Approach for Smart City
Chapter 3
by Multimodal Transportation

The realization of smart cities is able
efficiently to use the mix of transportmodes, e.g. public transport, private
vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians,and rail. However, many of thesemodes currently act independentlyof each other with no information
sharing between them. Recent
developments and applications ofinformation technology have made it
possible to share information among
multiple transportation modes andseamlessly connect them as a single
transportation mode. This is generally
referred to as “multimodal transport.”
Multimodal transport has relevanceto emerging economies which arecharacterized by inadequate public
transport and a large informal sectorof transport operators.
This chapter describes the summaryof how to realize a smart city throughmultimodal transport.

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Conventional
Transportation
Conventional planning mainly
supports automobile dependency,
which refers to transport patterns
mostly focused on automobile
travel over other modes [ 1 ].
It strives to maximize traffic speeds
and minimize congestion using a
speciﬁcally-developed set of tools.
However, in the cities of developing
economies like India, increased
dependence on private vehicle
usage has started causing frequentcongestion rendering traffic planningvery challenging [2]. Consequently,
the environmental impact of urban
transportation has been hugecreating long-lasting effects likeclimate change [3].
Accordingly, transportation planninghas now expanded to include moreemphasis on greener choices ofmodes like non-automobile modes
and public transportation.

A transportation system must handle
diverse demands. For example,
any conscious rider should have thefeasibility to take a greener route if
he wants to. Moreover, economicallyand socially disadvantaged people,
in particular, need diverse mobility
options: walking and cycling for local
travel, public transit or combinations
for longer trips, and automobiles(ridesharing) when necessary. As aresult, many agencies worldwide arerecognizing the diversity of travel
demands and the importance ofmore multimodal ways.

Multimodal Transport
Multimodal transport refers to linkingof multiple modes of transport(buses, Metro, auto-rickshaws,bicycle, etc.) to provide a moreseamless end-to-end transport
from source to destination withwithin the economic constraints.
Multimodal transport planningrequires tools for evaluating theChapter 3
Approach for Smart City by Multimodal Transportation

quality of each mode, such as
Level-of-Service standards which
can be used to indicate problems
and ways to improve each mode,as shown in Table 3-1.
For example, London’s overall public
transport network is characterized
by a well-established rail network
complemented by extensive bus andferry networks. These networks areintegrated by multimodal stations
designed to ease interchange forhigh volumes of passengers.
At major stations, purpose-built bus
interchanges have been developed
to be within walking distance of therailway and underground stations,
often operated by bus station staff
and furnished with real-time
information systems [4].
To facilitate multimodal transportation
particularly focusing on needed
to encourage public transit usage,
a number of different kinds ofintegration are required:• Integration with land-use
planning: Building public transit
links ﬁrst and then developing
mixed land-use commercial/residential centres around them•

thereby reducing the need totravel
Integration within and between
different modes of transport¾ Physical Integration:
facilitating direct, comfortable,convenient, and safe accessto public transport¾ Fare Integration: Enabling
the public transit user to pay
ONCE for a journey involving
different transport¾ Route Integration—Facilitating
logical interchange points
where passengers areable to transfer from one
vehicle or mode to anotherconveniently and safely¾ Information Integration—
Enabling a ‘one-stop-shop’
for public transit users,
cyclists, and walkers to gain
information on any journey
they wish to conduct using
these modes¾ Institutional Integration—
Ensuring that different
public transit providers seethemselves as part of anetwork and provide links toother types of transit, walking,and cycling

Table 3-1 Multimodal system features
Variable
Frequency

Indicators• Operating frequency.
• Headways (time between trips).
• Average waiting times.
Travel Speed• Average vehicle speeds.
• Door-to-door travel time.
Reliability• On-time operation.
• Portion of transfer connections made.
Boarding speed• Dwell time.
• Boarding and alighting speeds.
Affordability• Fares relative to average incomes.
• Fares relative to other travel mode costs.
Integration• Quality of connections between transit routes.
• Quality of connections between transit and other modes
Comfort• Seating availability and quality.
• Space (lack of crowding).
• Cleanliness.
Accessibility• Distance from transit stations and stops to destinations.
• Walkability (quality of walking conditions) in areas serviced
by transit.
Attractiveness• Attractiveness of vehicles and facilities.
• Attractiveness of documents and websites.
Marketing• Popularity of promotion programs.
• Effectiveness at raising the social status of transit travel.

1: Practical challenges
in developing cities
While there is a need to improve
the said multimodal transport
infrastructure, such interventions are
generally constrained by ﬁnancialresources. Since the transportation
system has to handle colossal
ridership, it may not result in theexpected acceptance of multimodaltransport unless the infrastructure
additions have good coverage.
Hence, the agencies should carefullyplan when and where to invest in theinfrastructure to target the gradually
increasing acceptance of ridership
optimally. To complicate matters,
the above-mentioned deployments
for non-motorized vehicles facegeographical restrictions. It may
not be possible to create separate
weather-protected shelters
everywhere as the cities are often
ill-planned. Hence, non-motorized
pathways may lack the required
coverage or quality. Moreover, thehotter temperatures may cause theriders to withdraw from walking or
cycling. Thus, within the ﬁnancial
resources, for the agencies topromote multimodal transport, auto
rickshaws are generally used as
feeder services or for shorter trips.
In this context, the success ofmultimodal transport lies in thequality of the last mile connectivity.
Developing its infrastructure
can signiﬁcantly improve public
transportation usage and hence
greener mobility. To this end, oneneeds to analyze the riders’ opinions
about the current mode transits andlast-mile connectivity to improveaccordingly.

2: Last one-mile connectivity
Against this backdrop, we conducted
an experiment to analyze the change
in riders’ opinions with and without
seamless last-mile connectivity. The
experiment was conducted near
the ISKCON crossroads BRT station,
which can provide the shortest
and eco-friendliest routes using all
possible modes. Speciﬁcally, the19Handbook of Multimodal Transport for Smart City
Application of Sensing, Networking and Big Data Analysis

application was to track the modal
choice behavior of the riders(Figure 3-1).
Riders getting down at the bus
station were approached and briefed
about the participants with the helpof ﬂyers. Further, they were asked
to ﬁll out a questionnaire about
their details. Of them, potential
participants were selected. With thissetup, participants were dropped
from station to office in the morningand office to station in the evening
for one week. The experiment lasted
for two weeks, and the participants
were divided into two sets one
for each week. Care was taken toensure that no delay was incurred in
the participant’s commute. Moreover,
all the participants were requested
to use the MMA app throughout
their rides to analyze their driving
behavior.
A questionnaire was taken from theparticipants on different aspects likeride comfort, and transit delay before
and after the experiment to examine
the effect of seamlessness on riders’opinions. All the participants weregiven certiﬁcates as a token ofappreciation.

Mobility as a Service- MaaS
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
integrates various transport
services into a single mobility
service accessible on demand.
A MaaS operator facilitates a diverse
menu of transport options to meeta customer’s request, be they
public transport, ride-, car- or bikesharing, taxi or car rental/lease, ora combination thereof. For the user,
MaaS can offer added value by
using a single application to provide
access to mobility with a single
payment channel instead of multiple
ticketing and payment operations.
This chapter focuses on what
MaaS is and how to achieve it indeveloping countries from theperspective of multimodal transport
in the smart city. When we look at20Figure 3-1 Auto-rickshaw with a ﬂag of the experiences

the reality of developing countries,
it is easy to ﬁnd many difficulties in
improving urban mobility. There is amismatch between rapid economic
growth and enhancing urban
nobilities. For example, the growthof vehicle registration is dramaticallyhigh because of the rapid growthof its economy. On the other hand,infrastructure development funding is
not enough to support such massive
demand for vehicle mobility. From
this situation, the following negative
impact of transportation stands out.
(1) heavy traffic congestion, (2) loss of
production time, (3) unnecessary
fuel consumption, (4) air pollution,(5) increasing accidental risk, and(6) problems with personal health.
Figure 3-2 shows the MaaS system
total conﬁguration [5]. Inside of thedark color circle is traffic function as
MaaS basic function. And each inside
function is related to three major
applications―municipal support, life
support, and tourism support. The
MaaS is a total life support system
by mobility assist. Therefore, MaaS
has various service applications,and a smartphone applicationis one of MaaS for navigation,transport selection, and ticketing fortransportation.
In terms of MaaS application, several
new companies have started a kindof MaaS plant form system using asmartphone application for searchingfor proper transportation selection.
In our program, we also demonstrate
a multimodal application (MMA),
and some example snapshots ofMMA are shown in Figure 3-3. Once
residents input their destination,
MMA calculates potential
transportation selection on theirsmartphone. Among those transport
selections, users can easily ﬁnd
the most appropriate mode basedon their interests, such as fastreaching destinations, economicaltransportation, or easy accesstransport. In general, such a MaaS
application is suitable for a trial, butthere are signiﬁcant challenges inpromoting a business.

Fundamental conditionof the MaaS
1: Choice of transportation
The major transportation in India ismotorcycles, auto-rickshaws, thenprivate vehicles and local city buses.
After this transportation, some major
cities will implement BRT or Bus
Rapid Transport and Metro railway.
It is difficult to deﬁne what kindof level is good enough fortransportation availability for MaaS.
At least, there should prepare somepublic transportation capability.

Chapter 3Approach for Smart City by Multimodal Transportation

Figure 3-2 MaaS system total conﬁguration [5]Figure 3-3 MultiModal application example

21

Handbook of Multimodal Transport for Smart City
Application of Sensing, Networking and Big Data Analysis

It is famous Delhi Metro and that ofother major cities such as Chennai,Gurgaon, Mumbai, Jay poor, Pune,etc. In Ahmedabad, there are twolines under development. Publictransportation is so-called masstransit which means it carries a lot ofpassengers’ transport capability.
There are some operation
management points for these masstransit expansion and usability.
(1) time punctual operation, (2) easy
ticketing, (3) connectivity with othertransportation, including last one-mileconnectivity, and (4) comfortability.
Those operational management
points can manage by a smartphone
application.

traffic signals―and all management
items should be under traffic policy.
In general, several methods will
support traffic information in eachregion. Variable Message Signs(VMS) will be one of the traffic
information delivery systems.

Figure 3-4 shows an example of
VMS in Ahmedabad. There are also
other several methods such as traffic
information radio and/or broadcast
television service. And smartphone
application is generally widely usedwith navigation system.

Figure 3-4 VMS in Downtown, Ahmedabad

2: Traffic Management
Traffic management is a crucial
function of urban mobility services.
There are two main parts―one istraffic information distribution, andthe other is traffic control such as

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1997.
[ 2 ] Alam, M.A., and F. Ahmed: Urban transport systems and congestion: a case study of Indian cities. Transport andCommunications Bulletin for Asia and the Paciﬁc, Vol.82, pp.33–43, 2013.
[ 3 ] Bhargab, M. and S. Sadhukhan: Urban public transportation system in the context of climate change mitigation: Emerging
issues and research needs in India. In Mitigating climate change, pp.75–91. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.
[ 4 ] Seaborn, C., J. Attanucci, and N.H.M. Wilson: Analyzing multimodal public transport journeys in London with smart card
fare payment data. Transportation Research Record, Vol.2121, No.1, pp.55–62, 2009.
[ 5 ] Hirabayashi, T. and Y. Yamada: Future of tourism 2022-2031. Nikkei BP Publish, Vol.1, p.223, 2021.

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