transportcamp au presentation: designing a multimodal, high-frequency network for melbourne
DESCRIPTION
My presentation at the inaugural TransportCampAU in Melbourne, Nov 1 (http://www.transportcamp.org.au/events/transportcamp-melbourne-2014) about work with Beyond Zero Emissions (http://bze.org.au/) to design a high-frequency bus network, assisted by open source tools such as OpenTripPlanner.TRANSCRIPT
Designing a High-Frequency
Intermodal transport network for
Melbourne
Patrick Sunter, 1 Nov 2014
Inaugural Australian TransportCamp, 2014
Multimodal Networks Network image from HiTrans Best Practice Guide (Nielsen et al, 2005).
Photo credits: www.pt4me2.org.au, Wikimedia commons user "voland b", Flickr user "avlxyz”. Travel time map from www.mapumental.com.
Isochrones:- comparing mobility
“Valorises mode interchanges”
Makes invisible concepts like “effective transfers” and frequency(*) visible in a spatial way
(*) to see full impact of frequency, may have to use tricks like averaging several departures;
Travel time map from www.mapumental.com.
Advance of technology to permit this
Desktop GIS and spatial databases
High-level programming languages (Python, Java, JavaScript)
Rapid computation of algorithms for routing (such as A*, Djikstra’s algorithm)
Good standard tools for Geographic and spatial manipulation (PostGIS, GDAL/OGR)
Vibrant web devt. infrastructure (Javascript libraries)
Importance of Open standards, open, and (crowd-sourced) data
Standards: OGC – Open Geospatial Consortium
OpenStreetMap
GTFS developers.google.com/transit/
Melbourne’s network, compared to BZE ‘clean slate’ bus re-design
Increased frequency (5 mins during peak on core network) Added more use of bus-on-motorways. https://www.ttc.ca/images/fixedImages/TTCRideGuide.pdf
BZE Process
Networks (GIS) -> Augmented n/w topology, inc stops -> GTFS (Python scripts) -> OTP Graph (using addition of OSM data)
Post-processing results using QGIS + Python scripts (GDAL, Shapely)
(Further analysis of travel-times computed in other software such as Netview, Excel)
https://github.com/PatSunter/SimpleGTFSCreator
BZE results 2 (E.g. Isochrone comparison)
http://analyst.melbptfutures.net
http://130.56.248.56/opentripplanner-webapp-ptv/#/
http://130.56.248.56/opentripplanner-webapp (BZE)
Some different forms of comparison
Computing isochrones (next slide) and network change analysis;
Travel-time analysis; E.g. work-in-progress bus network redesign and
frequency increase reduces avg. travel time from selected (1000+) origins & destinations:
from 52.5 minutes
to 43.2 minutes,
a 17.8% reduction (with 4km max walk distance).
Costing out options How do we best spend public money to get benefits
Buses cost increases as frequency increases, but decreases as speed increases
Bus Freq Orig time (avg)
Updated time (avg)
Reduction N Buses Mway
buses
5 52.5 45.9 12.50% 3281 207
7.5 '' 47.9 8.90% 2202 139
10 '' 48.6 7.50% 1661 104
12.5 '' 49.5 5.85% 1338 85
15 '' 50 4.75% 1120 71
BZE Further plans
BZE further plans: Integrate selected heavy rail improvements;
Tune frequencies depending on projected demand;
Simulate some regions for bus/tram priority measures;
Investigating options for short-range service:- More localised feeder services;
Demand-based transport services;
Some reflections & lessons learnt Crucial importance of walking. Over a large
area, various ways to serve this, more thought needed; Some smaller buses with a ‘feeder’ role Some demand-responsive buses, esp. in outer
areas (or even in inner as a subsidy to less able) Some level of walking in the system may be good
for public health (*), people will walk farther to a fast, frequent service.
Or:- an opportunity to better integrate cycling with heavy rail, to move in more Dutch/Danish direction?
Further Info & Acknowledgements
Further info: http://www.appropedia.org/OSSTIP BZE:
http://bze.org.au/zero-carbon-australia-2020/transport-plan http://analyst.melbptfutures.net/
Acknowledgements: My PhD supervisors and advisory committee: Prof. Nick Low,
Prof. Judy McKay, A/Prof Chris Pettit, Prof. Marcus Wigan Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) and Public Transport Users
Association (PTUA) project collaborators OTP, QGIS, GDAL, Python, and other FOSS developers; OpenStreetMap contributors; NECTAR, for web and VM hosting;