Urban Public Transportation World Review: Challenges and Innovations

The urban public transportation systems of world cities are confronted by various challenges in the face of expanding motorization, suburbanization, fiscal constraints, politics, many policy objectives to achieve, and changing needs for mobility. At the same time, many cities are responding to the challenges by various innovative schemes of planning, operations, marketing, and technologies. This special issue is dedicated to review the recent developments, to learn from experiences, and to find basic principles for achieving improved public transportation for the 21st century. It is our hope that this issue promotes a greater level of innovation in research and practice as well as an exchange of ideas regarding public transportation as a vital component of the city of today and of the future.

This issue recognizes six papers, which we consider a good fit to the theme of the issue. They have been selected after rigorous review by a number of experts in the academic community. The topics are related to real-world issues and the findings are of interest to both the practice community and the research community.

The paper by Rongfang and Guan, titled “The Mode Biases of Urban Transportation Policies in China and Their Implications,” suggests the direction of multimodal public transportation policy in Chinese cities, given the unprecedented explosion of motorization in the progress in the nation. The authors present the data of the cultural background and the historical urban planning trends in China, and argue the merits of multimodal transit service, including the use of bicycles. The paper by Elgar and Kennedy, “Review of Optimal Transit Subsidies: A Comparison between Models,” presents a review of rationales of transit subsidies, and categorizes the subsidy schemes into three models based on the economic principles and externalities. They argue that the model of second-best pricing is best suited for most cites in the near future. The paper by Pulichino and Coughlin, “Introducing Transit Preferential Treatment: Is a Political Maverick Necessary for Public Transportation to Innovate?” reviews 11 cities that implemented the preferential treatment for transit, and identify three paradigms by which preferential treatment policies were debated and evolved in the planning process: mobilization, inside-access, and outside initiative. These findings can become useful practical references for an argument for transit preferential treatment. The papers by Duff-Riddell and Bester, titled “A Network Modeling Approach To Transit Network Design,” and by Verma and Dhingra, entitled “Optimal Urban Rail Transit Corridor Identification within Integrated Framework using GIS,” present approaches that identify the transit route network and operational schemes by the use of computer models and GIS. The first paper allows identifying transit route without specifying the routes initially. The latter paper provides steps for a comprehensive transit network construction, a mix of rail and bus networks and operation, in a real-world planning environment in India. Finally, a paper by Ting and Schonfeld, titled “Schedule Coordination in a Multiple-Hub Transit Network,” offers a rather theoretical analysis of schedule coordination at timed transfer points. The findings, however, prove mathematically the limits and opportunities of multipoint timed transfer.

It is our hope that these papers offer real-life as well as scientific grounds that can be used to promote sound policy development, planning, and operational rationales for public transportation. We appreciate Professor Chang, Editor of the J. Urban Plann. Dev., for giving us the opportunity to organize this issue.