Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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3.4.2. Public transport
3.4.2.1. Public transport of megacities in developed countries
Despite the significantly different modal shares of public transport in different megacities of the
developed world (93 percent in Hong Kong, compared to only 12 percent in Los Angeles) it is
considered that the systems are already well developed in terms of quality. The policies that are
employed in public transport cities oriented like London are focused on employing Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) in order to make transport systems smarter, on providing specific
improvements that will improve the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and on reducing the
environmental impacts of public transport vehicles.
The majority of developed world’s megacities have multimodal public transport systems. Although
multimodality offers improved services and geographical coverage, it requires ticketing integration in
order to offer a convenient passenger experience and lower costs. In addition, integration between
different operators is also a key and more challenging issue for the transport authorities of the
developed world megacities. Although cities like Tokyo have proven that high public transport shares
can be achieved without any integration, other cities like London and New York have adopted
integrated or partially integrated ticketing in order to offer seamless trips to their passengers and
lower costs. The case of London shows the challenges of integrating different modes and operators
and the importance of having a single organization managing the transport operations in a city.
London is one of the very few cities in the UK that have the authority to manage all operations in the
city. Transport for London (TfL) is responsible for all land and river transport in the city of London.
TfL signs concessionary agreements with operators and therefore requires same standards of service
for all services running in the city, such as ticketing and fare standards and real time information
equipment on buses. An integrated ticketing system using electronic ticketing technology (the Oyster
Card) was first launched in 2003 and is being continuously upgraded with new features.
Another major challenge for the public transport systems of the megacities of the developed world is
the lack of capacity, particularly during peak hours. Extremely crowded services during peak hours
are the norm in Tokyo, New York and London. Various efforts to manage capacity and two areas of
contemporary technological innovation have made a significant contribution to the public transport
sector: digitization and electrification. Over the last decade ICT has, for example, considerably changed
ticketing for public transport with contactless payment through smart cards. 90 % of bus passengers
and 75 % of subway passengers use smart cards to board buses, subways or taxis in Seoul, offering
convenience and reduced travel costs (Rode et al, 2014).
ICT also facilitates the management of public transport capacity by improving the quality of services
or reducing the need to travel by providing the opportunity to work, shop or perform other activities
from home. In addition, the wide availability of open and big data further allow for crowd sourced
information to update network maps, offer real time transport information and improve service
quality. The most important recent enabler for enhancing mobility systems in cities for individual
users has been a combination of smart phone technologies and geopositioning systems. Smart phone
penetration has reached 72% in the United States, 71% in China and 49% in Thailand. Today, well
over 70% of Londoners regularly use smart phone travel applications and more than 40 million travel
information requests by smart phones are registered every month in Sydney (Rode et al, 2014).
However, efforts to manage capacity and reduce the need to travel alone may not always be sufficient
to meet the demand levels of growing megacities. In these cases, additional infrastructure to improve
capacity comes at very high costs. Additional capacity of road infrastructure is very expensive due to
high costs of land in urban and metropolitan areas, while underground or overground projects are
expensive due to the level of technological expertise they require. A recent example of such an
expansion is the Crossrail project in London. Crossrail is an underground train connecting central
London to the South East of England, serving major employment areas in central London. Crossrail
will run over 100km and will have 40 stations dramatically improving the quality of transport in
London and increasing the capacity of the network by 10%. Crossrail is currently the biggest