Urban Transport Infrastructure November 2018 Urban Transport Infra November 2018 | Page 24

Road Transportation
The IVHS can be linked up with
advanced vehicle control systems,
making use of in-car computer to
eliminate driver error and control
automatic braking and steering when
accidents are imminent.
Traffic management has been
extensively applied within urban
residential areas, where excessive
numbers of vehicles produce noise,
vibration, pollution and, above all,
accident risks, especially to the
young. ‘Traffic calming’ has been
introduced to many European cities
and aims at the creation of an
environment in which cars are
permitted but where the pedestrian
has priority of movement. Carefully
planned
street-width variations,
parking restrictions and speed-control
devices such as ramps are combined
to secure a safe and acceptable
balance between car and pedestrian.
3. Effective Use of Bus Service:
Many transportation planning
proposals are aimed specifically at
increasing the speed and schedule
reliability of bus services, and many
European cities have introduced bus
priority plans in an attempt to
increase the attractions of public
transport. Bus-only lanes, with or
against the direction of traffic flow,
are designated in heavily congested
roads to achieve time savings,
although such savings may later be
dissipated when buses enter inner-city
areas where priority lanes at
intersections and certain streets may
be restricted to buses only,
particularly
in
pedestrianised
shopping zones. congestion. In the UK, Runcorn New
Town, built as an overspill centre for
the Merseyside conurbation, was
provided with a double- looped
busway linking shopping centre,
industrial estates and housing areas.
About 90 per cent of the town’s
population was within five minutes’
walk of the busway and operating
costs were 33 per cent less than those
of buses on the conventional roads.
Although the system is not used to
the extent originally envisaged, it
successfully illustrates how public
transport can be integrated with
urban development. Bus-only roads
can also be adapted to vehicle
guidance systems, whereby the bus is
not steered but controlled by lateral
wheels, with the resumption of
conventional control when the public
road network is re-entered.
Such systems have been adopted
in Adelaide and experiments have
been made in many other cities
(Adelaide Transit Authority, 1988).
The bus can also be given further
advantages in city centres where
major retailing and transport
complexes are being redeveloped. The
construction of covered shopping
malls and precincts can incorporate
bus facilities for shoppers, and
reconstruction of rail stations can also
allow bus services to be integrated
more closely with rail facilities.
The ‘park-and-ride’ system, now
adopted by many European cities,
enables the number of cars entering
city
centres to
be reduced,
particularly at weekend shopping
peak periods. Large car-parks, either The advantages of the bus over the car
as an efficient carrier are secured, and
the costs of providing the fringe car-
parks are much less than in inner-city
zones. Rail commuters can also be
catered for in a similar manner with the
provision of large-capacity car-parks
adjacent to suburban stations.
Many towns and cities have’
attempted to attract passengers back to
bus transport by increasing its
flexibility and level of response to
market demand. In suburban areas the
dial-a-ride system has met with partial
success, with prospective passengers
booking seats by telephone within a
defined area of operation.
Such vehicles typically serve the
housing areas around a district
shopping centre and capacity is limited,
so they are best suited to operations in
conditions of low demand or in off-peak
periods. Fares are higher than on
conventional buses since the vehicle
control and booking facilities require
financing.
Experiments have also been made
with small- capacity buses that can be
stopped and boarded in the same way as
a taxi and which can negotiate the
complex street patterns of housing
estates more easily than larger buses.
However,
with
the widespread
introduction of scheduled minibus is the
problem of overloading has been
reduced.
4. Parking Restrictions:
As we have seen, it is not possible to
provide sufficient space for all who
might like to drive and park in the
central areas of large towns. Parking
thus must be restricted and this is
Where entirely new towns are
planned, there is an opportunity to
incorporate separate bus networks
within the urban road system,
enabling buses to operate free from temporary or permanent according to
need, on the urban fringe are
connected by bus with city centres,
with charges generally lower than
central area parking costs. usually done by banning all-day
parking by commuters or making it
prohibitively expensive. Restrictions
are less severe – off-peak, so that
shoppers and other short-term visitors.
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Urban Transport Infrastructure | November 2018