Transport Data Systems

In cities in the emerging world, public transport networks are governed by a large number of agents, each with their own agendas, priorities, incentives and resources, interacting nonlinearly through complex feedback loops. The transport system in these cities have developed into a semi-chaotic self-organizing structure with seemingly unpredictable behaviour to an outside observer. This is due to user agent actions by passengers, independent determination of operating plans and practices by transport operators, and a managing authority exhibiting a lack of will (both political and institutional), to implement adequate control measures to provide regulation and management of these systems. Based on the problems that face transport systems in developing cities and public transport in particular, this paper reports on an attempt to understand the supply of public transport in the Kampala area in a novel manner. We describe a mapping approach using a custom-developed smartphone application which was used to quickly and accurately capture informal transport systems for analysis and study of urban mobility where no dependable data was currently available. Secondly, based on the data created by the study project, to provide insights into the routes, operations and characteristics of the minibus taxi network which convey the majority of Kampala's travelers. Our hypothesis is that by understanding the network in geospatial terms, we will be able to create benefits for all role-players and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the supply of public transport to more closely match the demand for public transport in an emerging world city.

This report describes a systematic examination and person-oriented analysis of a number of the household interview surveys carried out in Australia between 1970 and 1981. The aim of the report is to concentrate on the person based travel characteristics rather than the household as a prime emphasis. The household age structure, as a lifecycle description, is examined as a basis part of this concentration on person travel. Regularities between different types of household and person are explored, and detailed patterns of travel time and other activity time exposure are presented. The special roles of different forms of travel for different age groups and people of each sex are examined, and the exposure and travel differences between the two sexes are examined. The results provide an effective way of expressing the special characteristics of often comparatively neglected modes, such as walking and bicycle riding, in similar terms to the major car usage and public transport modes. The findings presented here have been selected to provide a visually-oriented factual basis for considering personal
travel characteristics in a consistent and graphical format by all modes in the cities considered, and have been placed in an international context where the data are available to do so. Details are given of the sources in various machine readable and directly usable formats in a companion volume, ARRB Technical Manual 24. It is recommended that optical media now be used to create more stable and self-documented archival access to these and similar data sets

This paper presents an innovative way of conducting on-board vehicle surveys for minibus taxis using a mobile app to collect route traces, stop locations and importantly individual trip boarding and alighting pairs. On-board surveys were carried out on a city-wide-basis by field teams making use of a mobile application for data collection on operations and passenger activity along an estimated 800 licensed minibus taxi routes in the Cape Town municipal area using a prescribed sampling technique. The core technology itself has already been presented in a paper by Ndibatya, Coetzee and Booysen (SATC, 2016), as well as a follow-up progress presentation by Coetzee (SATC, 2017). This paper is a follow-up on the work presented in 2016 and 2017 by Ndibatya et al (Ndibatya, Coetzee, and Booysen, 2017). It describes the methodology followed for the individual passenger boarding and alighting surveys for minibus taxis at an unprecedented scale and duration. The methodology has significantly advanced due to the ability to now capture the demographics of each passenger boarding and alighting on the vehicles surveyed. Further, this paper presents a number of innovative techniques to analyse and generate reports on the data using geospatial comparisons, machine learning, by means of a custom management tool developed in-house by GoMetro.

Paratransit forms the basis of public transport systems in many of worlds emerging cities. However, there is limited information available on the extent of operations, the route network and passenger demand. Manual passenger counting techniques alone do not provide sufficient information on the extent of network coverage and passenger turnover for the routes on a network. Exploring techniques and methodologies to collecting data on paratransit operations using mobile technology helps us get an informed picture of the transportation system, and helps us make smarter choices when it comes to improving the existing system. Application of mobile technology to collect paratransit data in emerging markets has enabled the development of new data sources. These data sources help discover the extent of network coverage and enable the profiling of routes on the network from the collected passenger information. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate a methodology on the application of m...

This report describes the databases used, the production techniques adopted and the graphical databases created as a result of a systematic examination and person -oriented analysis of a number of the household interview surveys carried out in Australia between 1970 and 1981,and reported in ARRB Special Report SR38. The aims of this manual are (1) to summarise the datasets used and their archival formats; (2) to specify and describe the programs and procedures used to typeset the basic
tabulations produced on the ARRB Cyber 815 directly on the ARRB AM6400 typesetter, without any of the transcription errors normally incurred with such published materials; (3) to specify the Postscript
procedures required to produce customised print-ready three-dimensional summary display diagrams;
(4) lTo provide a concise reference for the various report production and integration procedures and methods used to go straight from text to final copy; (5) to specify the production of pictorial databases of the several hundred diagrams created for SR38; (6) to describe the automated slide shows created using these pictorial materials, and (7) to detail the form and nature of the various  forms of material available on magnetic media. The recommendations include the greater use of visual and audio communications aids as a means of reporting research, and the trial of optical mass storage media for data, programs, study descriptions, diagrams and results of major surveys.

Sustainable transport requires a perspective that extends beyond the present and beyond the transport system itself. To view sustainability properly requires more sophisticated models than we currently employ, and more data than we currently collect. As we extend the capabilities of models, and require better monitoring of transport impacts, the scope and scale of data needs increases significantly. Scope increases as environmental data items, covering issues such as air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions, are needed. Scale increases as both temporal and spatial detail expands. For example, morning weekday peak commuter travel data to key destinations was once sufficient for planning transport capacity. However to monitor the environmental impacts of transport, or assess measures to reduce them, data covering travel throughout the day and the week is needed. Moreover the impacts of travel for all purposes to all destinations need to be assessed, requiring fine spatial detail.