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This purpose of this paper is to evaluate the experiences of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in China's urban rail development, investigates the critical factors impacting on the project viability and derives lessons for future urban rail PPP projects in China and elsewhere.

A case study of the Beijing Metro Line 4 project was adopted as the main research method with semi-structured interviews with senior practitioners and experienced academics as the primary data collection instrument. Qualitative data were collected and subjected to content analysis.

The case study provides six critical factors which are required to facilitate PPP urban rail development: streamlined approval process; robust tendering; strong leadership within the public procuring authority; effective organisational structure and the private sector innovation; commensurate charging approach and government subsidising scheme; and appropriate risk allocation. The research shows that the potential to directly re-apply the Beijing Metro Line 4 model to future urban rail development is limited, but lessons for future urban rail PPPs can still be drawn from the study.

The paper serves as an illustration to public procuring authorities and potential private investors on how to structure and manage urban rail PPPs.

The research presents an original investigation of China’s first urban rail PPP, the Beijing Metro Line 4 project and assesses the applicability of the Beijing model to future PPP projects in urban rail development.

Traffic congestion and disorderly development of land will affect the development of cities. How to make efficient use of urban land is a major issue for cities. Based on this, the problems existing in the planning and construction of urban rail transit in our country were analyzed. The method of rail transit network layout, as well as the site size, site selection and spacing optimization methods were analyzed. The combinatorial network layout planning of Metro Line in a city was studied. According to the layout of rail transit stations, a layout optimization model was proposed. Three basic network layouts were used to lay down the subway lines in this city, and the site size, spacing and intersection points were planned. The effective utilization rate of urban land was increased, and people's travel time was saved, so as to provide a new idea for the layout of rail transit

Many factors contribute to public rail transit use in an urban network. However, a dysfunctional relationship between the built environment and the transport system significantly deters such use. Architects, urban designers, town planners and policymakers must understand the factors that promote or deter pedestrian use of the urban environment.

The paper investigates four connectivity and walkability factors for three different metro stations in Doha, Qatar: Al Aziziyah, Hamad Hospital and West Bay. The analysis includes pedestrian sheds, block sizes, ground-level land uses and connectedness in the urban spatial network based on catchment contour maps using space syntax.

The results indicate the three metro stations and neighborhoods are representative of diverse type of neighborhoods in Doha: relatively compact but expansive for the Hamad Hospital Station area, metrically and topologically restrictive due to the poor planning and the peninsular location of the reclaimed land in the West Bay area, and expansive, shallow and reliant on attraction for the Al Waab transportation corridor associated with Al Aziziyah Station.

Time factors and temporary closure/capacity reductions due to the global pandemic restricted planned efforts to collect more pedestrian use data based on passive observations and preference choices using surveys during the study. Nonetheless, adapting the investigation to the circumstances produced significant findings.

The analysis can help us develop better guidelines and diagnostic tools to calibrate design and planning strategies promoting more walkable, healthy and sustainable neighborhoods.

The study is original due to examining stations of the new Doha Metro for the first time. However, it relies on well-established representational techniques in urban morphology and space syntax research.

Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems have emerged as an attractive form of public transport both in industrialised as well as developing countries. This paper reviews the implementation mechanism of LRT projects proured by private finance, through Build Operate Transfer (BOT) type concession contracts. A case study approach is used to model an actual LRT project. The case study analysis shows that the uncertainty factor could be converted to monetary terms and the process would enhance ability of the decision makers to have a better understanding of the consequences of risks.

Regenerative braking is an efficient energy saving technology in urban rail system, in which the recovery energy from braking trains is collected by some equipments and released to accelerating trains when needed. However, the high cost and low lifetime of storage devices prevent the widespread use of this technology. The purpose of this paper is to conduct thorough cost-benefit analysis to facilitate China’s urban rail companies to make decisions on the use of such technology.

To evaluate the benefit from regenerative energy storage, the authors formulate an improved integrated scheduling and speed control model to calculate the net energy consumption associated with different energy recovery rates and then define the benefit as the amount of energy saving arising from the usage of storage equipments. With the frequent charge/discharge operations on storage equipments, the energy recovery rate generally decreases which lowers the benefit, but the maintenance cost increases. By trading-off benefit and cost, the authors derive the optimal scrapping time, the maximum profit and the profitability condition for storage devices.

Simulation studies based on the Beijing Metro Yizhuang Line of China are given. The results show that compared with the current timetable and speed profile, the integrated scheduling and speed control approach with energy recovery rate of 0.5 can reduce the net energy consumption by 12.69 per cent; the net energy consumption can be well approximated as a linear function of energy recovery rate; and the maximum profit and the optimal scrapping time on regenerative energy storage devices are both positively related to the electricity price. The allowance proportion and the number of service trains such that busy lines with higher electricity price or allowance proportion have advantages to use the regenerative energy storage devices.

In this work, a linear energy recovery rate and a linear maintenance cost are used in the cost-benefit analysis process. In future research, the more accurate expressions on energy recovery rate and maintenance cost should be considered if more data on recovery rate and maintenance cost can be gathered.

The main values of this paper are to develop the integrated optimization approaches for train scheduling and speed control and, on this basis, make thorough cost-benefit analysis for regenerative energy storage to improve the operations management of urban rail transit.

Beijing rail transit can actively control the density of rail transit passenger flow, ensure travel facilities and provide a safe and comfortable riding atmosphere for rail transit passengers during the epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to efficiently monitor the flow of rail passengers, the first method is to regulate the flow of passengers by means of a coordinated connection between the stations of the railway line; the second method is to objectively distribute the inbound traffic quotas between stations to achieve the aim of accurate and reasonable control according to the actual number of people entering the station.

This paper analyzes the rules of rail transit passenger flow and updates the passenger flow prediction model in time according to the characteristics of passenger flow during the epidemic to solve the above-mentioned problems. Big data system analysis restores and refines the time and space distribution of the finely expected passenger flow and the train service plan of each route. Get information on the passenger travel chain from arriving, boarding, transferring, getting off and leaving, as well as the full load rate of each train.

A series of digital flow control models, based on the time and space composition of passengers on trains with congested sections, has been designed and developed to scientifically calculate the number of passengers entering the station and provide an operational basis for operating companies to accurately control flow.

This study can analyze the section where the highest full load occurs, the composition of passengers in this section and when and where passengers board the train, based on the measured train full load rate data. Then, this paper combines the full load rate control index to perform reverse deduction to calculate the inbound volume time-sharing indicators of each station and redistribute the time-sharing indicators for each station according to the actual situation of the inbound volume of each line during the epidemic. Finally, form the specified full load rate index digital time-sharing passenger flow control scheme.

Resilience concepts in integrated urban transport refer to the performance of dealing with external shock and the ability to continue to provide transportation services of all modes. A robust transportation resilience is a goal in pursuing transportation sustainability. Under this specified context, while before the perturbations, robustness refers to the degree of the system’s capability of functioning according to its design specifications on integrated modes and routes, redundancy is the degree of duplication of traffic routes and alternative modes to maintain persistency of service in case of perturbations. While after the perturbations, resourcefulness refers to the capacity to identify operational problems in the system, prioritize interventions and mobilize necessary material/ human resources to recover all the routes and modes, rapidity is the speed of complete recovery of all modes and traffic routes in the urban area. These “4R” are the most critical components of urban integrated resilience.

The trends of transportation resilience's connotation, metrics and strategies are summarized from the literature. A framework is introduced on both qualitative characteristics and quantitative metrics of transportation resilience. Using both model-based and mode-free methodologies that measure resilience in attributes, topology and system performance provides a benchmark for evaluating the mechanism of resilience changes during the perturbation. Correspondingly, different pre-perturbation and post-perturbation strategies for enhancing resilience under multi-mode scenarios are reviewed and summarized.

Cyber-physic transportation system (CPS) is a more targeted solution to resilience issues in transportation. A well-designed CPS can be applied to improve transport resilience facing different perturbations. The CPS ensures the independence and integrity of every child element within each functional zone while reacting rapidly.

This paper provides a more comprehensive understanding of transportation resilience in terms of integrated urban transport. The fundamental characteristics and strategies for resilience are summarized and elaborated. As little research has shed light on the resilience concepts in integrated urban transport, the findings from this paper point out the development trend of a resilient transportation system for digital and data-driven management.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective treatment to analyze and diagnose urban rail transit (URT) vehicle maintenance strategy.

In this paper, the technique of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is introduced into the examination of URT trains, first. Then the method of fuzzy-set-based assessment for FMEA is presented, which is the quantitative tool of Fuzzy-Set-based treatment for FMEA in analysis and diagnoses to URT maintenance strategy. Moreover, recommendations for further improvement of the proposed approach are also provided. Initial application into the vehicle maintenance of Shanghai URT System shows, that the proposed approach has a good performance and consequently is worth further development.

The paper presents a FMEA and fuzzy-set-based theoretical approach for analyzing and diagnosing current methods in URT vehicle maintenance strategy.

With rapid development of URT systems in the world especially in those highly populated areas, much more attentions are turning to researches on URT maintenance, nevertheless, few quantitative research achievement are mentioned or applied. This paper is a tentative attempt at introducing fuzzy-set theory into quantitative analysis and diagnoses of URT maintenance strategy.

The study in this paper is helpful in theory and practice of URT maintenance and its methodology could be further applied into a broad family of facility group or system in other engineering fields.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical conceptualization of how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be applied to rail freight rolling stock in order to develop a tariff for track access charges which is functionally dependent upon the derived relative benchmark values of performance.

It is posited that track access charges should be differentiated to reflect differences in the performance of rolling stock and that this can be achieved purely on the basis of technical and other characteristics. The performance benchmarking of rolling stock is proposed as the basis for formulating and justifying a performance-based tariff structure. Using DEA, relative index measures of rolling stock performance can be derived, benchmark performance can be identified and a tariff structure can be developed.

A workable approach to implementing the concept, utilizing existing in-house databases, is found to be feasible and a template for tariff setting is established.

In the absence of access to in-house technical data on rolling stock, which is commercially sensitive, no empirical application of the concept is possible.

There are many ways to improve the efficiency of a railway system. Many are inherently long term and involve significant investment. Using Sweden as an example, this paper proposes the more immediate, simpler and cheaper approach of incentivising the use of better rolling stock through appropriate track access charging. Such an approach should reduce the number of problems arising on the rail network and the costs imposed on other rail users, the infrastructure providers and society. Ultimately, the implementation of this approach would support the objective of increasing long-term robustness and reducing disruptions to railways.

The interruption event will seriously affect the normal operation of urban rail transit lines,causing a large number of passengers to be stranded in the station and even making the train stranded in the interval between stations. This study aims to reduce the impact of interrupt events and improve service levels.

To address this issue, this paper considers the constraints of train operation safety, capacity and dynamic passenger flow demand. It proposes a method for adjusting small loops during interruption events and constructs a train operation adjustment model with the objective of minimizing the total passenger waiting time. This model enables the rapid development of train operation plans in interruption scenarios, coordinating train scheduling and line resources to minimize passenger travel time and mitigate the impact of interruptions. Regarding the proposed train operation adjustment model, an improved genetic algorithm (GA) is designed to solve it.

The model and algorithm are applied to a case study of interruption events on Beijing Subway Line 5. The results indicate that after solving the constructed model, the train departure intervals can be maintained between 1.5 min and 3 min. This ensures both the safety of train operations on the line and a good match with passengers’ travel demands, effectively reducing the total passenger waiting time and improving the service level of the urban rail transit system during interruptions. Compared to the GA algorithm, the algorithm proposed in this paper demonstrates faster convergence speed and better computational results.

This study explicitly outlines the adjustment method of using short-turn operation during operational interruptions, with train departure times and station stop times as decision variables. It takes into full consideration safety constraints on train operations, train capacity constraints and dynamic passenger demand. It has constructed a train schedule optimization model with the goal of minimizing the total waiting time for all passengers in the system.