sensitivity of model parameters and to determine the effect of different planning scenarios. The effect of the optimal solution on driver relief is considered. Conclusions as well as directions for further research are offered. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This thesis examines the opportunities and constraints facing the implementation of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). TOD consists of concentrated, mixed use development within walking distance of a commercial core and a transit stop that provide the focal point for the community and connect the resident to the region. Despite the fact that many planners accept TOD as a useful form of development, TOD has experienced barriers to its implementation. Neither the barriers to implementation, nor the opportunities for overcoming them have been sufficiently researched. This case study of land use planning at the four east Vancouver station areas of Joyce, 29th Avenue, Nanaimo and Broadway of the 'Expo' Advanced Light Rapid Transit (ALRT) line, known locally as 'SkyTrain', addresses this deficiency. Planning literature, planning documents, interviews with seven Vancouver planners, zoning and land use maps, and a land use survey provided the data from which conclusions were drawn. The research suggests that the major barriers to TOD implementation along the Vancouver 'Expo' line were poor transit routing, difficulties in assembling large parcels of land, lack of coordination between public entities, separated regional land use and transportation planning, inadequate political commitment to design and mitigation measures, the setting of goals for the station areas that are not TOD goals and the intrusive nature ALRT due to its elevated guideway. Many of these barriers correspond with those identified by the TOD literature as existing in other cities, but significant barriers that were identified in the case study but not by the literature include the intrusive nature of the ALRT technology due to its elevated guideway, the decision making process that had the province make decisions (e.g. the type of rapid transit technology to be used) without local input, and the absence of sustained implementation. Opportunities for overcoming barriers to TOD include creating more participatory decision making processes that ensure decisions that affect local communities are made at the municipal and regional, rather than provincial, level, the creation of a directly elected agency responsible for both land use and transportation planning, increased coordination between public agencies, and the creation of TOD guidelines. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

A city's intersections are places or voids where the trajectories, paths and commuter routes of a cities citizens collide. They are points of momentary stasis. At intersections the agents of speed and haste characteristic of the flow of the city are brought to a collective pause. The challenge of this thesis was to bring about an architectural representation of this negotiation between flow and pause. There was a desire to see the commuterscape of Vancouver as a way of allowing different publics and contrasting programmes the opportunity for chance encounters and collisions. This desire led to the design of a building which served as an intersection, sometimes carefully controlled while at others free and open to the random flows of urbanism. The site at the corner of Main and Terminal streets in Vancouver was chosen because it is a place where the di verse social, economic and historical fabrics of the city are intersecting. This site is the busiest at grade intersection in Vancouver where skytrain and bus passengers, car drivers and pedestrians are variously pushed together and pulled apart. Commuter space and commuter movement through that space are generally assumed to be unproductive, uninfected movement through vacuous and empty space. This thesis challenges that view by inserting a building into this commuter space to utilize the potentials for exchange, negotiation and encounter offered by such a space. The building is made up of two very different programs - one containing a series of small performing arts theatres, the other commercial and rentable office space. In between the two, the inbound and outbound skytrain tracks and a public walkway create varying perceptual experiences which mediate between the two different typologies. The public zones of the building are used to link the varied programs together and to create connections to the surrounding park and buildings. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

The north-south rail line known in Vancouver as the Arbutus corridor (Figure #1) is currently under-used but not yet abandoned, and its future use is in debate. As owner of the corridor, the Canadian Pacific Rail Co. has publicly announced its desire to change the corridor into a multi-use development. According to the wishes of residents and reflected in the City of Vancouver's policy, however, the corridor will be preserved for transportation use. An alternative design solution would be reactivating the rail line as a much needed north-south transit route, with an adjacent greenway for pedestrian and bike use, as a more responsible and sustainable vision for this corridor. The feasibility of this design, tested at a smaller scale in three Kitsilano neighbourhoods, revealed it is a viable solution. The issues surrounding this case study are the value of a fair public process to ensure a common vision; the validity of the policy preserving existing transportation corridors in urban areas; and the actual effect of rail transit and greenway upon the adjacent, as well the regional environs. Future directions are toward considering transit as a vital element in promoting sustainable communities. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The incidence of bus crashes in the US have been trending upwards, with accident, injury and fatality rates increasing 171%, 37.8%, and 5.1% respectively, between 2003 and 2007. Reversing the upward trend is an important objective of both transit providers and the society in general. This study introduces an operator-based safety methodology that utilizes data recovered from transit Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies and related systems to identify and assess factors contributing to bus operations safety incidents at TriMet, the transit provider for the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region. The analysis specifically focuses on collision, non-collision and total incidents, as well as on preventability of incidents that occurred between 2006 and 2009. Regression analysis established that bus operator age, experience, short duration absenteeism from work, operator's work span and variability in daily work span/assignments are empirically correlated with bus safety incidents. In addition, schedule adherence pressures and bus lift operations are also related to safety incidents. The other factors that influence safety performance are operators' responsive action events and customer complaints about unsafe bus operation. These findings make some contributions to the understanding of the factors that are empirically related to the frequency of safety incidents as well as offer insights into operation practices and policies that hold promise for reducing bus safety incidents.

Congested traffic corridors in dense urban areas are key contributors to the degradation of urban air quality. While waiting at bus stops, transit patrons may be exposed to greater amounts of vehicle-based pollution, including particulate matter, due to their proximity to the roadway. Current guidelines for the location and design of bus stops do not take into account air quality or exposure considerations. This thesis provides a unique contribution to roadside air quality studies and presents an innovative method for the consideration of bus shelter placement. Exposure to roadside pollutants is estimated for transit riders waiting at three-sided bus stop shelters that either: 1) face roadway traffic, or 2) face away from roadway traffic. Shelters were instrumented with particulate matter monitoring equipment, sonic anemometers for wind speed and direction, and vehicle counters capable of categorizing vehicles by length. Temperature and relative humidity were gathered from a nearby monitoring station. Data were collected for two different days at three shelters during both the morning and afternoon peak periods for a total of eleven data periods. Bus shelter orientation is found to significantly affect concentration of four sizes of particulate matter: ultrafine particles, PM1, PM2.5, and PM10. Shelters with an opening oriented towards the roadway were observed to have significantly higher concentrations inside the shelter than outside the shelter. In contrast, shelters oriented away from the roadway were observed to have significantly lower concentrations inside the shelter than outside the shelter. The differences in average particulate matter concentrations are statistically significant across all four sizes of particulate matter studied. Additional correlation and linear regression investigation reveals interactions between particulate concentrations and built environment characteristics, vehicle flow, and weather conditions. Temperature and relative humidity played a large role in the diurnal variation of average concentration levels. In all instances, particulate concentrations were greater during the morning period, often substantially so. Particulate concentrations are shown to vary based on both wind speed and direction. Vehicle flow is correlated with particulate levels, though significance is not consistent. Lagged vehicle flow is demonstrated to be more consistently significant. Regression analysis suggests weather factors such as wind, temperature, and relative humidity explain roughly 70% of particulate variation, while vehicle flow explains less than 6%.

No description available.