CHAPTER 6

Urban transport and fleet

management

1
 Introduction
As the urban population and income increases,
demand for key services such as transportation,
water, sewage treatment, and low income housing
will increase five to sevenfold in cities
of every size and type.

The policy makers have always stressed on

checking rapid urbanization and migration through
introduction of various schemes for rural
households.

In fact, urbanization is a result of the development

process. Despite the challenges, urbanization is an
opportunity for furthering
economic development and provision of quality of
2 life.
 Contd. Introd…
Amongst various urban services, urban transport is a
very important service for the overall development of
the country. Urban transport provides mobility of people
and goods and access to employment, education,
shopping, health, entertainment opportunities.

It also affects the income levels of people, land values

and environment. In nutshell, it determines the quality
of life in an area.

Many cities are unable to meet the increasing demands

for travel due to the prevailing imbalance in the modal
split; inadequate transport infrastructure and its sub-
optimal use; lack of integration between land-use and
transport planning; and no improvement or little
improvement in city bus services, these factors
collectively encourage a shift to more personalized
3
modes of travel.
 Issues/Challenges related to Urban transport
 Some important issues/challenges related to urban transport
are as follow:

Growing transport demand due to rapid urbanization –

in-adequate public transport and increasing use of
personalized vehicles;

Inter modal integration – mix of slow and fast moving

vehicles without segregation;

High and increasing trip rates;

 Increasing trip lengths/travel times;

 High and rapid motorization rates;

4 Low number of cars per thousand population;

 Contd. Issues/Challenges…
High and increasing (in many cities) road
fatalities;

Largely unorganized urban transport industry;

Choice for fuel and vehicle technologies;

Lack of integration of land use and transport

planning;

Increasing level of congestion and pollution

(rising levels of carbon emission) affecting
5 the environment.
 Transportation and urban form
Elements of the urban form
Urbanization has been one of the dominant trends of
economic and social change of the twentieth century,
especially in the developing world.

Urban mobility problems have increased proportionally

with urbanization, a trend reflected in the growing size
of cities and in the increasing proportion of the
urbanized population.

Since 1950, the world’s urban population has more

than doubled, to reach nearly 3 billion in 2000, about
47 percent of the global population.

This is in part due to demographic growth and rural to

6
urban migration.
 Contd. Transportation and…
Current trends indicate a growth of about 50 million
urbanites each year. More than 90 percent of that growth
occurs in developing countries. By 2050, 6.2 billion people,
about two-thirds of humanity, are likely to be urban
residents.

At the urban level, demographic and mobility growth have

been shaped by the capacity and requirements of urban
transport infrastructures, be it roads, transit systems or
simply walkways. Consequently, there is a wide variety of
urban forms, spatial structures and associated urban
transportation systems.

 Urban form
This refers to the spatial imprint of an urban transport
system as well as the adjacent physical infrastructures.
7 Jointly, they confer a level of spatial arrangement to cities.
 Contd. Transportation and…
 Urban (spatial) structure
This refers to the set of relationships arising out of
the urban form and its underlying interactions of
people, freight and information.

Considering that each city has different socio-

economic and geographical characteristics, the
spatial imprint of transportation varies accordingly
(Figure 1).

For instance, while some cities tend to have an

urban form that has been shaped by the automobile,
cities in other parts of the world, because of
different modal preferences and infrastructure
developments, have different urban forms.
8
 Contd. Transportation and…

9 Fig.1 : Transportation and urban form

 Contd. Transportation and…
Even if the geographical setting of each city
varies considerably, the urban form and its spatial
structure are articulated by two structural
elements:

 Nodes
These are reflected in the centrality of urban
activities, which can be related to the spatial
accumulation of economic activities or to the
accessibility to the transport system.

Terminals, such as ports, rail yards and stations,

and airports, are important nodes around which
activities agglomerate at the local or regional
10 level.
 Contd. Transportation and…
Nodes have a hierarchy related to their
importance and contribution to urban functions,
such as production, management, retailing and
distribution.

 Linkages
These are the infrastructures supporting flows
from, to and between nodes. The lowest level of
linkages includes streets, which are the defining
elements of the urban spatial structure.

There is a hierarchy of linkages moving up to

regional roads and railways and international
connections by air and maritime transport
11 systems.
 Contd. Transportation and…
Urban transportation is organized in three broad categories
of collective, individual and freight transportation. In
several instances, they are complementary to one another,
but sometimes they may be competing for the usage of
available land and/or transport infrastructures.

 Collective transportation (public transit)

The purpose of collective transportation is to provide
publicly accessible mobility over specific parts of a city. Its
efficiency is based upon transporting large numbers of
people and achieving economies of scale. It includes modes
such as tramways, buses, trains, subways and ferryboats.

 Individual transportation
Includes any mode where mobility is the outcome of a
personal choice and means such as the automobile,
walking, cycling and the motor-cycle.

12
 Contd. Transportation and…
The majority of people walk to satisfy their basic
mobility, but this number varies according to the city
considered. For instance, walking accounts for 88
percent of all movements inside Tokyo while this
figure is only 3 percent for Los Angeles.

 Freight transportation
As cities are dominant centers of production and
consumption, urban activities are accompanied by
large movements of freight.

These movements are mostly characterized by

delivery trucks moving between industries,
distribution centers, warehouses and retail activities
as well as from major terminals such as ports, rail
13 yards, distribution centers and airports.
 Urban transport management
As cities become the engines of economic growth, city
officials and decision makers face a challenging task
of developing and maintaining efficient urban transport
systems.

These systems must address the problems of severe

congestion, deteriorating air quality, energy
sustainability, and increasing numbers of road
accidents.

However, urban transport planning and management is

complex. It is more than about choosing technologies.

It involves the consideration of a variety of factors

such as affordability, local culture, environmental
issues, financing, energy use, and impacts on special
population groups such as the young and the old.
14
 Contd. Urban trans…
Urban transport management is aimed at solving
negative externalities occurring due to road traffic
(gap in demand and supply for mobility).

For this measure, both private and public transport

modes need to be managed by a planning authority
which has control over some decision variables:
road pricing (includes tax on vehicles as well as
fuel, parking charges, congestion charges, etc.),
transit ticket prices, and the service
characteristics of transit systems.

The multimodal transport system is subject to

some constraints: physical and environmental
capacity constraints, and budget constraints.
15
 Contd. Urban trans…
In some cases an upper bound is imposed on the
ticket price, in order to help people who are
captive of transit.

The planning authority fixes the level of all user

charges and the transit service characteristics,
in such a way that the average generalized cost
of transport is minimized, and at the same time
the transport system is in equilibrium and all
constraints are satisfied.

Along with pricing strategies, customization of

the entire transport system of the town to suit its
particular characteristics is the key to
16 maximization of output in terms of mobility.
 The State of Transport Services in Urban
Centers and in Rural Ethiopia
It is an established fact that 85% of our
country's population live in rural areas. This
constitutes one of the indicators for the low
level of our development.

Other than the fact that the rural population

earns its livelihood through agriculture, a large
majority of the people lead a hand-to mouth life.

This situation is in turn reflected in the low-

level performance of the country's transport
sector, because the level of a country's
economic development and that of its transport
sector are inseparably linked.
17
 Contd. The State of…
Our country's urban centers are highly
desiccated, while their levels of development are
uneven in many respects. This has contributed
to the loose and rather weak link existing
between urban centers and rural areas, which
manifests itself in the performance of the
country's transport sector.

When we look at the situation now, one

phenomenon we observe is an uneven
development of urban centers, in which a few
towns, but especially one city (namely, Addis
Ababa) is bloating out at the expense of others.
Such expansion of one city into a lone primate
18
city will result in an unbalanced regional growth.
 Contd. The State of…
The expansion of infrastructure development in
the transport sector and the growth of modern
transport services contribute greatly to the social
and economic development of the rural population.

There is, therefore, a need for building rural feeder

roads, both paved and gravel, to link major cities
and intermediate towns with small rural towns.

Alongside this, we need to expand, as is often

observed in many of the African and Asian
countries, intermediate transport services, or non-
motorized vehicles and technologies in the
country's rural areas.

19
 Contd. The State of…
Rural communities in Ethiopia still use, as of the days
of their communal days, donkeys, horses, mules,
camels and their feet to commute between their rural
habitats to the urban centers.

 This state of affairs has become a stumbling block to

the kind of rural-urban interaction and the expansion
of exchange in production inputs, increasing
productivity, and the proliferation of market outlets.

The building of feeder roads in rural areas, which has

resulted in the deployment of low-capacity Isuzu
trucks during the dry season to
transport the farmers' surplus products to the
market, is something that must be encouraged.
20
 Contd. The State of…
When we look at the state of urban
transportation, except for Addis Ababa and
Dire Dawa and a few regional and zonal
towns, we find that the growth and
development of urbanization is very slow.

Many of these small towns are characterized

by conglomerations of dwellings with worn
out corrugated iron roofs and wooden walls.

On the other hand, however, we observe a

certain degree of urbanization and urban
21
growth in some productive woredas.
 Contd. The State of…
The case of Addis Ababa is as unique as it is complex.
Addis Ababa is the capital city of the country and the
seat of Oromiya Regional Government.

It is also home to African and other international

organization and embassies. Yet we see a
considerable imbalance in the area of transportation
infrastructure, transport services, as well as supply
and demand.

The burden of serving the city's population, which is

estimated to be over four million, has fallen squarely
on Anbessa buses not exceeding four-hundred in
number, and on taxis (minibuses) that are said to be
actively in service and whose number is not more than
10000.
22
 Contd. The State of…
Of the total population of the city, those with
their own private cars number 50000, at most.

 All this adds up to the disproportionately high

imbalance between the demand-and-supply ration
in the city's transport system, especially leading
to traffic congestion during the morning and
evening rush hours, which is by large
insufferable.

The one branch of the road transport sector that

is hoped to alleviate the problem of
transportation both in the rural areas, as well as
in the urban centers, is the interurban transport
23 system.
 Contd. The State of…
Except, perhaps, for those towns in the
proximity of Addis Ababa, especially
Adama and Bishoftu, which are served with
transportation at intervals of minutes, the
services provided in between other
intermediate and small towns is limited to
a couple or so buses only.

This kind of service delivery, as well as the

quality and capacity of the buses, requires
a radical change.

24
The Strong Points of the Transport Sector
While the modern transport system in our
country is about a hundred years old, it
has not developed as it should have.

Of the different modes of transportation,

rail and water transport especially have
been on a path of regression, with the
former faring even worse to reach a stage
of total closure.

With regard to showing improvement and

growth, the level of the changes registered
in our air transport system makes it the
one area in which we should take pride.
25
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
Although this branch of the transport sector is
only 60 years old, the level of development it
has currently attained is one that gives it pride
of place both in Africa and around the world.

 Notable among its strong points is its capacity

to maintain a steady and sustainable growth,
with no trace of vacillating. Among the strong
points observable in the area of air transport,
one finds the following:

1. The high level of its application and use of

the results of modern technology, in terms
both of carriers and their accessories;
26
 Contd. The Strong Points of…

2. The fact that its maintenance tradition,

knowledge and capacity has become a model
for both African and Middle-Eastern
countries;

3. Its ability to create among the country's

population a Good-Company image, thereby
being regarded as the country's
ambassador to the world at large;

4. The great contribution it has made in terms

of producing skilled and professional
27
manpower;
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
5. A host of other virtues including:
 its capacity to generate foreign exchange;
 its capacity to transform itself into a strong
competitor;
 its ability to create job opportunities for Ethiopians;
 its ability to link Ethiopia both with Africa and the
rest of the world;
 its ability to register a steady and sustainable
growth in terms of providing public and freight
transport services;
 its contribution to the transportation of such foreign
exchange-generating export items as flowers, gold,
etc.;
 The big role it played in publicizing Ethiopia's
tourism, culture, sport, art;
 The reliability of the sector's traffic safety.
28
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
When we turn our attention to the country's
twin institutions of Aviation Authority and
Airport Administration, we can easily see
the contributions made by these institutions
to the growth and improvement of the
country's airline in terms of issuing and
implementing policies, strategic
proclamations, regulations and directives,
which all have served as a basis for the
airline's growth and development.

Among the strong points of the Ethiopian

Aviation Administration, we find the
following:
29
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
1. Both air transport and aviation are new
technological developments both in our
country and the world at large. Yet the
sustained efforts of the Aviation
Administration in making this new
technology beneficial to our country are
highly regarded;

2.The efforts it made in the area of traffic-

management and control to ensure the
safety and reliability of the country's air-
space have been highly commendable;

30
 Contd. The Strong Points of…

3. It has particularly demonstrated high

capability in creating strong links and
entering into agreements with other
country's, especially with the superpower
United States of America, and strong
European countries, such as Germany,
France and Italy, in the process creating
favorable conditions for the development of
our airline;

4. The opening up of country's air transport

enterprise for private operators.
31
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
One can assert that road transport is
everything to Ethiopia. The reason simply is
that there is no other transport branch that is
as close home to the hearts of the people than
this branch in terms of providing services for
transporting passengers as well as goods.

In this regard, among the strong points of the

country's road transport, we find the following:

1. It has the lion's share (90-95%) when it

comes to transporting passengers and goods
within the country;
32
 Contd. The Strong Points of…
2. The effort made in the area of building
new roads and upgrading and expanding the
existing ones is highly significant;

3. The ability of the sector to create jobs for

many Ethiopians;

4. The high role it plays in bringing

producers and consumers together;

5. The improvement shown in the level of

our use of modern vehicles for transporting
goods and passengers;
33
 The Weak Points of the Transport Sector
In poor countries, such as ours, any social
and economic activity is confronted with
many problems and constraints both
internally created and caused by external
pressures.

These problems can be taken care of

through structural changes in systems as
well as minor adjustment measure.

This being the case, it is easy to realize that

there is a high level problem of capacity
limitation and lack of proper management
initiative in poor countries, such as Ethiopia.
34
 Contd. The Weak Points of…
With respect to this, when we turn our
attention to our countries transport
sector, but especially to road, rail and
water transport, we find that the sector
suffers from many serious weaknesses,
among which we find the following:

1. The country does not have any

transport policy and strategy;

2. Problems of traffic safety in the road

transport sector;
35
 Contd. The Weak Points of…
3. Unlimited and uncontrolled selling of driving
licenses in our regions;

4. Absence of limits on the producing year of motor

vehicles imported into the country;

5. The withering out of our rail transport

services;

6. Lack of proper attention and attitude toward

non-motorized vehicles;

7. The uneven distribution of transport vehicles

throughout the country, one result of which is high
36 traffic congestion in few cities;
Advanced Fleet Management System
The main objective of An Advanced Fleet Management
System (AFMS) is to provide a bus operator with an
efficient operation tool that would reduce its operation
costs while ensuring a good quality of service.

It is basically composed of a central computer,

equipment on-board for each bus or tramway vehicle, a
radio network linking both of them, and other
positioning, information, communication, control and
safety equipment.

The demanding requirements in terms of transmission

speed and regulation reliability, safety measures,
equipment robustness, etc. make an AFMS significantly
different from a telematics fleet monitoring system.
37
 Contd. Advanced Fleet…
 TransCity – a fleet management solution

 The TransCity Advanced Fleet system has

the capacity to manage a fleet of
heterogeneous vehicles which can consist
of types of following vehicles:

Bus (minibus, standard, articulated, mega-

bus(double Deck))

Trolley bus (standard, articulated)

Tram (simple train, train doubles (double Deck))
38 Vehicle of service or maintenance
 Contd. Advanced Fleet…
 The system offer the following benefits:

Efficient safe operation of the fleet by providing

Intelligent radio-communication system;

Continuous vehicle positioning (with or without

GPS);

Managing schedules, headway and

interchanges ;

Management of priority at traffic lights;

Integration with vehicle and crew scheduling

39
systems;
 Contd. Advanced Fleet…
 Provide real-time information to users

 On board-vehicles
 At stops and interchange stations
 Directly through Internet or mobile phone communications

 Provide condition monitoring by

 Real-time transmission of operating alarms

 Permanent monitoring of vehicle mileage, etc.

 Monitor the performance of the network by

providing

 Daily reports and statistics

40  Analysis of operating data
 TransCity General Architecture
 General Description
 The TransCity Advanced Fleet Management
system consists of:

A central system intended to collect the

information of all the vehicles, to coordinate
the movements of vehicles and to transmit
the relevant information to all the external
systems;

Specific posts in the garages and a short-

range radio system, used to exchange the
information relative to the configuration and
41 to the operational data;
 Contd. TransCity…

An on board system on each of the vehicles

of the fleet;

 A long-range radio system allowing the

communication voice and data between the
central system and all the participants
(vehicles, mobiles);

 A set of equipments (bus/tram signs) or of

external systems (Information system of the
Customer) with which the TransCity
Advanced Fleet Management system is going
42 to exchange information ;
 Contd. TransCity…
The following figure displays the general architecture of the system

43 Fig. 2 : TransCity general architecture

 Contd. TransCity…
 Central Architecture

 Real-time Server
The Real-time Server provides the functions:
 Fleet management functions;
The management of the voice calls;
The management of the distress calls;
The management of the transmission of data in interface
with the server of radio communication or nodal radio;
The processing of help in the interventions;
Control of the operation ( localization …);
Enhanced service control management;
Driver Management;
Supervision and management of the alarms;
The management of the interfaces with the external
systems (reference table data operation, centralized
44 server by management of crossroads);
 Contd. TransCity…
 Delay Server

The delay server allows the user to do statistical

analyses by querying the database with
predefined reports or by building themselves their
own reports.

The delay server provides the treatment of

automatic removal of obsolete data (exceeding
online archive of statistical data).

Note that the system can restore previously saved

data and can exceed the nominal duration of
archiving to perform analyses over periods
45 greater.
 Contd. TransCity…
 Garage Architecture

 Garage Server
To exchange larger data volumes with embedded
computers in vehicles, a repository server (the place for
coursework and projects that use databases) and a WiFi (local area wireless
computer networking) infrastructure are implemented at each
garage.

The garage server is responsible for:

 distributing the necessary data to the onboard computers
in vehicles to ensure its functions, including location,
passenger information (including talking dictionaries and
text), monitoring schedule (including hourly forecasts),
both for the current operating day or the next day;

 distributing a new version of embedded applications.

46
 Contd. TransCity…

 distributing an implementation schedule for each

day defining operational lines, type of schedules that
is applicable, the version numbers of the data to
apply and the version number of the application to
implement.

 collecting statistical data and laboratory developed

and recorded by the onboard computer, and make
these data available in the central system in order to
import it into the delay server.

This storage capacity allows the onboard computer

to have a fully autonomous mode of operation over
several days, whether in the event of unavailability
of communication with the garage server or
47 unavailability of the central system.
 Contd. TransCity…
 Wireless Communication Network

A communication network type wireless WiFi 802.11

b/g/n is used to perform data exchange with the vehicles.

Data exchanges take place in areas of storage deposits:

for this purpose, a collection of databases and antennas
is deployed inside the deposit to obtain optimal
coverage of all areas.

Data exchanges are based on standard TCP (Transmission Control

Protocol) / IP(Internet implemented on Ethernet networks

Protocol)

(special system of wires used for connecting computer networks around the world) such as
FTP(File Transfer Protocol). This protocol ensures a level of
integrity and good safety during the transfer process.

48
 Contd. TransCity…
 On Board Vehicle Architecture

49 Fig. 2 On Board Vehicle Architecture

 Contd. TransCity…
The on Board Vehicle Architecture manages:
 Dialogue with the Radio Transmitter/Receiver to
 Transmit messages to the Central
 Receive messages from the Central

 Communication with the tag reader for trams

 The acquisition of odometric counter
 The acquisition of unlocking doors
 The acquisition of GPS coordinates for buses and in
option for trams
 Voice communication (driver, passengers with Public
Address System)
 All information provided by the existing subsystems like:

 Passenger Counting System or sensors

 Internal Vehicle Computer if any
 Ticketing system
 Head Signs
50
 Video Security System
 Contd. TransCity…
 Functional Architecture
 Signing On
Vehicle signing-on sets the relationship
between a vehicle and a block (running board)
with a view to defining the vehicle’s route and
schedule. The operator carries out vehicle
signing-on by the Central.

The signing-on process can be realized by the

driver on board or by the operator on central.
Only the line number is used, which will link
the vehicle to the topology, and a block
identifier which will allow the selection of the
51
journeys the vehicle is expected to follow.
 Contd. TransCity…
These data are transmitted to the vehicle over
the radio link. If the check succeeds, the
signing-on is registered both on-board and at
the control centre.

If a vehicle leaves a garage without a planned

journey, the signing-on process can be
performed by using ‘special’ block identifiers.

Once the signing-on process has been carried

out on garage exit, it is not required any
further, apart from when there is a change in
the vehicle block, or if the vehicle goes back
52 to the garage.
 Contd. TransCity…

The signing-off process or vehicle end-of-

service is implemented at the end of
operation of a vehicle automatically when
the vehicle enters the garage and the block
is finished.

For each block, the AFM system monitors

the time of signing-on.

If it is not carried out at the planned time

(within an authorized delay period), a ‘late
53
signing-on’ alarm is triggered.
 Contd. TransCity…
 Vehicle Location

The location of vehicle is the basic information

used by the TransCity Advanced Fleet system.

Vehicle location is sufficiently accurate to

permit the management of relative positions
(for example when one vehicle is running
behind another), positions on common
sections, stop and terminal arrivals and
departures, passenger information at stops,
and the approach to intersections equipped
with traffic lights if necessary.
54
 Contd. TransCity…
The location process is based on GPS
technology for buses and on beacon (a radio transmitter
whose signal helps fix the position) technology for trams. It is

provided by the embedded systems carried on

board the vehicles, which have the information
and sensors necessary to identify the position
of the vehicle on its route.

The control centre obtains the position of

each vehicle by polling the vehicle fleet
cyclically with location request messages. The
vehicle location polling cycle depends on the
long-range radio resources and the refresh
frequency.
55
 Contd. TransCity…
The vehicles may be located at any point on
the network, and may be on the operating
line routes, at stations, at terminus or in the
garage.

For each bus in operation, location is

determined by:
The on-board system, using the information provided by
the GPS satellites
An odometer connected to the gearbox output which
delivers pulses proportionally to the distance travelled
A single-axis gyrometer oriented along the vertical axis
which generates a signal proportional to the angular
velocity of the bus in turns
 Door open / closed contacts
56
 Contd. TransCity…
 Benefits
 The benefits for a bus/tram operator to implement
an AFMS

The primary benefit is to utilize a minimum number

of buses and capture maximum revenue in return of
a good service provided to satisfied customer. It
translates in:

An efficient real time regulation, with voice communication

reduced to the minimum, using an appropriate radio network to
carry both data and voice transmission,

A boost in the staff efficiency (for example with computer

assisted scenarios for decision making process, precise shift
management, etc.),

Last but not least, savings in other areas as fuel consumption,

57 asset management and maintenance works.
 Contd. TransCity…
 The benefits of an AFMS for a bus or tram passenger

In parallel to the reduction of operation costs, it

shall provide to the users a perceived increase in
the quality of service and comfort.

 This goal is largely achieved due to:

  Better adherence between the published time tables and the

actual bus/tram arrival times,
  Information provided via the web and at bus or tram stops, on
next arrivals when waiting for your vehicle, especially in case or
delays/problems,
  Modern monitoring and information tools specifically
implemented for care and security of passengers,
  The combination of the above, heavily impacting on the
passengers and drivers stress, provides at the end a general
58 feeling of better satisfaction.