Search

The nature of the relationship between urban street environments and the levels of station use and walk access mode share of urban metro systems remains unclear in transport studies. This thesis explores these relationships (at station catchment level) in several different urban rail systems in the US - Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Washington DC - that are as comparable as possible with Middle East conditions (in terms of population densities, rail network size, spatial structure, climate, etc.); and then compares model relationships to one of the metro systems in the Middle East (Dubai Metro) in the United Arab Emirates. Aggregate socio-demographic, land use and service frequency data is assembled from different urban datasets within a 400 metre and 800 metre radius of selected rail stations. In addition, for each station catchment area, a newly developed street network connectivity (S-Conn) index (presence of sidewalks, completeness of sidewalks, presence of crossings, and presence of barriers) and a street network quality (S-Qual) index (speed limit, sidewalk condition, dropped kerbs, seating areas, street lights, and amount of street trees) is developed and applied to sample of the street network segments. In general, S-Conn and S-Qual scores more highly within 400m of stations than it does between 400m and 800m, in all cities. Using this collated data, statistical models have been developed to estimate the relationships between the various explanatory variables and average weekday boardings and walk access mode share at selected stations. The study is particularly interested to explore whether urban S-Conn and S-Qual are significant explanatory variables in these models, both within 400m and 800m of stations. The study finds that the S-Conn index is positively associated with the average weekday boardings in the four US cities; but S-Qual is only significant in a few of the models. The findings also showed that the S-Conn index is positively associated with walk access mode shares both in the four US cities and in Dubai models. However, this result does not mean that the S-Qual is not important; its significance may differ for different cities and models. The study concludes that transport planners should take more account of S-Conn around station catchments when planning public transport infrastructure projects, in order to increase station patronage and walk access modal shares.

Free-floating carsharing systems (FFCS) are characterised by the volatile spatial-temporal distribution of fleet and user demand, as well as users’ heterogenous price sensitivity and spatial-temporal flexibility. Hence, it is possible to apply dynamic pricing-based revenue management in a FFCS system. By dynamically updating prices on different origin-destination pairs according to the realtime fleet and user demand distribution, operators can redistribute user demand as well as increase their own revenue. In addition to dynamic pricing, advance reservation also has the potential to reduce the volatility of FFCS system and make the carsharing service more profitable. By having advance reservation, the operator has better knowledge of future user demand and can prepare in advance for possible demand peaks. This increase in service reliability can better serve the current FFCS user and attract potential new FFCS users. These two approaches have been investigated by some of the literature in the carsharing research, especially dynamic pricing. The success of both approaches requires the participation of users, however, and we are still unclear about users’ preferences in respect to the two approaches. Without a clear understanding of user behaviour, it is too early to assume that the two approaches can help the operator in revenue management. Dynamic pricing, especially, adds an additional dimension of uncertainty to the volatile free-floating carsharing system, which may raise users’ aversion and not help the operator increase the revenue. This thesis contributes to the wider literature by bridging user behaviour modelling and carsharing system operational management. We estimate users’ preference for/against dynamic pricing and advance reservation, and develop a decision support tool that helps the carsharing operator to maximise revenue while taking user behaviour into consideration. We design a stated choice (SC) survey to collect carsharing users’ responses to two interacting dimensions of uncertainties. For choice-behaviour under multiple dimensions of uncertainty, we propose two levels of transformation (attribute- and utility-level transformation). We estimate carsharing user behaviour under uncertainty through a discrete choice model (DCM). The modelling results demonstrate that our SC survey design approach can successfully capture carsharing user behaviour under two interactive dimensions of uncertainty. The modelling results from the two levels of transformation are consistent with each other, and help the carsharing operator understand the user behaviour from different angles. This demonstrates the importance of considering both levels of transformation in risky-choice behaviour modelling with more than one dimension of uncertainty. We also provide a choice-based optimisation framework that considers users’ risky-choice behaviour. Choice behaviour as predicted by the risky-choice models and estimated from the SC survey data feeds into the choice-based optimisation model. We demonstrate the importance of having a correct understanding of users’ risk preference in dynamic pricing-based revenue management by a numerical analysis. The choice-based optimisation framework can serve as a decision support tool for carsharing operators to generate more revenue and better serve the users.

As part of the current trend for sustainable transport systems and for lively cities, considerable research has been conducted into the relationship between urban form and travel activity. Related Taiwanese studies are relatively scarce, however, perhaps because there is a lack of research about Taiwanese urban morphology. Therefore, establishing a complete urban form catalogue (including building type, street type, and interface type in particular) is the first step and prime objective for this thesis to contribute to the omission in the current academia, and further identifying the urban form types with their travel activity characteristics (mostly mode choice and walking behaviour) to recognise which form types are more favourable under the contexts of sustainable and lively lifestyle. Throughout the study, interfaces, i.e. the connections between different urban form components, are given particular focus. This is done firstly because interface is almost entirely undocumented in existing Taiwanese urban morphology, and secondly because, although the transition between the private and public domain is seen as playing a vital role in pedestrian or public life studies, but little discussion about it as an integral factor in most transport related research. This thesis is based on the study of both the physical fabric and residents’ travel activity pattern of Da-An District. Therefore, a two-dimensional coordinate system (x-y matrix) and cluster methods (e.g. K-Means) were used to classify the urban form types, whilst a questionnaire was used to gain the travel activity data. As a result, the urban form of the selected study area was found to comprise 10 building types, 12 street types, and 24 interface types. Through Chi-square tests, certain street and interface types were then found to be associated with certain transport mode shares for local trips. A number of specific interface types were further recognised as favourable (e.g. arcades with shop windows, and large landscaped front setbacks) or unfavourable (e.g. overhang without setback) to a sustainable and lively environment.

Urbanisation and growth of the global population places high demand on city administrations to play a leading role in the management of climate change in the 21st century. Additionally, several factors including heavy reliance on interconnected infrastructure, high population densities (together with large numbers of poor and elderly), and the concentration of cultural and economic assets make cities particularly threatened by climate change. Therefore, any actions undertaken in urban contexts will have a crucial role in the management of climate change risks. A recent special report from 2018 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations (IPCC) confirms that adaptation efforts will be as important as mitigation efforts since we can no longer stop climate change from happening at least to some degree around the globe. Transport infrastructure forms part of the systems on which cities rely most heavily for their efficient functioning. Therefore, the adaptation of these systems to the changing climate is crucial for the success of cities in the future. However, adaptation of urban transport is still not well studied and there is a need for the development of useful adaptation guidelines for applying adaptive actions to transport infrastructure at the local level. This thesis presents a conceptual framework called the “Expanded Adaptation Action Cycles” (EAAC). This framework conceptualizes adaptation planning in cities as an iterative action-learning cycle. In each iteration of the planning cycle, decision-makers implement adaptation actions based on their current knowledge while, at the same time, they learn how adaptation can be better implemented in their systems in the next iteration. The framework recognises that adaptation can be implemented at different scales (i.e. resistance, incremental adaptation or transformational adaptation) depending on the level of risks expected, the amount of change desired in the system and the resources available. The framework provides an overview of how a city might go through an adaptation planning process. Additionally, this thesis demonstrates the practical application of the EAAC framework by using it as a diagnostic tool to assess where a city is in the adaptation planning cycle, reveal possible future pathways from the current position of a city in the adaptation planning process and identify barriers and opportunities to certain pathways. In this framework, barriers and opportunities are associated with information quality and availability, resources availability and incentives on which decision-makers have to act. A case study of the decision-making processes for the development and maintenance of road infrastructure in Bogotá, Colombia was conducted to demonstrate the practical utility of the EAAC framework. Forty semi-structured interviews conducted with key local actors and experts provided insight into Bogotá’s governance processes and the extent to which climate change adaptation is considered within the transport sector. The collection of evidence also included a critical analysis of local policy documents and technical reports. Transport planners in Bogotá are currently trying to increase their understanding of the possible impacts of climate change over its principal road infrastructure through a study called “Red Vial Vital”. The main adaptation actions proposed by the city are the use of “green infrastructure” and sustainable urban drainage systems. The analysis indicates that the city is currently at the early stages of its adaptation planning. The adaptation measures being considered suggest that, at most, the city is aiming for implementing incremental adaptation. Additionally, several barriers to effective adaptation planning in the city were identified. The analysis revealed that incomplete or unusable information about climate change and its effects, reduced availability of economic and human resources, and the lack of adequate incentives are hindering the incorporation of adaptation planning into the transport infrastructure planning processes of the city. Furthermore, the most influential underlying factors were associated with the institutional environment. This finding is consistent with what has been proposed by other authors. The EAAC framework contributes to climate change adaptation literature by providing a relatively simple, yet comprehensive, conceptualisation of adaptation planning. While urban road infrastructure forms the focus of this research, the framework provides the theoretical basis to understand how adaptation can be planned and incorporated into the planning and design processes of any sociotechnical system. The EAAC goes further than other available frameworks as it links together the concept of the adaptation cycle, scales of adaptation and the identification of barriers and opportunities; these are aspects that typically have been separately addressed in the literature. In its practical application, the EAAC framework is expected to be a useful diagnostic tool for transport planners and designers in other cities. This is because it can, first, provide the ability to understand the relative position of a city’s approach to adaptation planning within a wider spectrum of possibilities. Second, it can provide insight into future possible planning interventions and their possible impacts, existing barriers to and opportunities for effective adaptation planning, and the necessary steps to follow in the planning process. Finally, there is also the potential for using the EAAC framework to analyse adaptation planning in other sectors facing the challenge of preparing how to deal with the risks associated with climate change.

As efficiency and sustainability become more important, researchers are working on new concepts to improve the way logistics are handled in the current Supply Chain Management (SCM). One concept gaining popularity is the delivery of products in urban areas using bicycles. More companies started using bicycles as an alternative transportation mode and face challenges to efficiently satisfy their customers and employees needs. Large cities with uphill roads require transportation systems to take into account the energy needed by cyclists to move. The load carried on push-bikes has to be kept under a certain threshold for cyclists to be able to pedal on ascending roads. Therefore, cyclists have to choose their route differently to vehicle drivers, hence the need for optimised routing. Another concept gaining popularity is the collaboration in logistics between several companies. Collaboration is thought to be an enabler for a sustainable and efficient SCM. One important improvement of modern logistics is the frequent exchange of containers via multiple cross-docks which requires spatial and time synchronisation between different types of vehicles. Since each logistics network has its specificities and requirements, new solutions such as the Physical Internet (PI) arise with standardised PI-Containers and protocols to face this challenge. By connecting several transportation networks through collaboration, the PI is expected to considerably improve the way logistics are handled in the current SCM. Connecting several distribution networks will produce continually varying network conditions arising from traffic growth. Some regions of the network would suffer from bottlenecks that could lead to an increase in transportation costs. One reason is that traditional routing protocols in logistics do not learn from their previous experiences of network problems such as congestion. Therefore, an intelligent network traffic control method is essential to avoid this problem. As routing problems are at centre stage in transportation sciences, they represent a critical research scope to study in order to improve logistics. As a consequence, in this thesis, three research directions involving routing problems are identified and solved to provide more flexible and extended models to the aforementioned research gaps. First, a new problem is introduced to tackle constraints arising for bicycle deliveries. A novel Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and an Evolutionary Local Search algorithm are developed to efficiently solve the problem. Experimental results show the accuracy and stability of the proposed algorithm compared to the CPLEX solver from IBM on a wide range of generated instances. A real-world scenario is also studied to demonstrate the relevance of this method. Second, this research focuses on the way the VRP can be solved while considering an important number of attributes for real-life applications. A rich vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery including several attributes for the PI is studied. A mathematical formulation is proposed and implemented in CPLEX to solve the problem. The model is then extended to handle multi-objective, uncertainty and dynamism. Multi-threaded meta-heuristics based on Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithm are developed with a set of new operators to handle the problem specificities. Computational results on a generated data-set showed that the proposed meta-heuristics are superior to CPLEX in terms of solvability and computational time. A classical benchmark on pickup and delivery problems was also used to validate the proposed method against state-of-the-art methods. The algorithms are integrated into a framework and used to provide solutions for a local company. Third, the paradigm between the digital and physical internet is explored to propose a new routing approach based on packet routing. While deep learning has been demonstrated to be a promising method for solving numerous optimisation problems efficiently, its application on packet routing is relatively new and rare. This research provides a proof of concept and sheds light on new opportunities to design efficient routing protocols for logistics with deep learning. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is able to not only learn the shortest path for deliveries but also to take into account the truck fulfilment rates to improve global efficiency.

Traffic congestion has become one of the most serious contemporary city issues for urban transportation network as it leads to unnecessary high energy consumption, air pollution and extra travelling time. During this decade, many optimization algorithms have been designed to achieve the optimal usage of existing roadway capacity in cities to leverage the problem. However, it is still a challenging task for the vehicles to interact with the complex city environment in a real time manner. In this thesis, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method to build a real-time intelligent vehicle navigation system for sustainable and resilient urban transportation network. We designed two rewards methods travel time based and vehicle emissions impact (VEI) based which aim to reduce the travel time for emergency vehicle (resilience), and reduce vehicle emissions for general vehicle (sustainability). In the experiment, several realistic traffic scenarios are simulated by SUMO to test the proposed navigation method. The experimental results have demonstrated the efficient convergence of the vehicle navigation agents and their effectiveness to make optimal decisions under the volatile traffic conditions. Travel time based reward schema perform better in reducing travel time however VEI based show better result in reducing vehicle emissions. Furthermore, the results also show that the proposed method has huge potential to provide a better navigation solution comparing with the benchmark routing optimisation algorithms.

Pedestrian safety is of paramount importance in road safety management. Yet to date there have been a limited number of models capable of capturing satisfactorily all aspects of pedestrian movement in road environments and subsequently suggesting measures to make roads safer for them. This study aimed at investigating such a model with emphasis on road side activities in urban environments. The work followed a methodology which analysed the problem at hand, suggested appropriate mathematical models, and tested the models. Based on data gathered from appropriately chosen road links and other records, the study showed that the number of bus stoppings, parking activity and pedestrian crossing violations, the traffic speed variation, the number of intersecting side roads, main road traffic volume and intersecting traffic volume were the most significant risk factors related to pedestrian crash risk. In addition, the traffic operating speed was found to be the predominant factor determining the crash severity. Two models were produced to link these variables with: (a) the risk of a pedestrian crash using generalised regression models (GLM); and (b) with the crash severity using logistic regression. Model selection tests were conducted and it was found that the models can capture the pedestrian crash risk satisfactorily. In addition, these models were tested and validated using three evaluation measures including the goodness of fit assessment, a graphical exploration of the observed versus the predicted crash numbers and a field validation. Furthermore, the study proposed the integration of the new models within the iRAP, an established road safety management system; it demonstrated how this may be achieved and examined their applicability if used in practice. The integration was systematically tested and ii validated and it was found that the new model provided better results compared to the original iRAP. The developed model, albeit estimated using data from urban roads in Birmingham in the UK, it can be transferred and ultimately used in developing countries subject to appropriate adaptation to local conditions and associated data.

This thesis addresses the detrimental effects of road traffic congestion in the Smart City environment. Urban congestion is a recognisable problem that affects much of the world's population through delays and pollution although the delays are not an entirely modern phenomena. The progressive increase in urbanisation and the numbers of powered road vehicles have led to an increasing need to control traffic in order to maintain flows and avoid gridlock situations. Signalised methods typically control flows through reduction, frequently increasing delays, holding traffic within the urban area and increasing local pollution. The current levels of vehicular congestion may relate to an increase in traffic volumes of 300% over 50 years while traffic control methods based on delaying moving traffic have changed very little. Mobility and Socio-economics indicate that the number of active road vehicles will increase or at least remain at the same levels in the foreseeable future and as a result congestion will continue to be a problem. The Smart City concept is intended to improve the urban environment through the application of advanced technology. Within the context of road transportation, the urban area consists of a wide variety of low to moderate speed transportation systems ranging from pedestrians to heavy goods vehicles. Urban roadways have a large number of junctions where the transport systems and flows interact presenting additional and more complex challenges as compared to high speed dual carriageways and motorways. Congestion is a function of population density while car ownership is an indicator of affluence; road congestion can therefore be seen as an indicator of local economic and social prosperity. Congestion cannot be resolved while there is a social benefit to urbanisation, high density living and a materialistic population. Recognising that congestion cannot be resolved, this research proposes a method to reduce the undesirable consequences and side effects of traffic congestion such as transit delays, inefficient fuel use and chemical pollution without adversely affecting the social and economic benefits. Existing traffic signal systems manage traffic flows based on traffic arrivals, prediction and traffic census models. Flow modification is accomplished by introducing delays through signal transition in order to prioritise a conflicting direction. It is incorrectly assumed that traffic will always be able to move and therefore signal changes will always have an effect. Signal transitions result in lost time at the junction. Existing Urban Traffic Control systems have limited capability as they are unable to adapt immediately to unexpected conditions, have a finite response, cannot modify stationary flow and may introduce needless losses through inefficient transition. This research proposes and develops Available Forward Road Capacity (AFRC), an algorithm with the ability to detect the onset of congestion, actively promote clearance, prevent unnecessary losses due to ineffective transitions and can influence other AFRC equipped junctions to ensure the most efficient use of unoccupied road capacity. AFRC is an additional function that can be applied to existing traffic controllers, becoming active only during congestion conditions; as a result it cannot increase congestion above current levels. By reducing the duration of congestion periods, AFRC reduces delays, improves the efficiency of fuel use and reduces pollution. AFRC is a scalable, multi-junction generalised solution which is able to manage traffic from multiple directions without prior tuning; it can detect and actively resolve problems with stationary traffic. AFRC is evaluated using a commercial traffic simulation system and is shown to resolve inbound and outbound congestion in less time than Vehicle Actuated and Fully Timed systems when simulating both morning and evening rush-hours.

Interactions within and between urban environments include the price of houses, the flow of traffic and the intensity of noise pollution, which can all be restricted by various physical, regulatory and customary barriers. Examples of such restrictions include buildings, one-way systems and pedestrian crossings. These constrictive features create challenges for predictive modelling in urban space, which are not fully captured when proximity-based models rely on the typically used Euclidean (straight line) distance metric. Over the course of this thesis, I ask three key questions in an attempt to identify how to improve spatial models in restricted urban areas. These are: (1) which distance function best models real world spatial interactions in an urban setting? (2) when, if ever, are non-Euclidean distance functions valid for urban spatial models? and (3) what is the best way to estimate the generalisation performance of urban models utilising spatial data? This thesis answers each of these questions through three contributions supporting the interdisciplinary domain of Urban Sciences. These contributions are: (1) the provision of an improved approximation of road distance and travel time networks to model urban spatial interactions; (2) the approximation of valid distance metrics from non-Euclidean inputs for improved spatial predictions and (3) the presentation of a road distance and travel time cross-validation metric to improve the estimation of urban model generalisation. Each of these contributions provide improvements against the current state-of-the-art. Throughout, all experiments utilise real world datasets in England and Wales, such datasets contain information on restricted roads, travel times, house sales and traffic counts. With these datasets, I display a number of case studies which show up to a 32% improved model accuracy against Euclidean distances and in some cases, a 90% improvement for the estimation of model generalisation performance. Combined, the contributions improve the way that proximity-based urban models perform and also provides a more accurate estimate of generalisation performance for predictive models in urban space. The main implication of these contributions to Urban Science is the ability to better model the challenges within a city based on how they interact with themselves and each other using an improved function of urban mobility, compared with the current state-of-the-art. Such challenges may include selecting the optimal locations for emergency services, identifying the causes of traffic incidents or estimating the density of air pollution. Additionally, the key implication of this research on geostatistics is that it provides the motivation and means of undertaking non-Euclidean based research for non-urban applications, for example predicting with alternative, non-road based, mobility patterns such as migrating animals, rivers and coast lines. Finally, the implication of my research to the real estate industry is significant, in which one can now improve the accuracy of the industry's state-of-the-art nationwide house price predictor, whilst also being able to more appropriately present their accuracy estimates for robustness.

Bus reforms are widely used to increase patronage, improve service quality, and reduce subsidies. Most of the literature on bus reforms focuses on economic factors, but studies of other interventions for behaviour change show that complex interactions between other factors can also be involved. The research presented in this thesis analyses the dynamics between behaviour and policy in a bus reform, using Malta as a case study. A novel conceptual model that considers the relationship between behaviour and policy is proposed. It draws its inspiration from two models, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behaviour Model (Michie et al., 2011). The proposed model combines the behavioural detail of the former with the comprehensiveness of the latter. This model is designed to aid in policy formulation and planning. Behaviour and its influencing factors were studied through two cross-sectional questionnaires (pre- and post-reform) performed with Maltese residents and tourists. Data were analysed using Multinomial Logistic Regression and Factor Analysis. Semistructured interviews supplemented the questionnaires, providing a more in-depth insight. Policy implementation was studied using a mixed approach of semi-structured interviews with transport professionals together with an analysis of the relevant policy documents and institutions. Discourse analysis was performed on the transcripts of the interviews. The policy documents and institutions were analysed through policy evaluation criteria, and the Institutional Analytical Development Framework approach. The findings indicate an overall perception of the failure of the reform, resulting from negative evaluations linked with the unreliability of the bus service. Some of these issues arose because of the institutional structures in place, and policy dependence on short-term government agendas. High expectations combined with initial operational problems led to disappointment and the loss of trust. These findings reinforce the idea that bus reform influences the complex links between behaviour and policy.

Informal public transport (IPT) has emerged as an adaptive alternative to formal public transport in developing countries. The informal public transport service has both positive and negative impacts on the wellbeing of urban dwellers. As such, there are varying discourses on whether IPT should be considered an urban resource or a problem. The impact of urban growth in terms of population increase and urban spatial sprawl creates public transport challenges in developing countries. It is against this backdrop that this study explored the perceptions of informal public transport stakeholders on the quality of service (QoS) experienced in the City of Ibadan, Nigeria. A pragmatist philosophical approach is adopted in this study in order to explore the stakeholders' perceptions of the QoS of IPT in Ibadan. A convergent mixed methods research design was employed to explore the set objectives seeking to understand how the impact of urban growth in Ibadan has developed a demand for public transport, more so against the backdrop of the diminished public investment in transport services and infrastructure. The study seeks to identify and explore stakeholders' perceptions on the established IPT in Ibadan. The study developed a multi-criteria evaluation model to explore and analyse such perceptions on QoS on identified three Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Ibadan. The identified issues are discussed using culture sensitisation of governance in the context of Ibadan and reflecting such perceptions against the ideals for individuals and public. Findings from the study reveal mixed stakeholders' perceptions. The descriptive analysis and narratives of the stakeholders reveal that some of the criteria are positively perceived. The application of the Kruskal Wallis Analysis for variability across the three studied local authorities reveal that there is insignificant influence of the socioeconomic characteristics of the users on perceptions of IPT. However, an analysis of individual criteria established in the multi-criteria evaluation model reveals a low users' perceptions of the QoS provided by IPT users. The study concludes that the positive perceptions attributed by users of the IPT, despite its otherwise poor QoS, is explained by the fact that the use of IPT in Ibadan is not out of public choice but a necessity given that there is no other alternative mode of public transport. Consequently, the study concludes that perceptions of informal public transport relate to the impact on individuals and public wellbeing. This is alternative thought from discourses that perceive urban growth in terms of population growth and physical spatial sprawl to the shift towards explaining the impact of urban growth and need for transport in terms of public wellbeing. Following on to this, the study draws a recommendation for a transport policy and practice developed from the nexus of the regulatory state, the informal transport sector and the users of informal transport driven by the view that informal transport is a key contributor to public wellbeing in cities of the developing world. Thus, the IPT should be sensitised as a permanent and 'formal' element for the City of Ibadan and not perceived as illegal and targeted for withdrawal from the urban.

Crowding is a major source of inconvenience for public transport users in densely populated metropolitan areas globally, while eliminating crowding requires costly investments. Crowding can be considered as a cornerstone phenomenon of public transport theory, as the interaction between demand and supply side policies. This PhD thesis aims to improve our understanding of the mechanics behind crowding, using microeconomic modelling techniques. From a demand perspective, the crucial precondition of any objective economic analysis is to reliably quantify the inconvenience caused by crowding. In pursuit of this goal, the thesis develops a statistical model to infer the user cost of crowding from metro passengers' route choice decisions. As an important intermediate research outcome, the thesis delivers a novel passenger-to-train assignment algorithm that recovers the network-level crowding pattern of a metro system. Our method is a unique contribution in the sense that it is based on large-scale automated datasets: we use smart card and automated vehicle location data only. The theoretical part of the thesis provides new insights into crowding pricing and capacity optimisation. One of the key messages of the thesis is that crowding in certain time periods and network segments is an unavoidable feature of optimal public transport provision, when demand fluctuates by time and space, but capacity cannot be differentiated between jointly served markets. We show that pricing can be an efficient tool to tackle the deficiency caused by this technological constraint. The thesis devotes special attention to two policy relevant applications: (i) the external cost of seat occupancy, an externality inversely proportional to the density of crowding, and (ii) the inefficiency of unlimited-use travel passes. Our conclusions may assist researchers and practitioners in better understanding the true cost of public transport usage and the related aspects of optimal policy design, including pricing, subsidisation and capacity provision.

Within just 50 years, Saudi Arabia's capital city Riyadh has developed from being a walled town to a modern metropolis of eight million people (ADA, 2015). Riyadh is a unique case study. Due to cultural and climate factors, there are good reasons why road transport dominates, with more than 93% of journeys undertaken by car. Despite substantial investment in the road network, there is severe traffic congestion caused by population growth and increased economic activity. This has made transport in and around the city time-consuming, unsafe, unhealthy and ultimately unsustainable. To address this, several high-profile projects are underway, most notably the Riyadh Metro, currently the world's most expensive metro project, with a total value of 88 billion SAR. This research is therefore timely. It attempts to answer why Riyadh's transport system has developed along its current lines, and whether schemes such as the Riyadh Metro will have the expected impact. To do this, the research had to operate from a strong multidisciplinary platform, linking transportation engineering, planning and urban studies to explore the issue of Policy Transfer as it applies to Riyadh. The Riyadh Metro is a paradigm case: it is a transport infrastructure that has proven successful in other (usually western) nations, and its application in Riyadh is expected to have similar benefits, despite the city's cultural and climatic uniqueness. The research makes a substantial original contribution to knowledge by creating a strategic traffic microsimulation of Riyadh's city core, using policy transfer insights, and unique access to Saudi Arabian stakeholder input, to develop a set of future scenarios which can be subject to a direct test in the model. This model has been created and calibrated using Riyadh traffic and mapping data, and professionally audited by the microsimulation company SIAS Ltd. One novel feature of the research is that this model is being used strategically. It enables four congestion indicators to be extracted under all network conditions, from free-flow conditions to complete saturation. These indicators are a) level of service, b) traffic flow, c) journey time and d) queue length. The values of the respective indicators will be logged and these, in turn, will represent coordinates for a so-called Overall Performance Curve (OPC). The various OPCs show how each of the indicators performs under all traffic conditions, enabling predictions about all possible future states to be explored. In other words, this research provides a scientific platform for future expectations. That's where the policy transfer issues come in, by using the OPCs whatever the expectations, it will be on them somewhere, given that the OPC is like a formal scientific test-bed covering all scenarios and expectations. The first scenario to be explored (Scenario 1) is the 'do nothing' option. Current forecasts show the existing road network will be fully saturated by 2021, with a forecasted additional 40% traffic volumes in the study area. This will result in already lengthy journey times increasing by a further 90%, and queue lengths by 120%. Clearly, 'doing nothing' is not a viable option in light of population growth and economic development. Riyadh transportation authorities are already acutely aware of this. One further pioneering aspect of this research is its ability to survey key Riyadh stakeholders to discover what alternative scenarios are being pursued and considered, and to gauge their expected outcomes. Scenarios 2, 3 and 4 pick up on these expectations and subject them to a direct test in the strategic microsimulation model. As such, Scenario 2 embodies the current strategy involving the Riyadh Metro and examines the expected traffic reductions. According to the various OPCs, the Riyadh Metro will reduce the volume of cars on the road network by up to 43%. If these expectations arise in practice, journey times and queue lengths will be approximately halved compared with present conditions. The key, of course, is whether these expectations will in fact be met. In summary, this thesis makes a number of new contributions to theory. These include a mapping of the existing policy transfer theory to the situation pertaining to Riyadh, and an extension of existing theory to take account of unique socio-cultural and climatic factors. Solutions cannot be proven to be effective in any society unless they are tested and implemented. Thus, this research provides an opportunity for engineers, city planners, transport systems stakeholders/decision makers and beneficiaries to SEE the future in the present.

The aim of this research is to combine theories of public participation and rights-based approaches to governance with discourses on social exclusion and transport disadvantage explored through a case study of a planned mass public transport system in a city adopting a rights-based approach to participatory governance. It does so by using a mixed-method case study approach, utilising qualitative research methods. Quito in Ecuador provided the natural choice for the case study given its rights-based approach to participatory governance determined through the Constitution of 2008 and the Law of Citizen Participation (2010), and shortly after receiving the devolved responsibility for urban planning and transport, the city government took the decision to install a metro line in the city centre. The research addressed three research questions. First, it examined the extent to which transport related social exclusion is intensified by existing practices of transport planning and operation. Second, it looked at the potential benefit of a rights-based approach to participatory governance. Third, it examined how a conceptualised understanding of transport-related social exclusion was able to describe the phenomenon as it exists in Quito, and through a framework devised from the literature to evaluate participatory activities, it considered both the activities of the city government in engaging the public, alongside the response received from citizens and civil society organisations. The research concluded that a rights-based approaches to participation in decision-making can address transport-related social exclusion and mobility challenges. Although Quito’s metro project fell into the ‘prepare-reveal-defend’ model of decision making, there were genuine attempts by the city government to initiate participation. Some initiatives took place after the decision was made, and others were overly complex i.e. the formulaic process of the ‘Offering of Accounts’. The research also determined that cultural change is required for residents to embrace a new open government, and that civil society organisations have a key role to play on fostering better participatory processes, and ultimately decision-making.

Private vehicle use poses a major challenge as a main contributor to climate change. A framework (Avoid/Reduce, Shift, Improve or ASI) has been developed which suggests that a broad approach is required when reducing the effect of transport on climate change. Review of the literature suggests that policy has tended to focus on the shift element of the ASI framework. This raises questions as to whether people would like to shift to public transport, and whether transport policymakers focusing on the shift element of the ASI framework is an effective approach. Further questions also remain with regard to whether the shift element is being adequately implemented. Indeed, internationally governments have tended to take a narrow approach to the shift policy which has focused on pull (incentive) initiatives but neglected push initiatives (disincentives). This thesis critically evaluates the feasibility of this focus on pull initiatives. This is explored through a case study of New Taipei City, Taiwan, where the government is providing major investment in pull initiatives, particularly Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) infrastructure, to get people to shift to public transport. Adopting a mixed method research approach, commuter surveys and qualitative semi-structured interviews were undertaken to explore both the commuters' perspective and the opinions of key actors and critical observers of the policies implemented. Car and motorcycle users' main reasons for using private vehicles are comprised of their dependency on using private vehicles, work-related purposes (e.g. job responsibilities, and position), and socio-economic factors. This makes changing their mode of transport difficult, when focusing on a narrow set of pull initiatives. Furthermore, there has been a lack of integration of initiatives such as the MRT infrastructure improvements with new bus services and cycleways, so their pull policies could have been stronger. Consequently, transport officials' efforts to change commuter travel behaviour are less effective than intended. A combination of pull and push initiatives may be a more balanced approach to changing people's behaviour in relation to their trip choice, and thus implementing sustainable transport interventions. However, there is likely to be a lack of political will for push initiatives. Consistent with previous findings in the academic literature, there is a need to take a broader approach to tackling the effects of transport on climate change. This thesis has provided further evidence to support this argument and questions why policy continues not to adequately reflect the need for a more holistic approach.

Abnormal weather events can have significant impacts on the safety and operational performance of the railways. In Great Britain, weather related train delays run into 1 to 2 million of minutes each year. With the rapid advances in weather forecasting and emerging information technology, the weather forecasting data can be utilised to improve the performance of train control models in dealing with weather events. In this thesis, the forecasted moving weather fronts are map in terms of their temporal and spatial coverage, as well as the corresponding speed restrictions and/or track blockages according to the severity of the weather fronts, onto the railway lines. This enables the control models to consider multiple disruptions in advance of them commencing, instead of dealing with them one by one after they have commenced. Then the proactive train control methods are proposed, i.e. mixed integer liner programming (MILP) and genetic algorithm (GA) for single-track rescheduling in adverse condition, and an MILP model for simultaneous train rerouting and rescheduling model, taking into account forecasted severe weather perturbations. In the models, the forecasted moving weather perturbations on different parts of the rail network are represented as individual constraints, whereby, trains travelling through the adversely impacted zones follow reduced speed limits and in the severely impacted zones where the tracks are blocked, trains need to be rerouted or wait until the blockage disappears. The case studies indicate: a) compared with existing control methods our rescheduling methods have shown to make significant reduction in total train delays (in the case studies examined, an average 21% reduction in delays); b) within the timescale considered, the further ahead the weather forecast information is considered, the less the overall delay tends to be; c) under severe weather disruptions (with track blockage), the proposed rerouting and rescheduling model is shown to be able to effectively and efficiently find a cost effective route and timetable.

Novel large consumer datasets (called 'Big Data') are increasingly readily available. These datasets are typically created for a particular purpose, and as such are skewed, and further do not have the broad spectrum of attributes required for their wider application. Railway ticket data are an example of consumer data, which often have little or no supplementary information about the passengers who purchase them, or the context in which the ticket was used (like crowding-level in the train). These gaps in consumer data present challenges in using these data for planning, and inference on the drivers of mobility choice. Heckman's in-depth discussion of 'sample selection' bias and 'omitted variables' bias (Heckman, 1977), and Rubin's seminal paper on 'missing values' (Rubin, 1976) laid the framework for addressing omitted variables and missing data problems today. On the strength of these, a powerful set of complementary concerted methodologies are developed to harness railways consumer (ticketing) data. A novel spatial microsimulation methodology suitable for skewed interaction data was developed to combine LENNON ticketing, National Rail Travel Survey, and Census interaction data, to yield an attribute-rich micro-population. The micro-population was used as input to a GIS network, logistically constrained by the transit feed specification (GTFS). This identifies the context of passenger mobility. Bayesian models then enable the identification of passenger behaviour, like missing daily trip rates with season tickets, and flows to group stations. Case studies using the micro-level synthetic data reveal a mechanism of rail-heading phenomena in West Yorkshire, and the impact of a new station at Kirkstall Forge. The spatial microsimulation and GIS-GTFS methods are potentially useful to network operators for the management and maintenance on the railways. The representativeness of the micro-level population created has the potential to alter multi-agent transport simulation genres, by precluding the need for the complexities of utility-maximizing traffic assignment.

For over a decade UK legislation has existed which grants powers to English Local Authorities to implement a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL). Despite positive experiences in Australia of utilising area wide parking space levies to pay for public transport improvements, only one UK local authority to date (2017), Nottingham City Council, has chosen to implement a WPL. The Nottingham WPL scheme is intended to act as a transport demand management measure as well as a core funding mechanism for transport improvements including two new tram lines. Acceptance by the public and the business community is a key barrier to implementing a WPL. The two major criticisms of the Nottingham scheme prior to its implementation were that a WPL would discourage business investment and thus damage the economy while its intended impact on traffic congestion would be minimal. Therefore, a comprehensive evaluation of the Nottingham WPL scheme s performance is essential in order to facilitate transferability of this approach to other UK and European Cities. This thesis contributes to the wider WPL evaluation project by evaluating to what extent the Nottingham WPL has met three key objectives identified for the scheme which address the impact on congestion, transport mode share and inward investment. This research utilises a theoretical evaluation approach, a Theory of Change approach strengthened by elements of Realistic Evaluation . This approach provides an appropriate framework for evaluating progress towards the three key objectives by identifying a plausible model for change and expected impacts for the Nottingham WPL and the transport improvements which it part funds. This model or Theory of Change , is then tested to understand if the scheme is achieving the desired impacts by analysing appropriate indicators to measure and attribute change to causal factors. Methods used to facilitate this research include, benchmarking indicators against similar UK Cities, questionnaire surveys to assess the reasons for mode switch, time series modelling of the impact on congestion and a consideration of the reasoning behind investment and de-investment decisions made by businesses in Nottingham. It is concluded that while the WPL and its associated transport improvements are resulting in congestion constraint and mode shift away from commuting by car, these impacts are being reduced by the presence of exogenous change notably, economic and population growth, short term disruption to the road network resulting from roadworks associated with the construction of transport improvements and suppressed demand for commuting by car. Additionally, this research shows that there is a body of evidence which demonstrates that the WPL has not negatively impacted on levels of inward investment and that there is some evidence to date that suggests the improved transport system facilitated by the WPL is attractive to potential business investors.

Transportation as an important component for urban sustainability has been well recognized. Although the lay understanding of sustainability generally focuses on environmental stewardship, more broadly sustainability is comprised of three aspects: environmental, economic and social sustainability. Individual and societal well-being are critical indicators of social sustainability, however, little attention from research and policy has been paid to the impacts of transportation on well-being. With extensive urban expansion resulting from rapid urbanization, commuting has become a physical and mental burden for many residents in the megacities of China because of the increasing travel distances and worsening travel experiences, significantly influencing their well-being. Relying on the data from a survey conducted in Xi-an, a mega-city of western China, this study quantitatively investigated the relationship between commuting and subjective wellbeing in the Chinese context. Based on the evidence from Xi-an, China, this study found that (1) commute characteristics, including travel mode choice and level of services, significantly influence commuting satisfaction, which in turn significantly affects overall satisfaction with life; (2) the built environment has no direct effect on commuting satisfaction, however it could indirectly affect commuting satisfaction through the path of commuting characteristics; most of travel-related attitudes have both direct and indirect effects on travel satisfaction; (3) the lower income population are more likely to live in pedestrian and transit unfriendly places, are more captive to their travel modes, and have lower levels of life satisfaction; all of which contribute to the lower level of commuting satisfaction among the lower income population. This study contributes to the literature by framing and quantitatively exploring the complicated relationships between the built environment, attitudes, travel characteristics, travel satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. This study also informs policies that help to improve satisfaction with commuting and wellbeing.

There has been a recent trend of cooperation between local traffic authorities and in-vehicle route guidance service providers that involves free exchange of traffic data. It is important for both sides to understand the outcomes of the cooperation and how to improve their individual outcomes. Despite the relevance of this topic, this area has not been explored in detail by existing studies. Hence, this thesis focuses on investigating cooperation strategies for both local authorities and service providers. This research first develops a cooperation strategy evaluation framework for free data exchange schemes. The framework consists of two model components. The first component is a mixed Path Size Logit (PSL) based market equilibrium model that estimates the market response to a given cooperation strategy. The second component comprises functions to evaluate the benefit for local traffic authorities and service providers. In particular, the benefit functions for free service providers and paid service providers are developed based on assumptions about their differences in revenue sources. Next, a framework for optimising cooperation strategies for the local authority and service providers is developed based on a non-cooperative Nash game. The framework is formulated as an Equilibrium Problem with Equilibrium Constraints (EPEC), which is solved by a Particle Swarm Optimiser (PSO) based Diagonalization algorithm that is developed as a part of this research. This optimisation framework is subsequently extended to analyse cooperation scenarios involving paid data sharing schemes and a mix of free and paid schemes. A number of numerical studies are conducted using the developed frameworks. One numerical study investigates the impact of market characteristics on the market share of a service provider with relatively good data quality, and finds that the route choice set composition, drivers’ value of time (VOT) and their perception accuracy with respect to service providers’ utility have a significant impact on the market share. The other numerical studies show three general implications for the cooperation. Firstly, when a local traffic authority’s objective is to maximise the network performance, it should cooperate with all service providers via free data exchange schemes and make sure that cooperative service providers use the data to enhance their data quality and not just reduce their own data acquisition costs. Secondly, when a local traffic authority considers generating a revenue by selling its data to cooperative service providers (via paid schemes), the authority should be aware that its revenue does not always increase when the data is sold to more service providers; higher revenues can sometimes be obtained from service providers who get a data quality advantage over other providers from local authority data. Finally, there may be a public concern about whether the local traffic authority’s data is appropriately utilised for improving the public benefit when the local traffic authority cooperates with service providers via paid schemes, and such concerns may prevent the local traffic authority from engaging in commercial transactions with service providers through paid data exchange schemes.

The field of choice modelling is evolving rapidly, with ever more complex representations of heterogeneity and a growing interest in discrete-continuous models instead of just discrete choice. Rapid developments are also taking place in terms of new data sources, with a growing revival of revealed preference data instead of stated preference, notably in terms of ubiquitous data and longitudinal surveys. Against this backdrop of developments in choice modelling, there is also a growing recognition of the role of the social environment on behaviour, through the effect of close and far social network members, with social interactions increasingly relying on digital communication. This thesis makes contributions in all of these areas, and differently from previous research, which has often focussed on just one, attempts to jointly explore multiple dimensions. Relying exclusively on revealed preference data, the work provides important insights into how social networks evolve over time, how people within a network interact with each other, and how there are links between a person's social network and his/her activity scheduling. The empirical results provide valuable insights for researchers not just in transport, but also in other fields. The behaviour modelled in this thesis is complex, with heterogeneity in different dimensions, in terms of preferences as well as behavioural processes, at the person level as well as at the individual choice level. At the same time, many of the choices are not mutually exclusive and have a continuous dimension too. The work makes a number of modelling advances, in terms of facilitating the recovery of heterogeneity and in putting forward solutions that allow for a computationally tractable representation of correlation and complementarity in discrete continuous choice, both in estimation and forecasting. Ever more complex representations of behaviour rely on rich data. This thesis highlights the benefits of detailed real world datasets in this context, and provides important insights into the limitations of existing data sources. The thesis closes by introducing a rich unified data collection that can be used for choice modelling applications in different fields.

High-risk cities worldwide face problems regarding increases in vulnerability to natural disaster combined with urban-transport problems. Up till now, there has been no study that was specifically concerned with these two issues simultaneously regarding how these cities should define their sustainability concept and formulate their land use and transport strategies in the framework of sustainable development. This study presents an approach for integrating concepts for disaster mitigation strategies into the land-use transport interaction (LUTI) plan by combining the disaster mitigation strategies with the conventional land use and transport strategies in the framework of urban risk reduction and urban transport sustainability. There were 18 combined alternative policy measures selected, which were classified into three different land use strategies and five alternative different transport policy measures. The land use strategies consist of (A) accommodation (BAU), (B) planned-retreat with strict zoning, and (C) planned-retreat with pricing policy. The alternative transport policy measures consist of (1) Bus rapid transit (BRT), (2) parking charge, (3) cut fuel subsidy, (4) combination of BRT and parking, and (5) combination of BRT, parking and cut subsidy This innovative approach is the first original contribution of this research. MARS LUTI model was modified by adding disaster risk factor in its sub land use of model, which become as the second original contribution of this research. In the level of strategies evaluation, all of the strategies tested were measured using four indicators, which consist of (1) vulnerability, (2) environment, (3) economic and (4) efficiency indicators. The additional of vulnerability indicator the framework of urban transport sustainability is the third original contribution of this research. The main finding for the case study are as follows : (1) the application of the two land use policy measures (strict zoning and pricing) gave significant contribution in reducing city vulnerability to potential tsunami disaster in the future, which could be applied to promote the concept of urban risk reduction. (2) The combination of “push and pull transport strategies” application through the combined BRT, parking and cut subsidy produced the best performance compared to the others alternative policy measures selected. The push and pull transport strategy succeed to direct the evolution of urban transport condition in the framework of urban transport sustainability in order to reach the sustainability objectives.

This research has been based on my experiences of London taxi drivers, both before I entered the London Taxi Industry, whilst studying to be a London taxi driver and during the thirty years I spent within the industry in a number of roles. My research has been undertaken in an inductive, broadly ideographic style. The study has been developed through initially narrating my experiences and observations in the industry and then analysing this account reflexively. The material that formed the basis of my narrative account was collected in an ethnographic style. In addition to my narrative account I also referenced the small amount of published material concerning the London taxi industry and interviewed a number of taxi drivers. A significant constraint was the lack of peer reviewed literature concerning taxi drivers and the taxi industry. Once I had developed my narrative account I then interpreted it in order to better understand the experiences and observations, the institutions and the people within the industry to understand and relate how they react and behave within their environment. The analysis involved deconstruction and interpretation against a framework of relevant literature to facilitate my understanding and assist sense making. I also interpreted the interactions with those outside of the taxi drivers' environment and analysed the persona that journalists and others have constructed that is meant to represent the London Taxi Driver. I considered the identity and characteristics implied by journalists with the prevailing culture and the identity that taxi drivers and the industry sought to portray. The qualification to become a taxi driver is known as the Knowledge of London. The Knowledge, as it is known in the industry, is recognised as an onerous task and has developed according to many in the industry into a rite of passage. I found that this process, with its rituals and arcane practices, which are accepted consensually by the industry, had a significant effect on the taxi drivers' identity and their status amongst non-taxi driver peers. Taxi driving is considered in working class circles to be at the upper end of a hierarchy of professional driving roles largely due to the achievement of passing the Knowledge of London together with the earning opportunity, perceived job security and flexibility afforded by being one's own boss. Knowledge of London students and taxi drivers appear to demonstrate common behavioural traits which I have explored in my research. London's taxi drivers appear to fear an assimilation of their role with other lower status driving roles and this fear has a significant effect on any attempts at change within the industry or within its institutions. The institutions within the industry provided much material for me to consider in the context of their alignment or clash with the culture of the industry. Changes in business processes and some of the institutions' relationships with their taxi driver stakeholders and the challenges to the industry's culture are considered as case studies within my reflexive account. The contribution to original knowledge is the insight into the culture and identity of London's Taxi Drivers, the behaviours and relationships within the industry both between drivers and the institutions that regulate, represent and benefit from the industry. Taxi drivers' responses to organisational and business process change. Further contributions to original knowledge are provided from the realisation that much of the structure developed within conventional organisations by management has developed organically without management intervention in the taxi industry. Many of the traits of life in offices and factories are likewise present in the London Taxi Industry despite the disparate and virtual nature of the industry and its reliance on consensual adoption of rules and practice rather than managerial influence and formal processes and procedures.

It has become increasingly clear that the level of road traffic in cities has created high levels of congestion with implications on man-hour, fuel loss and growing transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier studies have attributed these impacts to the legacy of the Modernist Planning/Master Planning paradigm which prevails in rapidly urbanizing cities in the global south region. While this strategic instrument is considered relevant and dominate the centre-stage of physical planning in most global south cities, earlier studies argue that it may have created the extensive spatial pattern which continues to produce unsustainable transport-related problems such as increases in commuter trips and greater distances between core-city employment areas and suburban residential areas. Implicit in the Modernist Planning approach is “predict and provide” engineering solutions which skew investments in transportation towards the building and expansion of roads for addressing traffic congestion challenges. It is widely argued that this situation create incentives that permit the ownership and use of private automobile vehicles at the expense of public transportation. This research investigates the contention that the prevailing Master Planning system in expanding cities of the global south region has fueled the growth of suburbia and car-dependent mobility patterns resulting in inefficiencies such as traffic congestion, the waste of human time and fuel, and emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). The study offers an alternative model that provides solutions to traffic-related and suburban sprawl impacts in expanding cities of the global south region. This alternative is based on a framework for the combination of spatial planning strategies of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Transit Oriented Development (TOD), and congestion pricing to overcome the shortcomings of inefficient strategic planning tools and improve sustainable outcomes for global south cities.

Bus priority in various forms has become an important application in towns and cities around the world, as Local Authorities seek to improve the efficiency and sustainability of their transport systems by promoting the use of public transport with its high passenger carrying capability. Segregating buses from general traffic, using busways, bus lanes, etc is increasingly being supplemented with priority at traffic signals, where signal timings respond to the approach of a bus to give it priority signalling through the junction. This was first trialled in UK on a significant scale in the 1980’s in an area of south east London containing isolated traffic signals operating under the UK’s ‘D-system’ of Vehicle Actuation (VA). There followed a period of some 20 years where equivalent priority strategies were developed, tested and implemented in the more difficult environment of Urban Traffic Control. These strategies have kept pace with the significant advances in technologies over this period, such as in detection, communications, processing and optimisation. However, this has not been the case with bus priority at isolated VA junctions, where strategies developed in London some 30 years ago still prevail – and even in large cities a significant number of signal controlled junctions operate in this way. This then suggested a research gap which has been taken up in this research – the exploration and development of new strategies for bus priority at isolated VA junctions. Taking existing strategies as the ‘base case’, their effectiveness was first explored through theoretical and mathematical analysis. This led to the first new output from this research – more comprehensive predictive equations for bus priority benefits (delay savings) than existed, covering a range of operational conditions. The limitations of the mathematical approach were identified, so research then progressed to the development of microscopic simulation modelling (VISSIM) for junction modelling and for exploring new strategies. This involved four variants of junction design and scenarios reflecting differences in levels of congestion, bus flows, signal timings, etc. New and improved strategies were then developed through modelling, including (i) re-optimising parameter values for the existing priority methods, (ii) improved bus detector locations taking advantage of new Automatic Vehicle Location technologies and (iii) new strategies for bus priority, including a ‘stronger’ strategy termed ‘always green bus’ and ‘differential priority’, where the level of priority given to a bus depended on its performance (eg regularity) at that time. Strategies were also developed to minimise the impacts on general traffic through various forms of compensation, with total person delay then being used as an evaluation criterion. The research has concluded with a series of recommendations for improved implementation of bus priority at isolated VA controlled junctions, taking advantage of the new technologies which are widely available and used within most bus fleets in the UK.

This research developed a new methodology and new models for assessing the potential of motorcycle crashes and selecting countermeasures to improve motorcyclist safety in a motorcycle-dominated traffic environment of urban roads. The crash risk models were developed based on discrete choice models and traffic conflict techniques. The innovative features of this research are that the non-lane-based movements of motorcycles were captured to evaluate their contributions to crash risk and a new concept - that of the Conflict Modification Factor (CoMF) - was proposed to use as a surrogate measure to assess the relative contribution of risk factors to crashes. In addition, a methodology was also developed to enhance the existing International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) star rating system for motorcyclists. The developed models were fitted and validated using data collected from urban roads in the city of Danang in Vietnam. The operating speed, speed difference, traffic density, front distance, longitudinal gap, lateral clearance and road surface condition were found to significantly contribute to motorcycle crash risk and several countermeasures have been consequently identified to improve motorcyclist safety including: installing changeable speed limit signs, installing changeable gap warning signs, installing changeable road surface condition warning signs and providing segregated motorcycle lanes.

This thesis is exploring the movement of bus passengers in the dynamic environment of a London double-decker bus and aims at defining an acceptable level of acceleration that would provide an accessible bus service to users of all age groups. In addition, it is investigating whether passengers start their journeys with an inherent balance disadvantage due to the interior layout of the vehicle. Twenty-nine healthy, regular bus users, between 20 and 80 years old, undertook three tasks (walking on a flat surface, ascending and descending a staircase) in five environments (static, stationary bus, bus in motion at low, medium and high accelerations) whilst their gait was recorded. During the process they were also asked to assess the experimental tasks and environments, and to report any incidences of balance loss. Innovative experimental methods of gait analysis were employed and statistical analysis revealed that even when the bus is stationary, passengers alter their natural gait whilst moving inside the bus, especially on the bus staircase. Increasing accelerations impel passengers to walk in a less natural way in order to maintain their balance. Moreover, as acceleration is increasing, they adopt additional balancing mechanisms by choosing step types that increase contact with the negotiated surface and provide more stability. Middle-aged participants presented reduced ability to control balance in all examined tasks, whereas older and male participants used the stabilising step types more than the other age groups and gender. To conclude, accelerations of 2.5 m/s² and decelerations of 2.0 m/s² should be avoided, as they are intolerable for most participants. For a truly inclusive and accessible bus system, the acceleration limit should be set to 1.0 m/s², while at accelerations of 1.5 m/s², only the majority of young passengers will sustain their natural gait.

Cycling as a sustainable means of transport brings a number of benefits, which includes improved health and well-being for individuals, improved air quality and climate change, accessibility and reduced traffic congestion at the national level. However, despite the benefits of cycling and the efforts by the government to promote this mode of transport, many short trips in Britain suitable for cycling are still made by motorised transport modes. People seem reluctant to change their mode of travel behaviour in favour of cycling. Therefore, it is important to understand the nature of complicated behaviour of people and the ones of cyclists at first. The thesis aimed to understand route choice behaviour for cycling for utility purposes in England. The thesis examined why cyclists use their current routes and how various features influence their choices. The thesis also probed the reasons for the choices and the relationship between the choice and the characteristics of cyclists. A mixed method approach was applied for the thesis, using questionnaires, actual route data collection for quantitative methods and interviews for qualitative methods. This approach allowed the researcher to examine diverse aspects of the research questions, which individual methods were unlikely to address. The thesis has identified what route features are important for cyclists, and why these features are considered important. In terms of the issues regarding cycling infrastructures, the preferences of cyclists were found to be linked to the fear to motorised traffic on roads, which is a fundamental issue that may not be revealed through quantitative studies. Another key finding identified was that cyclists choose different routes dependent on the conditions applicable even for same trip purposes. In this respect, it was noted that often their choices are forced by prevailing road instructions such as one-way road, although they may be aware that the alternative road conditions may not be good from a cycling viewpoint. However, it was also found that, where practicable, cyclists are likely to choose a route strategically, in a manner that will minimise the physical efforts required for cycling. Finally, based on the observations of the different geographical and environmental characteristics and atmosphere to cycling in two case study cities, the thesis also discovered the segment of the population who could become the main target for promoting the benefits of cycling.

Transport contributes around 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for climate change. The present work explores the potential to reduce these emissions through enhanced use of excess capacity in the urban transport system. For example, average occupancy in the UK is only 1.4 persons per vehicle for cars, therefore considerable excess capacity exists in these vehicles. Capacity and sustainability have largely been examined in isolation in various academic literatures. Existing research on capacity has focused on engineered specifications of transport infrastructure, rather than examining the potential to make more efficient use of infrastructure. Research on the sharing economy and transport and the potential of increasing vehicle occupancy for fuel savings is emerging, beginning to address some aspects of capacity and sustainability. The present work contributes to and extends these emerging areas of research. The objective of this research is to explore the potential for enhanced use of current and future excess capacity within an urban transport system in order to reduce CO2 emissions. This objective addresses the identified knowledge gap and practical challenges of reducing transport emissions. The research draws on theoretical approaches from a range of disciplines, including economics, engineering and sociological perspectives, integrating these through a socio-technical systems approach. The work also draws on the sustainable mobilities perspectives to provide a holistic examination of the urban transport system. The empirical work focuses on a case study of Greater Manchester (GM), which represents an archetypal large urban area in the UK. A behavioural study incorporates a survey of 500 residents of GM, in order to understand how people use their transport capacity. The survey results are then developed into a series of scenarios: 1 A: Shared Automobility, 1 B: Intelligent Automobility, 2: Public Mobility and 3: Flexi-mobility. These scenarios are then modelled using a traffic network model. Policy recommendations are made throughout this thesis and discussed with stakeholders through interviews to understand the practicality, acceptability and barriers to implementation. The present work shows that approximately 56% of vehicle capacity is found to be excess in GM, however the survey identified a number of potential areas for making enhanced use of this excess capacity. 53% of participants were found to be willing to car share and participants showed flexibility in their travel behaviour and mode choices. Transport modelling of the scenarios shows that Scenario 1 A: Shared Automobility has the greatest potential for reducing emissions, with a reduction of 35% in CO2 emissions in 2035 compared to Business as Usual. However, stakeholders identified practical and political barriers to increased sharing, and suggested that other policy measures, such as re-regulation of transport, have greater potential for influencing the sustainability of urban transport. This thesis shows that there is a significant amount of transport excess capacity in GM and that enhanced use of this capacity could contribute to reductions in CO2 emissions. These findings are applicable to areas with similar transport systems to that of GM, particularly in the UK. The framework developed in this thesis could be applied to other urban transport systems to assess the emission reductions potential of making enhanced use of excess capacity in urban transport.

Today, parking is the main coordinator between the land use and transportation. As the urban population is increasing, more and more cars are circulating through the city in search for parking spaces, often contributing to the global problem of traffic congestion. Hence, several governments seek to improve their existing transportation systems and infrastructure. Examples of their initiatives include the launch of ‘Smart Parking’ projects in major urban areas. However, the developments to date in this area have some significant limitations lodged against them. In this dissertation, we propose 3 different smart parking systems: iParker, INDO and RFPark, to enhance the overall parking scheme. First, iParker and INDO are introduced as new parking management and reservations systems. Both change the parking behaviour from driver-side parking searching to system-side allocation. This is achieved by solving new Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimisation problems with the objective of minimising driver's cost functions, while ensuring the maximum parking resource utilisation. Nevertheless, there are several differences between iParker and INDO. iParker is designed to operate as a country-wide system to offer drivers the optimal parking lot allocation and reservation before or at arrival to their destinations. This is based on minimising a driver's cost function that combines parking cost, reservation fees, proximity to multiple destinations and reservation type. As opposed to current reservation systems, iParker offers both static long-term reservations and dynamic short-term reservations, for both on-street and off-street parking lots. In addition, new pricing policies are proposed that allow the generation of more parking revenue and the fair distribution of parking traffic across parking lots. However, INDO is designed to operate inside individual parking lots who serve giant buildings - such as shopping malls - to offer the drivers the immediate optimal parking space allocation and the indoor guidance. A driver’s cost function here combines the times of driving inside the parking lot and walking inside the indoor destination. In addition, a Radio Frequency Identification/Near Field Communication (RFID/NFC) based navigation component is developed to provide commuters with guidance and navigation in the car park and the indoor destination. Based on simulation results, compared to the non-guided or the state-of-the-art guidance-based systems, iParker and INDO significantly reduce the average time to find a parking space and the drivers' cost, while the parking resources are more efficiently utilised. The pricing policies of iParker lead to the generation of more revenue and fair balance of traffic load across parking lots. In addition, INDO substantially reduces the commuting time indoors. On the other hand, RFPark is proposed as a new approach to parking monitoring. For the first time, Ultra High Frequency (UHF) passive RFID tags are deployed on the asphalt, and interrogated by RFID reader antennas above the parking spaces to detect the occupancy states. Most of the problems of the current cutting-edge parking occupancy detection systems are not present in this system. RFPark was analysed and implemented to show a pilot study in a real world outdoor parking environment in the University of Liverpool and has proved to have a very high detection accuracy. The innovative design and development of these 3 systems form a new ‘Smart Parking’ solution that offers to reduce the parking-related traffic congestion, enhance driver experience and improve the overall parking scheme. Although there are some challenges regarding the realisation of these smart systems, they are addressed here and solutions to them are proposed in this dissertation.

There is a growing recognition of the role that walking and cycling can make in reducing traffic congestion and air pollution whilst also contributing to improved personal health and wellbeing. While studies suggest that infrastructure is required to promote walking and cycling, there is a lack of evidence at the micro level on how interventions aimed at improving connectivity for walking and cycling influence travel behaviour and whether they promote a modal shift away from short car journeys. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which the implementation of a high quality traffic free route, delivered by a recent programme targeted at everyday walking and cycling in the UK - the Sustrans Connect2 Programme - influenced individuals' day-to-day travel decisions, changed the spatial and temporal nature of their journeys and impacted on overall carbon emissions from motorised travel. To achieve this aim an in-depth longitudinal panel study of a community of residents living next to a totemic Connect2 scheme in Penarth, Cardiff, was conducted. A panel of purposively selected participants (N=50) were interviewed and asked to record their travel behaviour using personal GPS devices and travel diaries over two seasonally matching 7-day time periods in 2011 and 2012. This novel GPS based mixed-method approach provided a detailed account of participants' travel behaviour in the local area (n=2664 journeys) and a comprehensive understanding of how, why and for whom the Connect2 intervention was likely to influence travel behaviour and the longevity of effects. The findings revealed that participants used the new Connect2 scheme regularly during the period of the study (36% in 2011; 26% in 2012); however, the new scheme was likely to have a greater impact for recreational journeys rather than for everyday travel. Spatial data provided new insights into the complexities of walking behaviour and factors influencing cycling for everyday travel or recreation, including route choice decisions, destinations where activities were conducted and the role of the new Connect2 infrastructure in supporting this. Further findings support the potential of active travel in replacing short car trips (20%) and its impact on carbon emissions from personal travel (4.9% among the study sample). However, results suggest that the new Connect2 scheme alone was unlikely to promote a significant change in travel behaviour and carbon emissions from (displaced) car journeys. The study contributes to the debate on the effectiveness of interventions targeted at promoting walking and cycling and the importance of wider infrastructural improvements that may be required to encourage their wider uptake. The combination of methods for data collection developed and employed in this study also helps to inform future travel behaviour research.

Global sustainability challenges are particularly acute in urban conurbations which house the majority of the world’s population and where most of the economic activity takes place. Mobility is at the core of this challenge as transport is one of the highest energy consuming and polluting sectors across the globe. Achieving a low environmental impact transport system fit for all is a clear objective. A modal shift to low energy but highly competitive transport modes is a key target. Urban railway systems have the environmental performance and mass transit capability to be the core provider of mobility in metropolitan areas bringing also other benefits e.g. connectivity, cohesion and social inclusivity. Nevertheless, in a very competitive context where all modes are improving their energy performance, it is crucial that urban rail systems enhance their energy conservation levels without jeopardising their service offer. There is a lack of consensus amongst stakeholders on how to assess energy performance of urban rail systems. This void has been extended to the academic literature, where the issue is largely missing. The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to energy conservation of urban rail systems by supporting the decisionmaking process leading to the deployment of interventions aimed at improving energy efficiency and optimising its usage. A three-phased methodological triangulation approach has been adopted to address three research questions derived from two research objectives. This research has investigated energy usage, interventions and interdependencies that are governed by the complexity of the socio-technical system that are urban railways. A holistic approach has been developed based on an adaptable systemic monitoring framework and associated methodology enabling i) a multilevel analysis of system energy performance using a set of twenty-two hierarchical indicators and four complementing parameters, ii) an appraisal of candidate energy optimisation interventions and iii) the monitoring of the results of implemented measures. To validate and illustrate its execution, the framework has been applied to five different urban rail systems to assess a total of eleven technical and operational interventions. This has resulted in observing up 3.4% or circa 4 GWh usage reduction at system level when considering the influence of the three technical interventions monitored and up to 4.8% or circa 6.6 GWh when the eight operational interventions are evaluated in conjunction. These outcomes have illustrated the universality of the framework and its adaptability to the particularities of each urban rail system.

Vehicles searching for on-street parking create environmental and economic externalities through increasing network traffic flow and congestion, heightening pollutant emission levels, creating additional noise, giving rise to time delays for through vehicles, and leading to potential safety hazards caused by vehicles manoeuvring into or out of on-street spaces. Despite extensive negative impacts on individual drivers and on society, parking search is an under-researched area, particularly in more recent years and within the UK. Furthermore, current statistical modelling techniques applied to parking search time have not utilised a more comprehensive analysis in which hierarchically structured data on multiple levels could be addressed. The aim of this thesis, therefore, is to investigate and compare the factors that influence drivers urban on-street parking search time and its policy implications. A mixed methods approach was applied that comprised qualitative interviews conducted with local government authority Council Officers and a quantitative revealed preference on-street parking survey (sample size, 1,002 observations) undertaken in four cities in the East Midlands region of the UK in order to obtain individual driver-level socio-economic and other parking related factors that may influence parking search time. Statistically significant variables for each of the cities were identified by employing separate linear regression models. A multilevel mixed-effects model in which drivers (Level 1) are nested within streets (Level 2) was then applied to the pooled dataset. Significant factors in the multilevel (street level) model were identified as: time of arrival at a parking place (for which every time period after the 07:00-07:59 reference case indicated increased search time); parking habit; parking tariff; the number of parking places previously visited (on the same trip); trip time from origin to parking place; area type; trip purpose; weather; vehicle type; and walking time from a parking place to a destination. Comparison of the factors that influence parking search time revealed important differences in statistically significant variables and coefficient values between the single-level and multilevel regression modelling approaches. Policy recommendations based upon the findings of the parking survey, modelling analysis, and further interviews conducted with local authority Council Officers, focus around time of arrival at a parking place, area type, parking charges and the potential technological advances that, if implemented, could have a considerable effect on parking search times within urban areas. Robust data collection and subsequent monitoring of parking search activity within each city should be undertaken in order to provide an evidence base which would support the introduction of future policy measures to reduce parking search activity.

Traffic congestion is a significant cost to society, amounting to somewhere between 1 and 2% of GDP according to an EU-wide survey (CE Delft, 2011). To address this cost, road pricing has long been viewed as the first best solution although issues with public and political acceptance have meant the uptake of such schemes has been low. In the meantime parking policies, a second best alternative to road pricing, have become extensively used by local authorities as a means of managing congestion due to the influence the price and availability of parking can have on a motorist s decision to drive. The effectiveness of such strategies however is limited due to local authorities being unable to control privately owned parking. More specifically, free parking at the workplace is seen as contributing to congestion at peak times by incentivising drivers to commute to work by car. To address this, in the UK the Transport Act 2000 granted powers to local authorities to introduce a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) whereby employers are required to pay a sum based on the number of parking spaces they provide for their staff with the revenue hypothecated for local transport improvements. The introduction of such powers meant the Government estimated there would be 12 schemes by 2010. To-date however, only Nottingham has introduced a WPL. The aim of this thesis therefore is to investigate the transferability of the WPL to other local authorities which is analysed through the application of the Policy Transfer Framework to the WPL in the UK context. It focuses on the views of key stakeholders with respect to the WPL at both the national and local authority level so as to understand the reasons for the low uptake as well as the design, implementation and operational considerations required to introduce such a scheme. The conclusions of this thesis are that lessons can and have been learnt with respect to introducing a WPL as the findings reveal that Nottingham City Council (NCC) drew on aspects of Policy Transfer to facilitate the introduction of the scheme. Specifically, NCC Councillors developed a vision of what a WPL could deliver and were reassured by experts from abroad whilst a staff transfer exercise allowed officers to learn lessons in terms of how the scheme should be designed, implemented and operated. What s more, lessons from a formal DfT evaluation of the pilot scheme in Nottingham following the delivery of the full WPL package will have a significant influence (either positive or negative) on the number of future schemes. More broadly, the results suggest that the WPL is transferable and the adoption of additional WPL schemes in the future is likely. This is due in no small part to the fact that the Nottingham scheme has so far enjoyed a relatively painless introduction even though it is still too early to evaluate how successful it has been in meeting its objectives. This research has made a significant contribution to knowledge in that it has explored the WPL with key stakeholders to generate a standard for introducing and operating a WPL. It has also provided an application of the Policy Transfer framework to understand the process and development of a new policy as well as the type and where lessons are learnt.

Widespread car usage of around 800 million of cars travelling 30 billion of kilometres on a daily basis has led to many benefits but also to significant environmental and societal impacts such as congestion, air and noise pollution and urban sprawl. This thesis aims to investigate the stakeholder values of car parking in order to support and inform the decision makers who are tasked with how best to resolve challenging car parking dilemmas. A two phase progressive methodology is involved. Phase one begins with conducting a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight academics to identify whom the stakeholders are that are affected by car parking. Then a second series of 20 interviews are conducted with sector leaders of stakeholder groups to establish how the stakeholders are affected by car parking and importantly, how they value car parking. Finally a third series of nine interviews are conducted with nine different experts to help to bridge the gap between phase one and phase two. Phase one found that a broader reach of stakeholders (classified into four different groups) are affected by car parking than the literature might imply, and that they value car parking in eight different key ways. It also found that the values emerged from a context of governmental, social and consumer concerns. Phase two of the methodology was quantitative and used the findings from phase one to develop four additional attributes considered meaningful across all four stakeholder groups, namely: safety, politics, public spaces and weekly household council tax. Choice based conjoint analysis was used to incorporate the attributes into three hypothetical scenarios namely; driver, strategy and social, as these were considered to be reflective of the value context unearthed previously in phase one. The scenarios were disseminated across England as part of a wider survey and achieved a sample size of 1107 responses. The results of which were then interpreted through willingness to pay (WTP) values. Key findings included: how a persistent political undertone can impact on car parking policy setting; that the car parking industry is under pressure to provide a service chiefly motivated by a perceived consumer intolerance of market prices; and that stakeholders can not only appreciate but also experience the impact of car parking choices on other stakeholder groups. Conclusions drawn included that the different stakeholder groups took issue with national government leadership believing it to currently be deficient in setting the standards for British car parking. Moreover, decision makers wrongly perceive that consumers of car parking do not pass between the groups and are therefore hostile to policies which do not directly benefit them. The key implication being that decision makers are cautious to implement policies which are not necessarily advantageous to consumers but which may lead to gains for the remaining stakeholder groups. In short, this thesis recommends amongst others that the governmental stakeholder group should seek to provide direction and guidelines for tariff setting which is reflective of the provision of a service that is conscious of the range of parking industry stakeholder values. Furthermore, as safety is an industry held value, practitioners should seek to better understand how it impacts their market. They should explore the relevance of schemes such as Park Mark to operators and their customers, by fundamentally investigating to what extent safety exists as a valid concern inside car parks and how it applies to personal safety, vehicle safety or general perceptions of safety. In addition, where the governmental stakeholder group remain mindful of the significance of securing political backing, the car parking industry would benefit from appreciating the sensitivities of political challenges faced by the governmental group when lobbying for any changes in parking policy programmes. Indeed, the parking industry should collaborate between the two parties and seek to unite in finding agreeable solutions which benefit constituents either directly or indirectly. As car parking values might differ according to their geopolitical context and lead to the extraction of a different set of attributes, further work would include looking beyond England to first the UK and then to abroad to explore the effects of potential cultural differences and learn the relevant lessons.

The impact EU (European Union) policies have at the local level is little understood and explored, especially in the field of urban transport. Yet the EU has a growing influence in the urban transport sphere. This thesis examines the EU’s impact on urban transport policies throughout Europe and assesses whether the EU has contributed to generate sustainable mobility at the local level. It argues that certain EU regulatory policies and funding programmes have had an impact on urban transport policies and have contributed to fostering sustainable mobility policies. Three methods were used for this study: content analysis of interviews with key stakeholders, comparative analysis of key documents in different countries and cities, in particular France and the UK, and surveys of a wide sample of policy makers in European cities. The findings of this study illustrate that the role played by the EU in the field of urban transport is increasingly important. The main EU influence in this field emanates from its environmental policies in a strong yet indirect way, as well as from its funding programmes in a more direct way but with less effect. EU climate change policies’ impact on urban transport is limited but increasing. Finally this study finds that the EU plays an important role in the field of urban transport and that local policy makers generally welcome initiatives and funding emanating from the European Commission. Discussion and recommendations are formulated highlighting the increasing importance supranational institutions such as the EU play in fostering sustainable urban mobility in collaboration with actors across different levels.

A great number of female passengers appear to feel fear of crime in underground railways and appear to be affected by the problem in terms of their frequency of use of the underground service, compared to males. However, although it has been dealt with as a problem to be ameliorated in the underground by Transport for London (TFL), how the service is designed to affect their fear and what factors should be taken into account in underground service design to alleviate fear of crime have not been fully answered to date. This research, therefore, aims to identify the influential factors of service design of the underground on female users’ fear of crime by investigating the features and their configurations of the London Underground service, which mediate the user groups’ fear. In order to identify the influential design attributes of the London Underground, which mediate female users’ fear of crime in situations, first, literature on emotion and fear, gender and sex, and service design and the elements of service are reviewed to find the intersection among the research domains. Based on the theoretical foundation, two user studies are designed to identify the role of female users’ gender in the underground and the influential factors of the underground service on the groups’ fear. Thirty one female user interviews are accordingly conducted and analysed in an ‘abductive’ manner. As a result, the mechanisms of female users’ fear of crime in the underground are revealed and the service design attributes in the mechanism are identified. Consequently, a conceptual model of the influential factors of service design on female users’ fear of crime is developed.

This thesis investigates signage in the built environment to determine how it may be representative of underlying socio-economic and cultural them~s of place. Using a multi-sited case study, it examines commercial signage in five arterial routes of Belfast; the Antrim Road, Falls Road, Lisburn Road, Newtownards Road and Ormeau Road. The research evaluates signage from the macro level of the built environment, through the meso level, aggregates of signs, to the micro level, qualities of signs, demonstrating how they work together to create the perceived environmental image of place. Findings demonstrate a correlation between observations on signage, the built environment and socio-economic and cultural themes of place. The research contributes to an existing body of knowledge and ongoing investigations into urban signage, demonstrating that alongside its primary functions of naming places, defining spaces, directing, warning, and generally making the urban environment legible, it is also a plentiful, accessible and reliable environmental indicator of the nature of urban places. Findings have the potential to impact on policy and practice, informing them of the value of retaining place-specific semiotic codes on commercial signs. This interdisciplinary investigation has resulted in a body of knowledge and visual archive which an analysis of signage as an isolated artefact would not have done. The methodology has the potential for application to cities globally and could prove useful to urban researchers from many fields, who may align these methods to suit extraction of data pertinent to their needs. The images used, more than a thousand in total, provide a lasting historical archive of the city, against which future research may be positioned.

Pedestrian behaviour simulation models are being developed with the intention to simulate human behaviour in various environments in both non-emergency and emergency situations. These models are applied with the objective to understand the underlying causes and dynamics of pedestrian behaviour and how the environment or the environment’s intrinsic procedures can be adjusted in order to provide an improvement of human comfort and safety. In order to realistically model pedestrian behaviour in complex environments, the specific human behaviour patterns which govern their behaviour need to be represented. It is thereby of importance to understand the causal chains between the surrounding conditions and the pedestrians’ behaviours: the impact of the environment’s purpose and facilities as well as the pedestrians’ individual goals on the pedestrians’ planning and route choice behaviour; the influence of emergent stimuli on the pedestrians’ plans and environment usage; the influence of the pedestrians’ environment usage under normal usage conditions on the pedestrians’ behaviour in response to a potential alarm event. In this thesis, a framework is developed for modelling advanced individual pedestrian behaviours and especially purpose-driven environment usage. The framework thereby aims to assist building and facility planners in improving a building’s layout in terms of pedestrian experience and walking routes. In this thesis, a comprehensive review on how individual pedestrian behaviour and the pedestrians’ environment usage are realised in current pedestrian behaviour simulation models has been undertaken. In addition, current theories on human decision making, goal-driven behaviour and emotion modelling have been surveyed from the research fields of artificial intelligence, virtual reality simulation, human psychology and human behavioural sciences. From this survey, theories suitable for this thesis’ cause have been identified and combined for the proposed Cognitive Pedestrian Agent Framework (CPAF). The proposed framework contains a sophisticated human decision making model, a multi-faceted individual knowledge representation, a model to realise situational and contextual awareness, and a novel realisation of a human path planning heuristic. The proposed framework has been demonstrated in the simulation of a building usage-cycle use case. Further, it has been outlined how the proposed framework could be used to model experiential alarm response behaviour.

Most desired applications for planning and scheduling typically have the characteristics of a continuous changing world. Unfortunately, traditional classical planning does not possess this characteristic. This drawback is because most real-world situations involve quantities and numeric values, which cannot be adequately represented in classical planning. Continuous planning in domains that are represented with rich notations is still a great challenge for AI. For instance, changes occurring due to fuel consumption, continuous movement, or environmental conditions may not be adequately modelled through instantaneous or even durative actions; rather these require modelling as continuously changing processes. The development of planning tools that can reason with domains involving continuous and complex numeric fluents would facilitate the integration of automated planning in the design and development of complex application models to solve real world problems. Traditional urban traffic control (UTC) approaches are still not very efficient during unforeseen situations such as road incidents when changes in traffic are requested in a short time interval. For such anomalies, we need systems that can plan and act effectively in order to restore an unexpected road traffic situation into a normal order. In the quest to improve reasoning with continuous process within the UTC domain, we investigate the role of Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach to planning in the presence of mixed discrete and continuous state variables within a UTC problem. We explore this control approach and show how it can be embedded into existing, modern AI Planning technology. This approach preserves the many advantages of the AI Planning approach, to do with domain independence through declarative modelling, and explicit reasoning while leveraging the capability of MPC to deal with continuous processes. We evaluate the possibility of reasoning with the knowledge of UTC structures to optimise traffic flow in situations where a given road within a network of roads becomes unavailable due to unexpected situations such as road accidents. We specify how to augment the standard AI planning engine with the incorporation of MPC techniques into the central reasoning process of a continuous domain. This approach effectively utilises the strengths of search-based and model-simulation-based methods. We create a representation that can be used to capture declaratively, the definitions of processes, actions, events, resources resumption and the structure of the environment in a UTC scenario. This representation is founded on world states modelled by mixed discrete and continuous state variables. We create a planner with a hybrid algorithm, called UTCPLAN that combines both AI planning and MPC approach to reason with traffic network and control traffic signal at junctions within the network. The experimental objective of minimising the number of vehicles in a queue is implemented to validate the applicability and effectiveness of the algorithm. We present an experimental evaluation showing that our approach can provide UTC plans in a reasonable time. The result also shows that the UTCPLAN approach can perform well in dealing with heavy traffic congestion problems, which might result from heavy traffic flow during rush hours.

Bus is the main mode of urban transport in most cities in developing countries. Despite a high mode share, bus service quality is often poor and para-transit services are regarded as a problem in urban transport systems rather than a solution. Using Dhaka as a case study, this thesis investigates bus service quality through identification and valuation of thirteen important attributes using discrete choice models. The attributes examined are travel time, travel cost, waiting time, headway, priority seats for women, crowding inside the bus, boarding and alighting, picking up and dropping off passengers, bus stop facilities, driving quality, driver and crew behaviour, cleanliness inside the bus, and air conditioning. Five focus groups were conducted to identify key qualitative bus attributes and their levels in order to design choice experiments for valuation. A survey of 431 respondents in Dhaka was then undertaken. Two choice experiments were designed and implemented within the survey, each with seven attributes (set A and set B) with travel cost as the common attribute. Multinomial Logit (MNL) models and Mixed Logit (MXL) models were developed using the Dhaka choice data. Twelve of the thirteen attributes were statistically significant at the 99% level. The values of in-vehicle time (IVT), waiting time and headway were BDT 34.80, 47.40 and 64.20 per hour respectively for low income groups in the segmented model. Waiting time has a premium valuation, 1.36 times higher than IVT, which endorses existing evidence. The highest valuation is for the dummy variable seating all the way which is BDT 42.20 for high income females. The next largest was bus stops properly, picks and drops passengers nicely , followed by wide door and mild steps for boarding and alighting , smooth and safe journey , bus stop with shed, but no seating arrangements , and air conditioning . The lowest value was BDT 4.61 for deck and seats are clean and tidy , for the low income group. The WTP for the qualitative attributes is high, but given the poor level of the existing service and low fare levels this seems reasonable. Income has a significant impact on travel cost, as well as gender on priority seats for women and crowding inside the bus. However, household car ownership does not have a significant impact on any of the bus attributes examined. The high income group has 75% higher WTP for A set attributes and 79% higher WTP for B set attributes than low income group. Females have 76% higher WTP for standing comfortably all the way , but 38% higher WTP for seating all the way compared to the male. However, females have a WTP of BDT 0.44 for per percent of priority seats for women in contrast with males who have a WTP of BDT -0.11. There is significant taste heterogeneity for both quantitative and qualitative attributes. The qualitative attributes for picking up and dropping off passengers, boarding and alighting facilities and driving facilities have higher valuation and this attributes came from the existing within the market competition structure in a highly fragmented bus market. Therefore, it is recommended to introduce competition for the market and incentives for bus industry consolidation.

This thesis investigates the design of inclusive services by integrating theory and approaches from the domains of Service Design and Inclusive Design. This integration was used to evaluate bus service use by younger and older people and the role of other stakeholders. The research was carried out through the case study of the bus service in Guadalajara, Mexico. As a result of this research, an inclusive service design approach and a tool are proposed to guide the design of inclusive services. Using an inclusive service design approach led to the application of a mixed methodology for data collection, which included: 1) a series of individual and group interviews with stakeholders as well as a document analysis; 2) structured focus groups with younger and older people; 3) observation of younger and older passengers using the service; and 4) accompanied journeys with older people. Data were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and the results facilitated 1) the understanding of the service operation; 2) the identification of the main barriers for interaction with the service along a door-to-door journey; and 3) the determination of the gap between what younger and older users need and desire and what bus operators actually provide. The research then focussed on visualising and communicating the findings to stakeholders. An inclusive service blueprint was developed to graphically represent the level of difficulty in using the service by younger and older people across the door-to-door journey, and to highlight areas for service improvements. A final study was undertaken to assess the usefulness of the inclusive service approach and the blueprint in improving the bus service. Collectively, the findings indicate that integrating inclusive principles along with a Service Design approach provided several benefits in investigating and improving the bus service. The uniqueness of data generated by younger and older users and the understanding of inclusive principles by the stakeholders already shows the potential to lead to a more inclusive service given the activities now happening in Guadalajara. This research contributes to the discussion of how the design of services can evolve through the incorporation of inclusive principles in the design process. Whilst the research was undertaken in the context of the bus service in Guadalajara, the approach and some outcomes from this research may be applicable for designing inclusive services in other contexts around the world.

Pedestrian training is one method of road safety education used to improve roadside behaviour and crossing skills in order to improve road safety. ‘Kerbcraft’ is a comprehensive pedestrian training scheme, recommended by the United Kingdom government, which has been demonstrated to be effective in improving pedestrian skills at the roadside. Very few Local Authorities have adopted Kerbcraft in its entirety due to cost and time constraints, with just five out of 57 local authorities surveyed operating a full Kerbcraft scheme. With a lack of comprehensive evaluation, the effectiveness of these adapted schemes is unknown. Many local authorities supplement on-street training with in-class activities that are generally designed to target knowledge acquisition, rather than behavioural improvements. Interactive Video has been shown to have potential to improve ‘hard’ procedural skills such as those used when walking at the roadside. An interactive video has been developed, designed to improve skills when children cross between parked cars. The interactive video is shown to be a usable and engaging educational resource with primary school children and shows that it can positively influence on-street behaviour overall. The video was most successful in a junior school with a high level of engagement observed and least successful in a primary school where the level of observed engagement in the video was lower.

Walking in the footway environment is an essential activity of daily living and the physical activity associated can also improve an individual’s quality of life. The possibility and ability for the individual to reach opportunities and participate in activities on foot indicate the accessibility of the footway environment. One of the major hazards in the footway environment that impedes the accessibility is falling. While it may happen to anyone, falling is more common in older people and the consequence of falling could seriously deteriorate their quality of life. Falls among older people is one of the major public health problems. Fall-induced injuries, either physical or psychological, can lead to further physical frailty and social isolation. Although falls study on the elderly has been widely discussed, there is little information available on risk factors in the outdoor footway environment. The current guidance of design and condition of footway environment, however, is short of scientific justification. The potential hazard of a single step-height, such as defects and kerbs on the pavement, is commonly encountered as well as negotiated by the individual under different lighting conditions. Therefore, a framework within which the interaction among sensory and physical capability and environmental factors could be well investigated is needed. This thesis investigates the process of planning for negotiating upcoming step-heights on the pavement, and aims at establishing changes in gaze (where people look) and gait (how people walk) behaviour in relation to combinations of environmental factors such as step-heights and lighting levels. About 17 young (aged 25-34) and 17 older (aged 65-74) participants walked on a straight walkway with 16 experimental conditions (8 step-heights at 2 lighting levels, one step-height in each environmental setting), and the visual and walking patterns were collected. The results demonstrated the inconspicuous descending step-heights (due to a lack of visibility) as well as the lower lighting level demanded additional visual attention and additional time to plan footsteps. Step-height of 60 mm was found to be the threshold of sensory as well as physical capability, which should be considered as suggested guideline for pavement design. Both 125 and 30 mm were perceived as VI more dangerous due in part to additional body function requirement and the nature of visual ambiguity respectively. More importantly, young participants demonstrated the agility and adaptability to different environmental setting whereas older people demonstrated more disturbed gait pattern and increased visual attention. Also, older people were more likely to face the risk of falling as they detected the step-heights later, had shorter time for response than young participants. Therefore in footway design, older people’s perception as well as reaction to response to the footway environment should be considered and the pavement should be designed to accommodate their needs. Bringing together the gaze and gait analysis is proved to be important in this thesis and it is essential for further research in understanding the cognitive process in between. The responses to risks of falling could not be understood without knowing the association between the visual perception and gait adjustments. The approach developed in this thesis might be used to further analyse microscopic as well as macroscopic scales of accessibility of the footway environment and provide some insights into how the individual’s sensory, cognitive and physical capability affect the decision making process while walking.

The thesis is organised in two parts. The objective of the first part is to review existing approaches to the simulation of microscopic pedestrian movement, to identify weaknesses and to propose an alternative model that addresses some of them. A three-layered classification framework is used to sort models based on their treatment of state-space, action-space and information-space. We identify three critical modelling parameters: the discretisation of the state space, the synchronisation of behavioural action (the cause) and its result (the effect), and the treatment of uncertainty and its impact on behaviour. We continue by presenting a pedestrian micronavigation model, which is driven by two types of actions taking place in distinct spatiotemporal contexts; behavioural actions, applied using a discrete time and action-space platform, and physical actions, triggered in continuous time and space. Finally, we present simulation outputs for simple modelling exercises and demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed modelling framework in tackling scenarios that require more complex decision-making processes. The second part focuses on route choice modelling. We start by discussing the effect of spatial morphology and configuration on pedestrian behaviour and routing decisions. Following the three-layered classification framework that was presented in the first part, we review methods of spatial abstraction and discuss their validity for representing state, action and information spaces for pedestrian routing. We propose a network-based abstraction of space derived from the visibility characteristics. In chapter 10, we address one of the most challenging aspects of pedestrian route-choice modelling: route-assignment under transient traffic conditions. The proposed route-choice models are based on structures that propagate feedback of experienced route costs and system-wide self-learning. This approach is appropriate for two reasons: it facilitates the integration of micro-navigation movement simulation with macroscopic route-choice behaviour modelling, and permits the simulation of variable levels of prior experience.

Shared space is an innovative streetscape design which seeks minimum separation between vehicle traffic and pedestrians. Urban design is moving towards space sharing as a means of increasing the community texture of street surroundings. Its unique features aim to balance priorities and allow cars and pedestrians to co-exist harmoniously without the need to dictate behaviour. There is, however, a need for a simulation tool to model future shared space schemes and to help judge if they might represent suitable alternatives to traditional street layouts. This thesis presents a microscopic mathematical model to simulate pedestrians and 4-wheeled motorised vehicles in shared space schemes. The complete development of the model is addressed: mathematical formulation of three interrelated layers based on the Social Force Model (SFM), software implementation, calibration and validation using the case studies from New Road (Brighton) and Exhibition Road (London). Microscopic pedestrian, vehicle and mixed traffic models are reviewed and evaluated with respect to their ability to reproduce behavioural phenomena, resulting in the SFM being adopted as the most suitable basis for this thesis. The behavioural patterns of shared space users are analysed to identify specific manoeuvres that need consideration. These patterns are realised in a three-layer model: The first layer introduces the flood fill algorithm to define intermediate destinations for agent's path around obstacles to the final destination. The second layer explains how the SFM is modified for pedestrians and vehicles. The third layer describes conflict avoidance with minimal change of speed and direction. The new mathematical model is calibrated and validated according to defined performance indicators using real data from the two case study sites. The results show that this model is suitable to simulate shared space users but that the physical parameters depend on how a shared space scheme is realised compared to the original philosophy. The achievements of this thesis can be beneficial to urban planners and councils considering the implementation of a new shared space scheme.

The turn of the nineteenth century was an exciting time for urban transport innovation. Inventors and entrepreneurs sought a power source that was efficient and economical. In some towns, however, other considerations were equally important in choices about transport mode and subsequent operation. Technology, socio-cultural, political, and economic concerns, as well as environmental and aesthetic considerations were all factors. This research considers their influence in the social shaping of the design and implementation processes. Opposition to overhead tram traction was widespread but quickly overcome inmost towns. However, after lengthy debates, five towns in England opted for the surface-contact system. Of these, Wolverhampton and Hastings are the main focus for this research because they occupy opposite ends of the social and political spectrum. Lincoln, Torquay, and Mexborough, where surface-contact traction survived for some time, are covered in less detail. Most historians of technology regard surface-contact tram traction as a failure anda temporary deviation from electric traction development. They maintain that surface-contact was technologically and economically unattractive compared to conventional overhead systems. More recent historians have suggested that aesthetic arguments were a surrogate for other interests. Through an analysis of primary and secondary source material, this thesis investigates those claims. It finds that despite technical difficulties, surface-contact traction survived for several years in the five towns, fulfilling the aesthetic ideals of the time and supporting economic and social development in the process. To this extent, the thesis judges surface-contact to have been a success. The evolution of urban transport, the development of the towns, and social dynamics including networks of power are all covered, together with aesthetic,environmental and economic considerations, as well as political and commercial pressures. The thesis examines how these diverse issues influenced decisions,and concludes there was no single factor that prompted either adoption or abandonment.