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Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have emerged as efficient, convenient, and cost-effective solutions to meet customer transport needs. Since their advent in developing countries, a plethora of research has examined the service quality attributes of such systems that contribute to customers' overall satisfaction. Yet, there have been some methodological gaps that have limited understanding of what maximizes customer satisfaction with the service quality of the BRT system. This current study intends to fill such gaps and examines drivers of explicit and derived customer satisfaction with BRT systems in the emerging economy of Pakistan. In-depth interviews were first conducted to identify key service quality dimensions for BRT customers from four major Pakistani cities. A structured survey was then used to collect data from a total of 481 respondents (useable responses) using the Qualtrics platform. Data were analyzed via gap analysis, importance-performance grid, and regression analyses in SPSS to identify service quality elements that derive BRT customer satisfaction. These three data analysis techniques produced varying findings regarding service quality dimensions needing improvement to increase satisfaction. This study provides critical insights to improve the customers' BRT experience and some theoretical contributions for future researchers. • Four BRT systems are analyzed in a developing economy. • Importance Performance analysis is conducted. • Explicit and derived satisfaction approaches yield different results. • Ease of access, coverage, and timely information are attributed to focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Number 11 aims to promote inclusiveness and sustainable urbanization, such that cities can become productive and accessible places for attracting talent, encouraging innovation, and creating economic growth. SDG Target 11.2 specifically mentions urban transport. Localizing SDG Target 11.2 involves city governments ensuring a public transport (PT) system that has at least two dimensions of accessibility: physical and economic. This translates to ensuring barrier-free physical access to the PT system, as well as affordable fares for using the PT system. This study presents a process for operationalizing the SDG Target 11.2 indicator for small cities in India. The study focuses on addressing physical access to quality public transport system. Presently, the commuters in these cities are dependent on intermediate PT (IPT) systems to meet their mobility needs. Small cities lack a detailed database for planning PT systems. Master plans are generally prepared by planning authorities to guide the future development of cities; however, the master plan documents lack discussion and vision for future mobility, as required by SDG Target 11.2. This study concludes that the current indicator for SDG Target 11.2 requires modification to ensure SDG-compliant PT systems in small cities. An integrated IPT and PT system is required to improve access to high-quality PT systems, in line with SDG Target 11.2. • An integrated bus and intermediate public transport system can provide access to ~90% of the city population in small cities. • Improvement in Improvement in non-motorized transport (NMT) network and integrated public transport (PT) network, can increase 20–30% public transport demand by 2025, 30–50% increase by 2030 in small cities in India. • Improved intermediate PT (IPT) services in small cities can provide access to 20–30% of the population. • Sustainable Development Goal Target 11.2.1 should include IPT access and a shorter access distance of 300–400 m,. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A method to assess the vulnerability of PTS comprising subsystem is proposed. • Critical areas of PTS are identified based on running timetable and position data. • Differences of vulnerability or critical area between subsystem and PTS are revealed. • A case of high-speed rail and air transport coupling system in China is researched. The public transport system (PTS) consists of different types of transport subsystems, such as high-speed rail (HSR), air transport (AT), conventional railway, expressway and waterway in a state, which exerts significant impacts on distribution of demographic and economic activities. And its interruption or failure may cause severe social and economic disruption. So the vulnerability analysis of the system attracts an increasing attention. However, most of previous researches mainly concentrate on the vulnerability modeling and analyzing of a single subsystem, neglecting the simultaneous interruption of components, and less considering the complementary effects of other subsystems from systematic perspective and the geographic interdependency among components. For trying to fill these gaps, this paper proposes a method to analyze the vulnerability of PTS composed of two or more transport subsystems and identity the critical area within the system based on the data of running timetable and position coordinates. Finally, taking HSR and AT coupling system in mainland China as a case study, we investigate the differences of vulnerability and critical areas between individual subsystem and overall system. Results reveal that the vulnerability variations and the critical areas distribution of the system are different from these of the subsystems. The research also finds that whether a component is critical depends not only on the system's feature, but also on the component's feature, whether an area is critical depends on economic development and population density of the area. These findings are beneficial to prioritize the plan, budget and maintenance of PTS, and prepare emergency response plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure and properties of urban public transport networks are important for understanding the mobility of public transport systems. However, most studies have ignored the impact of shared mobility and lacked the support of large-scale empirical data when exploring the mobility of urban public transport networks. Using multi-mode travel data, this study constructs a three-layer multiplex network and assigns weights to reflect the transport capacity of different modes (bus, metro, and shared bike) based on ridership and travel distances. The case study was conducted on the public transport system of Shenzhen, China. The results show that the degree distribution and edge weight distribution of the multiplex network exhibit distinct scale-free characteristics. The effect of the multiplex network model on single-layer networks suggests that cooperation between networks significantly improves the capacity and efficiency of urban public transport systems. Regression analysis reveals the effects of the urban population and land use on the demand for public transport services. The results show an intrinsic association between the public transport system and urban land use, which will facilitate the prediction of public transport demand and serve the sustainable development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers of public transport systems have been facing for years the strategic challenge of maintaining high quality of transport services to improve the mobility of citizens, while reducing costs and ensuring safety and low environmental impact. A well-established way to evaluate the performance achieved by the system or by specific activities is to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPI). However, existing management systems, which refer to flexible yet large and complex data models, provide a limited support to define and select relevant KPIs for the objectives at hand, and even the identification of whether and how the data model is capable to achieve a certain informative need is a critical and time-consuming task. This work is aimed to propose a framework to ease the development of a monitoring system in the public transport domain. The approach is based on the ontological representation of all the knowledge regarding indicators and their formulas, business objectives, dimension analysis and their relation with the Transmodel, the European reference data model for public transport information systems. On its top, a reasoning framework provides logic functionalities to interactively support designers in a set of common design tasks: the choice of the most suitable indicators for the performance monitoring needs at hand, the definition of new indicators and the identification of the minimal set of Transmodel modules needed to calculate them. A case study is included to discuss these applications, while an evaluation shows the feasibility of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the critical issues of the current urban planning, mobility and accessibility in the post-earthquake (2009) settlement configuration of L’Aquila urban area (Italy), the medieval centre of which has a unique architectural and artistic heritage. The purpose of the study is to analyse the L’Aquila urban planning experiences in order to trace the relationship between the mobility and the spatial structure of the city. The current scenario is considered both as the result of the historical evolution of the settlement and as a dynamic system in which a mix of natural forces, decisional choices and technical expertise have operated. The result of the research is a preliminary proposal for the implementation of the public transportation system that is obtained by integrating a re-designed existing railway line with a sustainable concepts of mobility based on a “dense grid” network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present models and the corresponding decision-support tool, SARTRE, for evaluating the Public Transport Net- works (PTN), and more specifically a bus network. Firstly, we define the framework architecture of SARTRE. The PTN model is explained, and various evaluation and assessment methods are explained. These models and evaluation algorithms are specifically designed to address to the design and the supervision of PTN for small- and medium-size towns. This approach has been success- fully implemented in a decision-support tool, which have been used by the public transport authority of the region of Belfort in France to supervise its new PTN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A hybrid predictive control formulation based on evolutionary multi-objective optimization to optimize real-time operations of public transport systems is presented. The state space model includes bus position, expected load and arrival time at stops. The system is based on discrete events, and the possible operator control actions are: holding vehicles at stations and skipping some stations. The controller (operator) pursues the minimization of a dynamic objective function to generate better operational decisions under uncertain demand at bus stops. In this work, a multi-objective approach is conducted to include different goals in the optimization process that could be opposite. In this case, the optimization was defined in terms of two objectives: waiting time minimization on one side, and impact of the strategies on the other. A genetic algorithm method is proposed to solve the multi-objective dynamic problem. From the conducted experiments considering a single bus line corridor, we found that the two objectives are opposite but with a certain degree of overlapping, in the sense that in all cases both objectives significantly improve the level of service with respect to the open-loop scenario by regularizing the headways. On average, the observed trade-off validates the proposed multi-objective methodology for the studied system, allowing dynamically finding the pseudo-optimal Pareto front and making real-time decisions based on different optimization criteria reflected in the proposed objective function compounds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Moving walkways have been used for people transport for more than a century. One of the latest innovations in this field is the Accelerating Moving Walkway (AMW), which provides higher transport speed. However, the application of moving walkways is still limited to short-distance travel up to 300m. This paper summarizes and analyses the findings of a literature review on (accelerating) moving walkways, which aims to compare the characteristics of AMWs with other public transport systems, namely buses, light rails, Automated People Movers (APMs), and Personal Rapid Transits (PRTs). Based on the comparative evaluation, we conclude that AMWs can be competitive to the other transport modes. Hence, we propose the potential application of AMWs for the transport of people, i.e. pedestrians, over longer distances. Subsequently, issues related to the concept of long-distance AMWs are briefly introduced as topics for further research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]