engleski

The Role of Public Transport Priority in Sustainable Urban Mobility

The continuous urbanisation process in the world has resulted in considering sustainable urban mobility as a top priority. Therefore, the public transport becomes the key element of sustainable urban mobility because of its advantages over the private car (space consumption, energy consumption, impact on the environment) and thus becomes the backbone of sustainable mobility in most cities. Operating speed in public transport is an important characteristic by which users decide whether to make a modal shift of their city trips to public transport. The operating speed is especially important in public surface transport (trams or buses) which is not separated from other traffic, and therefore it constantly interferes with other vehicles sharing the same urban network. Consequently, the influence of other vehicles leads to operating speed reductions and thus the attractiveness of public transport becomes significantly lower. The previous research on the subject concluded that the introduction of public transport priority can lead to a better transport process (considering travel times, network occupancy, and reliability) and other positive effects (considering energy savings, impact on the environment, and reduction of external costs) on the entire urban network. This paper presents an overview of research on the tram priority for the entire tram network in the City of Zagreb done by authors. The analysis of the research conducted in this paper provides conclusions about the significance of introducing priority in surface public transport through both the efficiency and the effectiveness of tram network in the City of Zagreb, which would result in increased attractiveness of public transport and the modal shift in favour of public transport.

sustainable urban mobility; public transport; public transport priority; operating speed; City of Zagreb

Rad je izrađen u sklopu znanstveno-istraživačkog projekta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu „Analiza funkcije javnog gradskog prijevoza u održivoj urbanoj mobilnosti“