Comparison of level of service and cost-effectiveness of Transitway and Light Rail Transit (LRT)-based systems

A methodological framework for economic and service assessment is developed. Urban transit system (Transitway and LRT) is then defined in detail in terms of its infrastructure components, vehicles, operational methods and capacities.;Life cycle costs are developed per passenger-kilometre and per passenger, based on costing models and computation procedures developed in the thesis. Numerous sensitivity tests are carried out to assess the capability of each individual system.;Cost-effectiveness comparisons are made both theoretically and empirically. Comparison is made to demonstrate the resulting cost-effectiveness of both systems.;Implementation issues and the staging flexibility of Transitway and LRT system are described.;Door-to-door travel time for urban commuters is assessed in terms of ride time and non-ride time based on various Level of Service (LOS) parameters. The average speed of a rapid transit system on a full urban area-wide basis is determined for both Transitway and LRT systems.;Recommendations are made to give serious consideration to the Transitway alternative where rapid transit alternative evaluations are carried for low to medium-sized urban areas. Also, the need of further study is recommended to include users, builders and operators points of view in the evaluation process.