1,720,956 research outputs found
A stated preference survey to forecast microtransit choice in suburban areas with low public transport ridership
Full text linkPublic transport services with fixed schedules and fixed routes are often unreliable and economically unsustainable in suburban areas having a low transport demand that is spatially and temporally dispersed. Therefore, suburban areas become car-oriented and have transportation gaps, increasing the risk of social exclusion for the most vulnerable groups. Microtransit services aim to fill these gaps, offering greater flexibility in routes and schedules for non-commuting trips and operating more efficiently, with shorter walking distances to stops and waiting times. The paper aims to investigate the microtransit choice and the factors that influence it using a Stated Preference (SP) survey. Some suburban neighbourhoods with under utilized public transport services in Palermo, Italy, have been chosen as study areas. Conducting face-to-face interviews, Revealed Preference (RP) data was collected to assess residents’ mobility habits. SP experiments were proposed to respondents to calibrate a mode choice model. A hybrid microtransit has been proposed, operating as a conventional fixed-route and fixed-schedule public transport service in peak hours and as an on-demand service in off-peak hours. A scenario analysis was performed to understand which type of customers would be easier to attract, and how in-vehicle times, waiting and walking times affect the microtransit choice. The study found that the choice probability for microtransit is higher for young people than for older people, increasing with the increase in the level of education and the introduction of travel demand management policies that discourage the use of private cars, such as parking pricing or the introduction of restricted traffic areas
Understanding the Key Factors of Shared Mobility Services: Palermo as a Case Study
Full text linkThe potential success of shared mobility services in the urban area strongly depends on careful tariff planning, adequate sizing of the fleet and efficient integrated public transport system, as well as on the application of policies in favor of sustainable modes of transport. The balance between earnings and expenses is not always an easy target for the companies in those cities where these services are not well-rooted in the citizens’ mobility habits. Often only large operators in the sector can continue to offer a service generating profit. However, several factors can determine the success or the failure of shared mobility services. The objective of this study is to identify, thanks to the help of a case study, success and failure factors, developing an approach that is supportive for companies in managing the services and optimizing fares and fleet to increase the number of members and maximize profits. The city of Palermo has been chosen as a case study: the “Amigo” carsharing service - partly station-based, partly free-floating - is a service managed by the municipal company AMAT S.p.A., which operates also the public transport service
A GIS-based methodology for evaluating the increase in multimodal transport between bicycle and rail transport systems. A case study in Palermo
Full text linkBackground: In a world where every municipality is pursuing the goals of more sustainable mobility, bicycle plays a fundamental role in getting rid of private cars and travelling by an eco-friendly mode of transport. Also, private and shared bikes can be used as a feeder transit system, solving the problem of the first and last-mile trips. Thanks to GIS (Geographic Information System) software, it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of such a sustainable mean of transport in the future users’ modal choice. Methods: Running an accessibility analysis of cycling and rail transport services, the potential mobility demand attracted by these services and the possible multimodality between bicycle and rail transport systems can be assessed. Moreover, thanks to a modal choice model calibrated for high school students, it could be verified if students will be really motivated to adopt this solution for their home-to-school trips. Results: The GIS-based analysis showed that almost half of the active population in the study area might potentially abandon the use of their private car in favour of bike and its combination with public transport systems; furthermore, the percentage of the students of one high school of Palermo, the Einstein High School, sharply increases from 1.5% up to 10.1%, thanks also to the combination with the rail transport service. Conclusions: The GIS-based methodology shows that multimodal transport can be an effective way to pursue a more sustainable mobility in cities and efficiently connect suburbs with low-frequent public transport services to the main public transport nodes
Designing microtransit services in suburban areas: A case study in Palermo, Italy
Full text linkPoor quality of Public Transport (PT) services is one of the main causes of social exclusion for people living in the suburbs. Public transport companies usually allocate few financial resources to these areas, providing transport services with low frequency, poor accessibility, poor reliability, and high waiting times at stops. Recently, microtransit has emerged as an effective solution to improve the travel experience in suburban areas, particularly for non-commuting trips during off-peak hours. This paper presents an integrated methodological approach for designing microtransit services to meet the mobility needs of people living in low-density suburbs. By conducting a Reveled Preference (RP) and Stated Preference (SP) survey and developing a travel demand model, the demand was estimated and used as input to simulate and size the service. Combining GIS and simulation models, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were assessed; fleet size to meet the trip requests was identified and the fare was selected using a sensitivity analysis. The method was applied to a real case study to design a new microtransit service with flexible routes and on-demand stops in a suburban area in Palermo, Italy. The results highlight how introducing a microtransit service with 30 nine-seater vans could change the mobility habits of people living in the suburban area, being attractive and financially sustainable if costing 2 €, or just a little more than the existing fixed-route bus service. It could improve the travel experience by reducing the average waiting time at stops to around 5 min and improve access to amenities and PT hubs by guaranteeing a walking time of maximum about 8 min
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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