While many headline-grabbing major transport interventions have been proposed or are currently under construction, one of the more neglected but major issues facing transport infrastructure is urban congestion and transport delays within core cities.
In the UK, we have fallen significantly behind other countries in the provision of fast and reliable urban public transport. Many of the UK core cities have had aspirations to improve and extend their urban transport networks and many have struggled to achieve this because of cost or the vagaries of the planning system. However, significant investment is currently being made in Manchester, Nottingham and Birmingham with the extension of their light rail systems, and in Cambridgeshire with the world's longest guided busway, which opened, after some delay, with significant success in terms of patronage. Other busways are currently being constructed and many of our conurbations are looking towards high-quality bus partnerships and segregated modes with the aim of achieving modal shift from the private car, which is the main cause of congestion experienced in urban areas.
It is therefore timely that we have developed this collection of papers within Transport on the theme of light rail and urban transport. This collection of papers presents case studies and best practice guides from the UK and around the world on how issues related to urban transport have been addressed via guided bus, light rail, metro and quality bus systems.
The first paper focuses on Cambridgeshire guided busway, explaining the genesis of this scheme, and reveals how the success and lessons learned, in terms of patronage and modal shift, can be generated by high-quality segregated modes (Brett and Menzies, 2014).
The second paper relates to the extension of the Midland Metro light rail scheme in Birmingham (Griffiths et al., 2014). This scheme, after a couple of false starts owing to financial issues, revealed how lessons have been learnt in the procurement and design of integrated light rail, and furthermore in addressing the issues of trying to reintroduce trams to the streets of major cities.
The third paper, by Santos et al. (2014), looks at the efficient operation of urban metros across Europe and the ways in which efficiency and usage can be measured in order to make best use of the system.
While buses form the mainstay of the UK urban public transport network, for them to encourage modal shift and not themselves be subject to other congestion requires segregation and good-quality vehicles with a fast and reliable service. The final set of four papers is grouped around the theme of bus quality indicators, reliability and user satisfaction. Mahmoud et al. (2014) describe and evaluate indicators from a user perspective in terms of what makes a successful bus network, and suggest a way forward for operators and policymakers to help specify quality bus service provision. Qu et al. (2014) present algorithms that can be used to predict bus timetable reliability. Wang and Zhu (2014) present some interesting data from China on bus use and satisfaction; and finally Kumar and Vanajakshi (2014) offer data that show how bus arrival can be predicted in congested areas.
We hope that you find this collection of papers useful and thought-provoking.
