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Rail transit impacts on adjacent neighborhoods are contested. Through the lens of New Urbanism and sustainable urban development, this article offers a critical analysis of different perceptions of...

This paper examines the impact of the opening of a light rail transit (LRT) line on commuting patterns in adjacent neighborhoods in a case study on Charlotte, North Carolina. The results show a reduction in commuting distance experienced by higher-wage workers, while it is increased for lower-wage workers after the opening of the city’s first LRT line. These results are expected as the alignment of the LRT line connects higher income neighborhoods to the areas with significant shares of higher-wage jobs. Low- and medium-wage workers in the LRT accessible neighborhoods did not seen a significant improvement in the spatial separation between their work place and place of residence after the opening of the LRT, which may conflict with goals of increasing accessibility for the transit dependent population.

In this situation, it is necessary to establish and manage a SIP (Shelter In Place) by utilizing existing facilities rather than increasing the number of evacuation facilities. These facilities can...

In the 1990s, some cities across the United States invested significantly in expanding light rail transit (LRT) systems. As a result, transit-oriented development (TOD) near new stations became a d...

Goals for public transit agencies and new public transport infrastructure projects include attracting new riders and retaining existing system users. An understanding of the public transport market and its preferences, habits, and attitudes can help public transit agencies reach these goals by shedding light on how to increase customer satisfaction. To understand potential users of one of Montreal’s most recent major transport projects, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), we conducted a survey in Fall 2019 while the light-rail system was under construction. Drawing on vetted transport market-segmentation frameworks, this study employs an exploratory factor analysis to reveal factors that affect respondents’ propensity to use the REM. A k-means cluster test is applied to the factors to articulate market segments. The analysis returned four clusters that form a clear spectrum of least likely to most likely REM users: car-friendly non-users, urban core potential users, transit-friendly users, and leisure and airport users. Positive opinion, proximity, and desire to use the REM for leisure or non-work trips are three key characteristics of likely users. There is a visible relationship between clusters who are likely to use the REM and clusters who agree that the REM will benefit their neighborhood. Improving people’s perception of the potential benefit of the REM to their neighborhood, better accommodating leisure use, emphasizing and communicating appealing destinations, and highlighting transit connections are four core ways that planners could work to potentially increase the number of people who are likely to use the REM.

The transport of the tram system on a high capacity corridor in a narrow urban area with increasing demand has become limiting both in terms of capacity and in terms of quality improvement. In this sense, the tram system in Sarajevo, as the primary system of city passenger transport, for many years, requires improvement in order to meet demand. The lack of clear strategies and plans for improving the primary transport system results in interventions of short-term investments in the maintenance of the infrastructure and suprastructure of the classic tramway of outdated and abandoned technology. In this way, the system is brought into a state of very unreliable and unsafe work. On the other hand, it is obvious that the development of individual motorized traffic has led to the fact that the common route has worsened the quality and safety of driving. The paper presents basic guidelines and aspects for the transformation of the classical tram in Sarajevo to the Light Rail System that can reach the fast city railway with the quantity and quality of the offer.

This paper presents the concepts for an anti-collision system intended for trams. The purpose of the anti-collision system is to develop and provide information to support the driver’s decision to initiate the braking of a tram. The anti-collision system is based on the processing of data from multiple sources (obstacle detection, image processing, and visual light communication system) and an expert system. The information about the road situation is visually presented on HUD (Head-up Display) of the driver.

The inner and middle suburbs of Adelaide South Australia have low levels of public transport use and high levels of private motor vehicle use for commuting compared to the inner and middle suburbs of Australia’s other major cities. A major reason for this is an absence of a rapid transit system in the region and the subsequent reliance upon bus commuter services in mixed traffic. The state government has proposed reintroducing light rail ’trams’ into inner and middle suburbs as radial routes connected to the central business district. The justification for the reintroduction is largely concerned with enhancing the city’s global image and facilitating urban infill. This article uses evidence from a literature review and statistical and physical analyses to ascertain the appropriateness of four common public transport systems, buses in mixed traffic, heavy rail transit, light rail transit and bus rapid transit for a central area of Adelaide South Australia where a new light rail line is proposed. This article argues ‘Curitiba’ styled bus rapid transit is the best option for the area because it is far less expensive than light or heavy rail, it has the potential to provide a rapid transit option for significantly more existing residents in the area, and would be more reliable and convenient for the people in its catchment. In doing so it can also provide a more equitable service.

Near-fault (NF) earthquakes cause severe bridge damage, particularly urban bridges subjected to light rail transit (LRT), which could affect the safety of the light rail transit vehicle (“light rail vehicle” or “LRV” for short). Now when a variety of studies on the fault fracture effect on the working protection of LRVs are available for the study of cars subjected to far-reaching soil motion (FFGMs), further examination is appropriate. For the first time, this paper introduced the LRV derailment mechanism caused by pulse-type near-fault ground motions (NFGMs), suggesting the concept of pulse derailment. The effects of near-fault ground motions (NFGMs) are included in an available numerical process developed for the LRV analysis of the VBI system. A simplified iterative algorithm is proposed to assess the stability and nonlinear seismic response of an LRV-reinforced concrete (RC) viaduct (LRVBRCV) system to a long-period NFGMs using the dynamic substructure method (DSM). Furthermore, a computer simulation software was developed to compute the nonlinear seismic responses of the VBI system to pulse-type NFGMs, non-pulse-type NFGMs, and FFGMs named Dynamic Interaction Analysis for Light-Rail-Vehicle Bridge System (DIALRVBS). The nonlinear bridge seismic reaction determines the impact of pulses on lateral peak earth acceleration (Ap) and lateral peak land (Vp) ratios. The analysis results quantify the effects of pulse-type NFGMs seismic responses on the LRV operations' safety. In contrast with the pulse-type non-pulse NFGMs and FFGMs, this article's research shows that pulse-type NFGM derail trains primarily via the transverse velocity pulse effect. Hence, this study's results and the proposed method can improve the LRT bridges' seismic designs.

Urban environments are characterized by pronounced spatiotemporal heterogeneity, which can present sampling challenges when utilizing conventional greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement systems. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a GHG instrument was deployed on a light rail train car that continuously traverses the Salt Lake Valley (SLV) through a range of urban typologies. CO2 measurements from a light rail train car were used within a Bayesian inverse modeling framework to constrain urban emissions across the SLV during the fall of 2015. The primary objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate whether ground-based mobile measurements could be used to constrain urban emissions using an inverse modeling framework and (2) quantify the information that mobile observations provided relative to conventional GHG monitoring networks. Preliminary results suggest that ingesting mobile measurements into an inverse modeling framework generated a posterior emission estimate that more closely aligned with observations, reduced posterior emission uncertainties, and extends the geographical extent of emission adjustments.

Regional integration is increasingly used as a policy strategy to accelerate urban development and regional cooperation. This research assesses the effects of regional integration on housing prices to evaluate policy effectiveness for small and medium-sized cities on the peripheries of core cities. Taking as a case study the Chinese city of Kaifeng—a contiguous city in the Zhengzhou megaregion—we utilized hedonic house price modelling and spatial econometrics to investigate the effect of Kaifeng’s integration with the core city on the dynamics and determinants of housing prices between 2001 and 2016. The results show that housing prices in Kaifeng increased significantly after the city’s integration with Zhengzhou in 2005. Further, the results confirm that the regional integration had a significantly positive effect on housing prices, especially in border areas. Moreover, the new time-saving cross-border light rail system had more influence on the prices of nearby housing than the new expressway, and new urban districts with high-quality amenities led to a sharp rise in housing prices in Kaifeng. Our findings offer policymakers some guidance concerning regional cooperation and urban development.

PurposeThe paper investigates the governance and administrative process in the Palembang Light Rail Train (LRT) project in Indonesia and gives suggestions on the strategic development of the LRT project for creating a desakota technopole in Palembang.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts both STEEP (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political) analysis and desakota technopole theoretical framework. The STEEP analysis is used to explain the Palembang LRT project which is to meet one of the city’s high-tech urban transportation goals. The desakota technopole framework is used as a strategic urban planning guideline for the further development of Palembang.FindingsThis paper has three findings. First, based on STEEP analysis, Palembang needs smart urban transportation, such as LRT, to solve the present and future traffic problems. Second, the governance and administrative process in the LRT project is mandated to national companies as part of a national government infrastructure policy financed over multiple years through the national budget. Third, it is critical for national, provincial, and local governments to adopt a desakota technopole framework strategy to meet long-term targets.Originality/valueThis paper highlights Indonesia experience towards making a desakota technopole, using the Palembang LRT project policy as the key driver under investigation.

This article explores the shape of queer sexual habits and gendered forms of desire along the Jerusalem light rail, a route whose role in normalizing Israeli occupation and colonialism has been hotly contested during its construction and since its opening in 2011. Analyzing how this infrastructure can invite both colonial and sexual relations, which slip and slide into one another, the author argues that the train provides a shared setting to cruise for both security dangers and enticing strangers. The light rail—the national and security interests that went into producing it, the eventual material shape it took, and how it altered the colonial landscape—has entwined forms of surveillance, suspicion, and sexuality, deeply affecting how individuals gauge, judge, sense, watch, and seduce one another. Ideology, in other words, haunts pleasure as it lurks within and through built environments, the exact environments wherein sex rouses and arouses the senses. Danger and desire become kindred. Offering an ethics of cruising, the essay unravels how sexual, colonial, and racialized sensibilities take shape in tandem, sometimes through a single look or glance, to argue for abandoning the idea that cruising is always an idealized pursuit of pleasure.

This paper presents a numerical study concerning light rail (LR) bridges, with emphasis on the characterisation of load effects and the interaction between LR loadings and supporting structures. The predicted bridge responses were employed to appraise the provisions of the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (Aashto) load and resistance factor design (LRFD) bridge design specifications (BDS) and the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association manual. Because existing methods to determine live load distributions and skew correction factors are inadequate for LR bridges, new design equations are proposed. A single multiple presence factor of 1·0 is recommended for LR bridges, regardless of loaded tracks. The centrifugal force of curved bridges decays as the radius of curvature increases due to a change in centrifugal acceleration. Regarding the longitudinal force resulting from train braking, multipliers are suggested for design provisions. Temperature-induced loading is distributed to the bridge girders. Rail break is expected up to 75 mm within the range of thermal loading specified in Aashto LRFD BDS, which leads to an increase in dynamic load allowance. The force transfer from superstructure to substructure is marginally influenced by bearing arrangement. A statistical test was conducted to comparatively assess the equivalency of the bridge responses related to the above-mentioned design parameters.

The hybrid energy storage system (HESS) helps to lighten the power supply equipment of light rail vehicles (LRVs), and the static wireless power transfer (WPT) technology can improve the disadvantages of wired charging. This article focuses on the WPT-based charging strategy for HESS, the efficiency and cost of the WPT system are focused. Considering the specific of the HESS in the application of LRV, a charging strategy is designed and optimized to achieve the optimal efficiency tracking of the WPT system, and the strategy can also avoid the wireless communication between the primary side and secondary side. In addition, the bidirectional power flow is proposed to reduce the power level of the WPT system, which helps save system costs. Furthermore, the dynamic power allocation of HESS is improved based on the LRV operating situations, and the WPT system parameters and HESS charging parameters are optimized correspondingly. Finally, the feasibility of the charging strategy is verified by 27.8-kW WPT charging experiments.

As car ownership soars, traffic congestion and its associated negative impacts have become real concerns in many cities around the world. Therefore, transportation systems that perform better in eliminating or reducing traffic congestion and related problems to tolerable levels have become imperative. Alternative transit systems should be assessed properly to accommodate the expected demand in the long term, at least, to some significant extent. However, this is generally neglected in developing countries and, among many possible alternatives, a popular transportation system is usually preferred within the available budget. As an example, Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, Turkey, has recently implemented a light rail transportation system (LRT) on its major east–west corridor as the main transit system. In this study, the existing LRT is assessed and its performance is compared with a hypothetical bus rapid transit (BRT) system, which is a strong contender and comparatively a lower-cost alternative. This is done to assess whether the LRT was the better choice in relation to the current demand. Therefore, in this study, the existing LRT system is first defined in the PTV VISSIM simulation environment. Then, the hypothetical BRT system is considered on the same route with the current demand. The capability and capacities of the existing LRT and the BRT system are assessed and compared in many aspects. The results are compared, and important findings are outlined.

Many American cities have launched or expanded light rail or streetcar services recently, which has resulted in a 61% increase in light rail and streetcar revenue miles nationwide during the period 2006–2016. Moreover, light rail and streetcars exhibit higher fatality rates per passenger mile traveled compared with other transit modes. In light of these trends, this study explores light rail and streetcar collisions, injuries, and fatalities using data obtained from the National Transit Database. This study applies a two-part methodology. In the first part, descriptive statistics are calculated for light rail and streetcar collisions, injuries, and fatalities, and a comparative analysis of light rail and streetcars is performed. In the second part, multilevel negative binomial regression models are used to analyze light rail and streetcar collisions and injuries. Three key findings have emerged from this study. First, the results generally align with findings from prior studies that show the majority of light rail and streetcar collisions occur in mixed right-of-way or near at-grade crossings. Second, this analysis revealed an issue predominantly at stations: 42% of light rail injuries were people waiting or leaving. Third, suicide was the leading cause of light rail fatalities, which represents 28% of all light rail fatalities. The implications of this study are important for cities that currently operate these modes or are planning to introduce new light rail or streetcar service to improve safety.

Nowadays, urban transit system has become one of the major forces underlying urban pace transformation via changing accessibility of related land parcels, which leads to the changes of land value and land use structure. This paper studied the interaction between land use changes and related transport routes, particular about how different transport routes and road nodes influence the conversion of industrial lands to residential and commercial uses respectively. Taking Changchun, an old industrial city in the rust belt of China as a case of study, we explored and compared the influences of different transport routes and road nodes on industrial land conversion. We found that surrounding the studied transport routes, more industrial lands were replaced by residential lands than by commercial lands. Also, apparent differences exist in the corridor effects of different transport routes (i.e., light rail, expressway and trunk road) and road nodes (i.e., expressway nodes and trunk road nodes) while the industrial lands convert to residential and commercial uses. Our research findings help us to illuminate the interactive relationships between transportation and industrial land conversion in old industrial cities which are undergoing social, economic and the related urban transition in Northeast China.