In the context of the urban agglomeration and the rapid development of rail transit, the planning of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region (BTHR) rail transit 2020 is attracting attention. The BTHR is a natural disaster-prone area and a high-risk area for terrorist attacks; the robustness of the area is critical to the sustainable development of North China. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the...

New transit capital expenditures are typically evaluated in isolation from the transit/transport systems to which they belong. Problems with reporting performance elements such as ridership and costs are discussed. A focus on evaluating the total transport systems impact of new transit project implementation is called for. On this basis, new US rail transit systems have generally performed poor...

Even before the IEEE’s Rail Transit Vehicle Interface Standards Committee (RTVISC) approved IEEE 1473, railcar manufacturers from Breda in Italy to Kinki-Sharyo in Japan to Bombardier in Canada had been designing the underlying LonWorks® protocol into their rail vehicles. But after its formal adoption in 1999, IEEE 1473-L based networks have begun to proliferate at transit properties in North A...

Light rail systems have proliferated in Spain in the last decade, following a tendency that is common not only in other European countries but also in other parts of the world. This paper reviews the benefits of light rail systems, both related to environmental issues and mobility issues. It analyses the evolution of light rail projects in Spain and shows that light rail systems in this country...

Increase of transit speeds is one of the most effective ways of increasing the attractiveness of transit for urban travel. While surface transit in particular suffers from low speed, the desirability of higher speeds is not limited to it. Rapid transit has adequate speed for short to medium-distance trips in urban areas. However, for longer. trips, particularly when there is a competing freeway...

As part of the Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail Transit Project, the Cities of Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, Arizona are proposing a new light rail line, part of which will follow Central Avenue, a major north-south corridor in the City of Phoenix. The service is expected to initially operate with approximately 6-minute headways in both directions. The LRT tracks will be in the center median a...

A station closure is an abnormal operational situation in which the entrances or exits of a rail transit station have to be closed for some time due to an unexpected incident. A novel approach is developed to estimate the impacts of the alternative station closure scenarios on both passenger behavioral choices at the individual level and passenger demand at the disaggregate level in a rail tran...