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Real-time scheduling: building a business case for making demand responsive, multimodal services.. - 16th Dec 2003
by Peter Warman,
Independent Public Transport Consultant
Summary
Information technology has been used to improve passenger information and to assist in the operational management of public transport services. As we become more familiar with the potential of these systems, the concept of real time scheduling is being developed that suggests that transport services can respond to known and forecasted demand.
The intention of this paper is to explore the vision for public transport systems that monitor and respond to travel demand in real time. This will take a number of years to evolve, but it is the natural consequence of introducing smartcards for ‘bookings’ and ‘payment’ and real-time tracking systems for ‘service control’ and ‘information systems.’
This vision of the future requires that systems continually monitor and forecast travel demand and position suitable vehicles/drivers to ensure the transport capacity is available to meet the demand. The presentation outlines the argument for going down this route.
This approach should appeal to travellers as services can be provided 'on demand,' when passengers wish to travel to any destinations they choose. The approach does not remove the need for high frequency, fixed route services but recognises that these alone do not offer the full range of mobility that is required to compete with the private car. In a world where smartcards are integrated with mobile phones, how could we organise our public transport to respond to the real-time demands of the traveller?
In the past thirty years, the traditional scheduled public transport industry has not been well equipped to provide a travel service that closely matches demand. For example, it has few effective tools that enable it to ‘grow a new bus service.’ The industry has developed by putting more emphasis on controlling its operational costs rather than responding to the evolving patterns of movement generated by the relentless growth in car ownership and the changing land use patterns that have occurred as a result.
This can be contrasted with the taxi and mini-cab sectors, who have designed their operations to respond to travel demand by having the capacity available without presuming how that capacity will be used at any given time. The question facing the bus industry is whether it is willing to change its culture and become more ‘demand responsive’ organisations now it has the technology to do this.
Traditional scheduled public transport involving bus, rail, metro and air services account for about 13% of passenger kilometres in the UK. The remaining 87% is ‘Demand Responsive’ transport in the sense that it is used on demand. For local travel, the popularity of the traditional bus services is only likely to satisfy passenger expectations in urban areas if it has a ‘turn up and go’ service frequency with headways of ten minutes or less during the day. In effect, this is a ‘demand responsive service’ in that the traveller does not rely on memorise departure times from a given stop. Nearly all the growth in bus use in recent years relies on identifying travel demand corridors that can justify high frequency bus operation. If a bus service does not achieve this status, its usage will continue to decline as travellers do not seem willing to tolerate the uncertainties and waiting times associated with low frequency services.
The trends in taxi and private hire vehicles(mini-cabs) usage suggest this is the preferred means of motorised local travel where the car is not available and scheduled public transport is infrequent. Between 1985 and 1999, the number of licensed taxis outside London has doubled. For the same period there was a 40% increase within London. The average number of taxis/PHV trips made in 1997/99 was three times as high as 1975/76. Understandably, people use taxis much more extensively when they have no access to cars. Three or more passengers share thirty percent of taxis journeys and only 35% of taxis journeys involve only one passenger.
We live in a ‘demand led’ consumer culture. The local public transport industry has to recognise this or continue its slow decline outside the major conurbations. As the public transport industry invests in the various databases and transport management systems that are required to fulfil the Transport Direct initiative, it will have the opportunity to monitor the demand for transport in ‘real-time.’ They will also use their systems to fine-tune their scheduling to meet the aspiration for delivering a reliable, on-schedule service. They may then move on to use ‘dynamic scheduling’ systems… matching capacity to demand along a given route. However, with these new tools, do we wish to continue operating buses in the same way? Is there a better way?
Demand responsive transport does not presume that traditional forms of scheduled transport, i.e. bus, tram and train, will be replaced where the capacity offered by these services best serves the requested journeys. However, if the only alternative for scheduled transport is the local taxi service, it would seem that we are missing out on the type of service that offers the flexibility of a taxi and the capacity of a small bus. In recent years, there has been a tendency for taxi operators to provide larger vehicles for their service, although there still seems to be a reluctance to operate more ‘shared passenger’ services.
The intention of the paper is to explain how the UK can provide public transport that monitors and responds to travel demand in real time. This will take a number of years to evolve but is a natural consequence of introducing smartcards for payment and real time tracking systems for service control and information systems. In practice, it requires that systems continually forecast demand and position vehicles/drivers to ensure the transport capacity is available to meet the demand.
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