Advanced Systems for Public Transport

It is our pleasure to introduce this issue from Public Transport with a selected set of the papers that were presented at the 12th Conference of Advanced Systems for Public Transport (CASPT12) held by the Department of Transport Engineering and Logistics of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and its Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence in Santiago, Chile on July 23–27 2012. CASPT has become the most important conference in the field of design and operations of public transport systems and serves as a forum for the international community of researchers, practitioners and vendors involved in all aspects of public transport planning and operations (with similar emphasis in bus and rail based services). CASPT covers significant contributions to the theory and application of systems and methodologies for advancing public transport planning and operations. CASPT encourages not only the generation and presentation of new ideas, but also hopes to instigate productive collaborations between participants from academia, industry, and government. This version of CASPT was the 12th in the series, and for the first time it was organized in the southern hemisphere and in Latin America. Latin America is very active regarding modernizing the public transport sector, as can be observed in the successful blend between urban planning and transit development in Curitiba, Brasil or in the innovative and amazingly productive Bus Rapid Transit network operating in Bogotá, Colombia. These systems have inspired the world. Santiago also offers a very interesting system with full integration between buses and Metro and a 100 % penetration of a touchless card payment device. Transantiago, as the system is called, has very significant achievements, but also has faced severe problems. Both can be easily observed, and from which CASPT attendants learned during the meeting.