Urban rail systems: analysis of the factors behind success

Date

2002-10-01

Author

Babalik-Sutcliffe, E

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

256
views

0
downloads

Investment in urban rail systems has increased rapidly over the past decades. While there have been some successful systems, a significant number have failed to be as successful as expected in improving public transport and urban environment. These experiences have led to a considerable debate in the literature about the effectiveness of new urban rail systems and whether it is worthwhile investing in them. While these debates continue, political support for metros, and particularly light rail systems, is still strong, and investment in them is very likely to continue. Hence, it is extremely important to understand the factors that make these systems successful. The paper presents the findings of a research aimed at identifying these factors based on the analysis of eight new urban rail systems: four in the USA, three in the UK and one in Canada. The paper presents the results of the performance analysis of the case studies as well as a detailed analysis of the factors that affected the performance of each system. Based on the case study analysis, a comprehensive list of factors that make urban rail systems successful is presented. The analysis also facilitates a comparison between the experiences of the three countries, and focuses on the effects of different operating environments and different planning approaches on the performance of urban rail systems. The paper concludes with a comparison of the findings of this research to those of previous studies.

Subject Keywords

Transit Systems, Light Rail, Land-Use, United-States, Transport, Impacts, Coordination

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63727

Journal

TRANSPORT REVIEWS

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/01441640210124875

Collections

Department of City and Regional Planning, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Urban rail operators in Turkey: Organisational reform in transit service provision and the impact on planning, operation and system performance Babalık, Ela (2016-06-01) Many cities around the world have seen efforts to restructure the provision of public transport. While transit authorities as public agencies continue to deliver transit services in some cities, many others have privatised these services, have opened up the market to private operators or have outsourced them to newly founded subsidiaries. The situation is no different in Turkey, where new legislation was enacted in the 1980s enabling local authorities to establish corporate companies under their own agency,...
Bus Rapid Transit System in Istanbul: A Success Story or Flawed Planning Decision? Babalık, Ela (Informa UK Limited, 2015-6-30) There is a growing tendency in cities around the world to invest in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in an attempt to improve the capacity and quality of public transport services. The appeal of BRTs is based on their ability to combine the service level of rail transit systems with the flexibility of buses at relatively lower investment costs, and this was the motivation behind the opening of such a system in the Turkish city of Istanbul in 2007. This system has attracted mixed opinions as to its performanc...
Smart parking in IoT-enabled cities: A survey Al-Turjman, Fadi; Malekloo, Arman (2019-08-01) The rapid growth in population has led to substantial traffic bottlenecks in recent transportation systems. This not only causes significant air pollution, and waste in time and energy, but also signifies the issue of the auto-park scarcity. In the age of Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city ecosystems, smart parking and relevant innovative solutions are necessary towards more sustainable future cities. Smart parking with the help of sensors embedded in cars and city infrastructures can alleviate the dea...
Evaluation of regional railway investment with urban development dynamics: The case of IZBAN in Izmir Kul, Fahrettin; Yetişkul Şenbil, Emine; Department of City and Regional Planning (2021-11-29) With the technological developments, railway transportation has become an important part of urban transport. Besides increasing the accessibility in the city, the railway creates demographic, economic, and spatial effects. In planning, railways are used to increase or direct urban development. This study evaluates the railway investment as an exogenous effect on the city. Furthermore, this study examines the railway’s as a complementary factor of the urban development trends. Urban development is analyzed w...
Evaluating the Relation Between Station Area Design Parameters and Transit Usage for Urban Rail Systems in Ankara, Turkey Ozgur-Cevher, Ozge; Altintasi, Oruc; Tüydeş Yaman, Hediye (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020-08-01) Urban rail transit (URT) systems are particularly favoured by planners due to their potential in attracting car users. However, a URT investment must be complemented by land-use characteristics at macroscale (whole city) and design parameters at microscale (vicinity of the station). Despite the common referencing to key concepts (i.e. density, diversity and connectivity), the variability in their definitions and scales causes ambiguity in the determination of their quantified impact on URT ridership. Furthe...

Citation Formats

E. Babalik-Sutcliffe, “Urban rail systems: analysis of the factors behind success,” TRANSPORT REVIEWS, pp. 415–447, 2002, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63727.