Value of Speed in Public Transit Services

High speed is always a desirable feature of public transportation services. Any measure that increases public transport speeds results in benefits to users in tenns of saved travel time, and benefits to the operator in reduced operating costs and in eventual reduction of fleet size. At the same time, it is known that some major efforts for increasing speeds, often involving considerable cost (such as increasing maximum technical speed of vehicles) result in relatively small increases in average passenger travel speed. This problem is common for a number of different modes of transportation. An excellent example can be found in air transportation; increases of aircraft cruising speed are costly and have relatively little impact on the passenger average travel speeds, particularly for short-and medium-haul trips. The same problem is observed with both rapid and surface transit in urban areas. In order to derive more specific results applicable in practice, this research is limited to the latter transportation systems: public transportation in urban areas.