Improving Public Transportation with CUBE
Marios Ntaflos
Civil Engineer MSc MEng | Promoting Mobility Simulation tools in EMEA & Americas
Why public transportation is important and what are the challenges today?
Public transportation is a contributing factor for improving urban sustainability. A good public transportation system can stimulate the economy, can connect people to otherwise unreachable valued destinations and can reduce traffic congestion in the cities.
However, perhaps the most important reason why cities today need public transportation is that it helps reducing the overall environmental greenhouse gas emissions. Busses, trains, ferries and trams help to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel supplies, making public transport modes more energy efficient from most private cars today.
Despite the increasing recognition that public transportation is receiving, there are still challenges that need to be tackled. One of the most important issues of public transport nowadays is how to make it inclusive and accessible for everyone.
How CUBE can help transport specialists improve public transportation?
Organisations have turned to CUBE to know the impact before implementation and make better decisions for the first time. CUBE is a leading transportation and land-use modelling tool that creates a digital twin of the transportation system which allows planners to predict how changes in infrastructure, operations, technology, demographics and other policies can impact the movement and the accessibility of people.
CUBE is used extensively by goverment authorities, private operators and professional service firms to create transport models for:
- forecasting public transport demand and revenue;
- analysing public transport projects;
- optimising the routing of public services;
- testing different ticketing systems;
- testing the mode shift away from private cars;
- estimating future run times and patronage; and
- many more...
The CUBE software supports any mode of transport, delivering a true multimodal approach with feedback interactions between different modes. The flow-chart environment and the powerful GIS capability offers flexibility in building transport models.
User cases of public transport models in CUBE
Over the last three decades, CUBE has become widely used around the world, from Ecuador and Chile in South America to Australia and New Zealand and from the UK to South Africa.
The video below shows an overview of user cases around the world and how different organisations have used CUBE to create transport models.
Conclusions
Public Transport is getting increasing attention as cities are trying to become more sustainable. There are however, challenges to overcome such as accessibility and inclusion. CUBE has been extensively used worldwide offering the right tools to planners and leaders to create transport models for improving public transportation and for ultimately creating a more sustainable urban environment for everyone.
If you want to learn more about CUBE and how you can build or erhance a transport model please contact me at [email protected].
Thanks for Sharing!?
Atlantic Transportation Engineers, LLC
3 年Operating and maintenance (O&M) cost of public transportation is high in labor-intensive bus systems and hence not self sufficient which requires subsidies. Majority of the cities rely on buses as public transit. These subsidies are creating disinterest in public transit by the cities; thus ignoring the transit needs of the people. This is favoring the routes of high ridership only. The models and transit technology should aim at reducing this O&M cost; thus the buses could operate in many routes in providing transit access to more people. Driverless buses, flexible routes, demand responsive operations, etc. innovative operations and technologies should be explored through models to make public transportation an effective alternative to automobile.
Sales Consultant & Trusted Advisor (Semi Retired)
3 年Thanks for sharing
Senior Manager, Sales & Channel Desk at Bentley Systems
3 年Great work!
Global Sustainability Director at Bentley Systems | Linking digital technology to real-world sustainable outcomes.
3 年Nice work, Marios. It would be great if we could somehow quantify the positive environmental / sustainability impacts of some of these use cases.