A shared demand responsive transport service can alleviate traffic and provide alternative transport options, Prof. Maria Attard and Prof. Adrian Muscat say.
Earlier this year, the Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the University of Malta published a study about the external cost of private and commercial vehicle use in Malta. The results were a staggering €274 million in 2012. These costs were estimated to increase by 16 per cent in 2020 should no action be taken to curb private car use and its impacts.
Over the years, the institute has been instrumental in highlighting the need for a more concerted effort in transport policy, and for Malta to move towards a sustainable mobility agenda where the transport mix is broadened and encouraged, the public transport infrastructure is improved and given priority over cars, and disincentives for car use be introduced to reverse the trends of auto mobility.
In the meantime, new technologies have emerged which are easy to integrate with transport services that do not necessarily increase the capacity of the network with demands for new roads and more parking. Rather, they allow us to increase the capability of the existing network by increasing efficiency of motorised resources, improving the management of road infrastructure, and introducing demand management measures in urban areas. Of course we could redesign our towns and villages but that is a bit more difficult, and while better land use planning decisions are necessary, changes to the urban area will take much longer to implement.
Recently the institute launched a new project to look into the potential of shared demand responsive transport systems for delivering sustainable mobility goals. This project will specifically address the question of how we can make better use of motorised resources. Essentially, we believe that technology will enable this to happen. The development and implementation phase of the project is being funded by the Vodafone Malta Foundation under its Mobile for Good programme, which promotes initiatives that aim to deliver social change through the application of technology and innovation.
Taxi services, private car ownership and public transport systems are the most common on-demand motorised personal transport systems in use. Taxis offer a personalised door-to-door service at a relative high cost while the private car offers a low-cost personalised service but requires the financial and social cost of road infrastructure and parking spaces at each destination and the financial cost of owning and maintaining a car, which is not used for most of the time. Nonetheless it can work out cheaper than a taxi service.
A well-planned DRT system can support a policy that aims at sustainable and efficient transport
On the other hand, buses offer the lowest-cost non-personalised service that requires the passengers to organise their life around its routes and schedules. Public transport also results in the longest trip time when priority over traffic is not granted.
In this project we are looking at demand responsive transport systems that lie in between the extremes provided by the taxi and the public transport services. The DRT system is a shared on-demand mode, where passengers share the vehicle with other passengers during their personalised trip. This is what makes the problem difficult. The DRT concept is not new and operators, usually in isolation, provide shared on-demand taxi and minivan services to and from specific spots, such as airports and other well frequented venues. This can be carried out manually because the services start from one place.
Recently DRT systems have been reconsidered in an up-to-date ICT and intelligent transport systems setting, mainly to provide the last mile connection in low-density suburban areas, in protected inner city areas and as inter-town connections where demand is low. A number of studies have been carried out in Europe, mainly through the EC-funded Sampo and Samplus projects, which were followed by the implementation of trials in specific cities such as Florence, Italy and Braga, Portugal. Most of these systems were semi-automated, ran a small fleet and resulted in high operating costs that required subsidies.
In our project we want to study DRT systems as a direct replacement to private car ownership. The challenge is to offer a good service at a reasonable and competitive price. We have studied a fully automated system that provides origin-to-destination services over a closed service area of 100km2 to obtain an estimate of the non-subsidised cost to the end-user. The results show that a well-planned DRT system can support a policy that aims at sustainable and efficient transport.
The success of the system depends on the efficient deployment of resources, mainly vehicles and chauffeurs, to maximise vehicle occupancy and minimise travel times. We have already developed a model to study the relationships between the latter system variables. In a nutshell, scheduling in urban areas recognises patterns that look like predetermined paths. The model therefore treats DRT scheduling and dispatch over a large urban area as a collection of time varying routes. In our study we concluded that a last mile connection service in Malta is not feasible, since it triples the cost of a public transport trip. However a full origin-destination DRT service is highly likely to be successful in terms of financial cost to the end-user and therefore, in mitigating private car ownership and related social and environmental problems.
We are now extending the project to include real-world measurements. We will be developing the physical prototype to carry out these measurements. The results will give a clearer picture of how the system variables relate to one another. We will also be using the prototype to demonstrate the system.
This project is seen as an opportunity for the University of Malta and the Vodafone Malta Foundation to be proactive with actions and research that target one of the critical challenges for Malta. The prototype services will be studied and tested around the University’s Msida campus. It is also an aim to showcase the University as both an initiator and eventually a best practice example for others to follow.