Urban transport line-haul systems evaluation

Many cities are presently reaching a growth stage where their existing transit services can no longer adequately serve their rising transit demands. Also, as a policy goal, mass transit systems are being encouraged which can substantially alter the modal split picture. In the assessment of mass transit technologies and also in the design and evaluation of transit services, conformity to the community goal structure is of essential concern. This thesis reports on an investigation into the evaluation of urban mass transit systems. A comprehensive assessment of the evaluation methods is made and a utility-theory based methodology is developed and applied which takes into account most of the important service variables and community impacts. The analysis performed focuses on the line-haul component of the overall urban mass transit system in a corridor or subarea context. At the outset of this study the problem of technology evaluation and its role in the overall urban transportation planning process is examined. It is shown that a new three-level hierarchical structure is preferred over the current approach of two-levels in this process. This additional level proposed is corridor or sub-area planning and it is at this level that technology evaluation should be studied. A survey of the existing practice of technology evaluation is summarized next. It is shown that studies to date do not deal adequately with all of the factors which should be considered in a study of this nature and that trade-offs made among them are not adequately represented. A technique, based on a utility-theoretic approach,' is investigated with respect to its applicability in transit design and evaluation studies. The use of this technique combined into an overall framework is then illustrated by way of a case study of the Alta Vista Corridor in Ottawa. It is expected that the analyses reported in this thesis will be immediately applicable to the situation currently being faced by many cities making the choice of how and where to expand transit services and which technologies are best suited to their needs.