scholarly journals “Unparking”: How can Smart Mobility Reduce Parking Demand in Our Cities to the Minimum? (Beirut Case Study)

Smart Cities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185
Author(s):  
Adib Haydar

Beirut is a car-dependent city, with 80% of Beirut citizens using their private cars to move across the city (the rate of car ownership is higher than regional and global benchmarks: 627 cars/1000 in Beirut, 550/1000 in Dubai and 170/1000 in Singapore). This reality causes two related impacts: an increased parking demand and decreased public transportation usage. Furthermore, in order to discuss these aspects, our study addresses the following question: How can the municipality’s interventions and mobility system reforms, such as smart public transportation systems and shareable mobility, reduce parking demand? As our methodology, it consists of three sections: (1) determine Beirut's parking problems by estimating parking demand and supply; (2) assess the potential effects of Beirut municipality policies in comparison to international experiences; and (3) evaluate the potential impacts of the smart public transportation system and shareable mobility in reducing parking demand. This paper studies parking growth in developing countries, such as Lebanon, and can help planners, decision-makers, and the Beirut municipality to make more informed decisions about parking policies, and to meet growing parking demand by introducing smart interventions that have high local potentials.

Author(s):  
Shu Yang ◽  
Chengchuan An ◽  
Yao-Jan Wu ◽  
Jingxin Xia

Because of the popularity and necessity of taxicabs, taxicab-related research has received increasing attention over the past decade. However, few studies have highlighted the value of taxicabs as an important component of public transportation systems, and the measurement and evaluation of taxicab systems have been largely missing in the previous literature. Two measures, from a demand and supply perspective, intuitively can serve as the measures for evaluating taxicab service performance, including loading and availability. Since the concept of taxicab availability has not been clearly defined in previous research, this study proposes a new concept of taxicab availability based on the concept of transit availability. Four taxicab availabilities—namely, spatial, temporal, capacity, and information availability—are further defined and introduced. The study used a large amount of taxicab GPS-based data to measure these availabilities. A framework is proposed to investigate statistically whether there are mathematical patterns behind loading and availability. The results show that patterns can be found and mathematically described, and statistically accurate and reliable taxicab information can be produced based on the patterns. Two presentation aids were selected to present the information: taxicab timetables produced for the general public and loading and availability heat maps produced for decision makers. The research provides detailed insight into taxicab system performance. The contributions of this research are to provide ( a) guidelines for evaluating system performance in a city or region and ( b) taxicab timetables for the general public.


Author(s):  
David A. Faria ◽  
Wilma Smith

A study was done to develop various innovative transportation strategies to address the changing travel needs of Arlington, Texas, residents. The study was guided by the Arlington Community Transportation Study Committee. It developed the transportation niche concept: the ability to use alternative community transportation services to address specific needs of the community in different parts of the city. Five high-priority niches were studied in detail. The success of the individual niches in particular and the integrated transportation system in general will rely heavily on the cooperation and coordination between the public and the private sectors and the acceptance of the niche concept by the general public.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cao ◽  
Ma ◽  
Huang ◽  
◽  
Chen

As a product of the development of the Internet and the sharing economy, shared bicycles are beneficial in solving the last mile problem of public transportation for urban residents and expanding the service area of urban public transportation to a certain extent. This paper analyses the spatial-temporal characteristics of shared bicycles in the city of Beijing by using kernel density estimation and statistical analysis methods. The maximum coverage location problem model is used to quantify the effects of shared bicycles on the subway and bus urban public transportation systems. The analysis results are of great importance to identify the effects of shared bicycle usage on an urban bus public transportation system from the view of space-time. The results show that (1) shared bicycles are largely located within 1.5 km from the subway station and 500 meters from the bus stations; (2) the number of the shared bicycle usage changes along with the distance from the subway and bus stations; (3) subway and bus stations are divided into six types based on the sink-source characteristics of shared bicycles; (4) the service areas of subway and bus stations are expanded by approximately 2.34 and 1.33 times, respectively, after the implementation of shared bicycles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3_4) ◽  
pp. 401-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Gershenson

This article presents an overview of current and potential applications of living technology to some urban problems. Living technology can be described as technology that exhibits the core features of living systems. These features can be useful to solve dynamic problems. In particular, urban problems concerning mobility, logistics, telecommunications, governance, safety, sustainability, and society and culture are presented, and solutions involving living technology are reviewed. A methodology for developing living technology is mentioned, and supraoptimal public transportation systems are used as a case study to illustrate the benefits of urban living technology. Finally, the usefulness of describing cities as living systems is discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 445
Author(s):  
Yurui HAN ◽  
Serge ROHMER

With the growing importance and widely application of the sharing bike system in public transportation systems in cities, many relevant problems emerged, which brought serious influence to the sustainable development of the system. The aim of this paper is first to research the existing sustainability indicators of urban mobility system through literature reviews, next it is to redefine and select the related indicators of sharing bike system through deeply understanding the evolution of bike sharing systems in cities from a sustainable point of view. Then, indicators are selected and applied to better understand the generations of sharing bike systems after the description of the different generations of sharing bike systems. The comparison highlights which characteristics of sharing bike system should be considered to adopt to a sustainable urban development and which features of the sharing bike system could need improvement and change to cater to active demand of the city development.Keyword: sustainability, urban mobility, sharing bike system, indicators,


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 32-35
Author(s):  
Anna Pająk ◽  
Artur Orzeł ◽  
Róża Stepaniuk

In the frame of Action 2.1. “Sustainable public transportation” of the II Priority Axis of the Eastern Poland 2014-2020 Operational Programme five viovodeships submitted 14 applications of investment projects of the total value of 2,1 billion PLN. The main aim of the Programme is to support complex projects of ecological integrated public transportation systems in the broad perspective of sustainable development. Three applications were submitted by the City of Rzeszów. The main aims of the projects are: the development of Intelligent Public Transportation System in Rzeszów, creation of the Communication Centre in Rzeszów as well as bus fleet modernization. The article refers to the characteristics of the projects in the context of current financial perspective of Eastern Poland Operational Programme.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. 5003
Author(s):  
Claudia Cavallaro ◽  
Jordi Vitrià

Given the widespread use of mobile devices that track their geographical location, it has become increasingly easy to acquire information related to users’ trips in real time. This availability has triggered several studies based on user’s position, such as the analysis of flows of people in cities, and also new applications, such as route recommendation systems. Given a dataset of geographical trajectories in an urban metropolitan area, we propose a new algorithm to detect corridors. Corridors can be defined as geographical paths, with a minimum length, that are commonly traversed by a minimum number of different users. We propose an efficient strategy based on the Apriori algorithm to extract frequent trajectory patterns from the geo-spatial dataset. By discretizing the data and adapting the roles of itemsets and baskets of this algorithm to our context, we find the longest corridors formed by cells shared by a minimum number of trajectories. After that, we refine the results obtained with a subsequent filtering step, by using a Radius Neighbors Graph. To illustrate the algorithm, the GeoLife dataset is analyzed by following the proposed method. Our approach is relevant for transportation analytics because it is the base to detect lacking lines in public transportation systems and also to recommend to private users which route to take when moving from one part of the city to another on the basis of behavior of the users who provided their logs.


Author(s):  
Camila Rodriguez ◽  
Tatiana Peralta-Quirós ◽  
Luis A. Guzman ◽  
Sebastian A. Cárdenas Reyes

Many cities in the developing world are reforming transit by formalizing bus services to capture user and nonuser benefits. A forerunner in transit reform, the city of Bogotá, Colombia, first implemented the TransMilenio bus rapid transit (BRT) system and then more recently undertook a large-scale initiative to formalize and regulate traditional urban buses in the city. This integrated public transport system [Sistema Integrado de Transporte Público (SITP)] is transforming Bogotá’s traditional urban bus system into a regulated, concessionary system with restructured bus routes that integrates operations, fares, and infrastructure with the TransMilenio BRT. An investigation was conducted to determine whether the SITP has increased affordability and employment accessibility for public transit users in Bogotá. Results revealed that most accessibility improvements resulted from the recent expansion (and significantly higher speeds) of TransMilenio rather than the SITP. Results of an analysis conducted with budget constraints to determine affordable accessibility indicated that employment accessibility was reduced overall; however, the new integrated fare increased accessibility over traditional buses, especially on the periphery and in southern areas of the city, as a result of reduced transfer costs. Overall, results partly explain the lack of enthusiasm for the bus reform process on the part of public transit users and the political discomfort that becomes apparent when embarking on this process in developing-world cities. Also, more incremental, flexible reform might be crafted for public transportation systems that are dominated by informal services.


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