Do we need a clearing house for psv research?
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WHAT RESEARCH is being carried out in the field of passenger transport? A simple enough question on the face of it but finding an answer called for the ingenuity of a Sherlock Holmes. Each clue, each piece of information gleaned led to another source and my conclusions were that much is being done by a wide variety of interested bodies and on many different lines — but without a great deal of ultimate co-ordination.
My findings confirmed the views expressed by Mr P. I. Welding, director of planning and development Merseyside PTE, at a seminar on "Operational research in the bus industry" (CM July 23 1971) who found a lack of co-ordinated attack on the problems facing the industry as a whole. At the same seminar, Mr R. B. Medley, of MIRA, was concerned at the absence of a central clearing house for research information, a view I wholeheartedly support after following many fruitful trails but having to leave so many others untouched.
The first sign of any activity in this direction was found at the DoE which is involved in an exercise with the bus operating industry to identify research needs and decide on research projects for the DoE or the industry to pursue. These research programmes are expected to predict what is likely to happen to the bus industry in this country in the future.
At first in my investigations I tried to define research but discovered this was impracticable because the information obtained ranged from the relatively short-term plans of London Transport for improving services to meet passenger demands, to the far-seeing activities of the Cranfield Institute in the field of peristaltic propulsion (movement by wave-like contractions) for passenger conveyors.
The Government through the DoE and the Road Research Laboratory (RRL) is leading the field in research. Foremost among its research activities is the working group on bus demonstration projects which was established by the then MOT in 1969 to consider what could be done to facilitate the operation of buses in cities whether by changes in traffic policies or introducing different kinds of bus operation. The initial outcoine of the study was the recommendation of a series of demonstration projects, some of which have been in operation, and successfully too, for some time. Most of them have been referred to in CM in recent years. Thirteen such projects were sponsored; mostly, they were concerned with traffic management systems which give priority to buses within traffic lanes at signals and other junctions and exemptions from barred right or left turns or other movements. Two excellent examples are the projects in operation in Leicester and Reading. The purpose of the Leicester project is to evaluate the reduction in delays to buses at traffic signals arising from the provision of an extended green time when required by buses. Equipment has been installed at the City's Humberstone Gate/Charles Street intersection to enable buses turning right at the junction to actuate the controller through a radio link which gives them additional green light time if the lights are about to turn red. The effects of this form of priority on other traffic are also being studied.
Contra -flow lane
The Reading project involves a comprehensive traffic management scheme covering the whole of the town centre. Buses are given priority in a number of areas and the best-known aspect of the scheme is the King's Road contra-flow bus lane which extends for more than IGOGyd, and is claimed to be the longest lane of its type at present operated in this country.
The principle is that buses .run down a marked lane on the right-hand side against a one-way traffic stream. The Reading project is concerned with extensive surveys of traffic flow, journey speeds, bus delays and the number of passengers carried by bus. Accidents occurring in bus priority roads will be analysed and the extent by which bus priorities are misused by other traffic. Further extensions to the initial project which started as long ago as 1965 are in hand as development of the town centre has progressed. These involve further contraflow routes and restrictions on traffic other than buses and local access traffic to certain main shopping streets in the town centre. Local motorists, myself among them, have certainly felt the effect of the Reading scheme and that the effect is the one desired by the planners there is no doubt; it certainly discourages a motorist from attempting to take a private car into the central area.
Among the other projects in operation are those in Bristol and parts of London where a system of radio-telephone links with a central controller provide a continuously up-dated picture of the location of each bus in the fleet. By this means the controller can take the necessary action to maintain maximum service levels throughout the network. The equipment consists of an optical scanner on the vehicle which picks up coded responses from static beacons on bus routes at a rate of 10 to the mile.
A scheme in Southampton devised to reduce journey times involves the linking of existing and new traffic lights and has the effect of throttling traffic, except buses, entering main routes when those routes are congested. The queues which previously formed on the main routes will, by this system, be transferred to side routes and traffic on the main routes will have clear runs. Buses will enter the main routes through priority lanes which may also be used by emergency service vehicles.
Minibus scheme One of the projects which has received some publicity is the Leeds minibus scheme. The object here is to test the economics of the introduction of small buses circulating through the centre area of a city and penetrating at low speed into pedestrian precincts. The minibuses operate over a two-mile route linking the railway station with the bus station and central car parking areas. The combination of a low flat fare and a high-frequency service are almost certain to prove non-viable but the scheme is intended as a test of inducements to use public transport and the possibility of operating in pedestrian precincts.
The DoE is working on a further series of demonstration projects to follow these initial projects and these will be of a more advanced nature.
The dial-a-bus concept is being investigated with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A model has been devised to identify under what conditions this type of system might be economically and socially viable in this country.
The Ford Motor Company's Dial-a-Ride system which is due for initial trial in the spring of next year is a doorstep bus service, controlled by computer. It is intended to offer an improved form of public transport at little more cost than a bus ride and complementary to a taxi service. Chelmsford and Harlow local authorities are considering the scheme which is already under trial in America.
A consortium operating under the name of "Throughways" is working, in conjunction with the DoE, on specially built busways which are tracks enabling special vehicles to enter and leave towns at high speed. In order to fully utilize the trackway a special merging system is needed to enable the vehicles to gain easy access to the main track. Throughways are also interested in an automatic steering system for the guidance of vehicles while on the track.
Looking to another area of passenger transport. the DoE is examining moving pavements — an old hat idea but with a new concept of much higher speeds. Nine to 10 mph travel is envisaged once problems caused by acceleration and deceleration have been overcome. Besides the engineering aspects of building a safe and compact acceleration device, there is a human engineering side to this too in establishing how people manage with unaccustomed movements.
Small automated vehicles from 2A-seaters to fully automatic trains to run on dense traffic networks throughout cities — cabtracks — is another area in which mita work has been done. The system offers attractive features and good benefit-to-cost ratios, I was told, but would involve serious disturbances in town in terms of land use and visual intrusion.
Finally, the DoE is interested in technological developments such as magnetic suspensions, flywheel energy storage, advanced batteries, electric control for urban vehicles, air cushions and linear induction motors, all of which may affect passenger transport. And it must not be forgotten that work on vehicle safety and pollution control in vehicles is a continuous occupation of the department.
Instant planning I talked to Mr Roy Smith, London Transport's traffic superintendent, buses, who referred to his research activities as instant planning. He was concerned, he said, with planning for a period between four weeks' and one year ahead. This planning involved supply specifications for buses per hour, the buses to be used, service times, speed of buses and timing for routes.
The movement towards full o m-o by 1978 is LT's major forward planning traffic activity and this is well under way. 0-m-o, according to Mr Smith, implies an obsession with boarding times and research is always going on to find ways of improving boarding speeds. Looking at fare collection equipment is a high priority in this area, so too is introducing some opportunity to purchase tickets before travel. The human mechanics of what happens to people when super-fast systems are in use is another aspect of this research.
I asked Mr Smith about LT's long-range views and he told me they were about to plunge beyond 1978 to see what shape the public transport system would take. He believed the industry would be very much the plaything of the urban situation. This would not only affect transport but the way in which we lived. Political decisions too would have a major effect on progress. Vast operational changes in the industry could hinge on decisions about heavy subsidies and enforced restrictions on private cars in certain areas.
SuperBus scheme The National Bus Company, like London Transport looks to the more immediate future operationally but is nevertheless naturally very interested in all research affecting passenger transport. Mr Tom Glass, NBC's public relations offioer, told me they were watching the DoE's bus development projects with very keen interest.
The Leyland National bus, Mr Glass felt, embodied all the research and experimentation that has been going on in chassis, body and component design. "It is the safest bus ever produced and the most sophisticated, it epitomizes passenger vehicle development over the last few years in one package." he said.
So far as NBC was concerned experimentation and research took place at individual company level. "Every general manager has some little project going," said Mr Glass, "and these experiments in individual companies will eventually have universal application."
Research into the ideal bus is currently going on at MIRA. This work is being done by the association's PSV Operational Research Unit which was set up about a year ago. The brief for stage one of the project is "to determine the requirements for economic vehicle operation in respect of such matters as the fare collection methods, vehicle size, performance and layout and passenger safety". The Unit has a staff of only two and it claims the project is a modest pilot study. However, the results are very interesting (a full report appears in MIRA bulletin No. 3 July /September 1971). The report covers such items as vehicle types, size, floor heights, doors, heating and ventilation, luggage space, staircases, mgineering and traffic matters.
The MIRA researchers contacted 207 verators at home and overseas and 124 manufacturers of vehicles and components Ind found considerable disagreement within he industry regarding such basic choices ts single-deck or double-deck vehicles and >neor two-door vehicles; operators generally were found to be in need of issistance in making such choices.
Most operators, the report stated, reguired a simple, reliable bus giving a .easonably rapid and comfortable ride but large number had indicated to the .esearchers that they were quite willing to ;oncede many of their stated preferences if his resulted in a reliable vehicle requiring he minimum of maintenance.
One-man-operation had forced the trend owards single-deckers of 33ft to 3611 engths providing the equivalent accom
modation to rear-entrance double-deckers. The advantages claimed were freedom from the hazards of staircases and from the reputation which, the report said, rearengined double-deckers had for unreliability.
For stage carriage work the Unit found eight different types of vehicle met basic operator requirements — four were singledeckers and four were double-deckers in lengths of 30ft, 33ft and 36ft.
Floor heights were required to be "as low as possible" and preference was generally shown for two-door vehicles although observations had shown conflicting results in some instances when compared with single-door buses. Some operators had found driver resistance to two doors.
Double glazing was rejected by many operators but a sufficient number had been in favour to justify its study and on the question of heating the general wish was to provide saloon temperature well above the DoE minimum.
Choice of suspension systems among operators varied, the researchers found, but if all systems could be proved to be equally reliable and easy to maintain then air suspension was preferred.
Fully automatic transmission was another aspect for which operators showed preference, so too was power steering.
Fire hazard resulting from increased use of Fibreglass was a problem which most of the operators consulted felt should be the subject of further investigation.
The next stage of my research involved the more distant future: I visited the Cranfield Institute of Technology. There are three sections of particular interest in the passenger research field at Cranfield. First in the School of Advanced Automobile Engineering. Mr G. H. Tidbury, senior lectueer, is involved with studies on the structural design of bus bodies. These studies have demonstrated the use of a simple theory to estimate the proportion of the total load carried by the body structure of a particular bus. Mr Tidbury's paper on the subject refers to some unsolved problems but he said that he hoped the methods outlined in the paper would enable design calculations to be carried out on bus bodies mounted on proprietary chassis to the same level of confidence as for integral vehicles.
Student research Student research in Mr Tidbury's department has recently revolved round a proposed layout of a bus network and a suitable bus for the Milton Keynes New Town. However, the results are a bit far-fetched because they take no account of present legislative restrictions on vehicle size.
The second section of interest at Cranfield is the very recently established Transport Assessment Group. Cranfield is now, along with Loughborough University, the leading centre for transport studies and the emphasis is on transport technology and the assessment of transport systems. It is early days yet to see positive results from the Group but it is working on the problem of establishing a methodology for assessing technology and its implications. One of the initial projects is being looked at by the Group in conjunction with IBM and concerns the application of transport planning computer models to future bus operations.
From the Transport Assessment Group my researches led me to the Department of Aerodynamics at Cranfield where Mr John Spillman, senior lecturer, works on passenger transport projects for the future. Mr Spillman believes that the achievement of ultimate reliability in a system for moving passengers would require a sophisticated track mechanism, but vehicles should be kept as simple as possible. His answer to this is a model of a system where the vehicle is supported. propelled and stabilized by a cushion of air produced from the track. A demonstration of the model over a short distance proved to me that the system worked impressively. Once such a system is in operation the lead time between vehicles could be drastically reduced in safety to provide a high-density short-distance urban transport system. Another model was evolved from the theory of peristalsis (the process of muscular contractions progressing in a wave-like manner along a tube).
It works, Watson !
Mr Spillman has applied this principle to propelling various types of load along a conveyor track. The system requires air to be pumped along a flexible tube until it reaches the identation made by the weight of the vehicle resting on the tube. The pressure of air then forces the vehicle along the tube. This system does work. I know, because I sat on a small platform and was propelled along by this method.
The work being done by Mr Spillman appears to provide scope for considerable development ready for commercial application so I asked him the $64,000 question — "When?" He answered that he was producing elegant solutions to problems which did not yet exist.
There is, of course, a great deal more research going on than can be mentioned here. It covers a wide area from roads and road systems, vehicle safety in general and passenger safety, improvements on bus interior design, traffic planning and bus operational planning. Manufacturers in the industry are always researching some aspect and the universities too play their part particularly Loughborough, Leeds (planning), and Newcastle (operational problems).
There is no apparent shortage of re'search facilities but finance obviously limits what can be done. Cranfield, for example, said it was trying to persuade the DoE to finance more research into bus safety. However, the DoE is doing a great deal in this and other areas through its own departments, RRL, for example, an other bodies.
To me it seems that the clear message is that there is a need for some form of consultation machinery between all parties concerned to see what is being done and what needs to be done to avoid duplication of effort in reaching the goal — a highly efficient and relatively cheap public transport system.