Urban Smart Public Transport Studies: A Review and Prospect

Based on the recent development of urban smart public transport and its status in China, this study systematically reviews four crucial research areas, including the analysis of passenger flow characteristics, operations management, network design and optimization, and system evaluation. The limitations of existing researches and future research directions in the four areas are discussed. Correspondingly, this study examines the emerging trends of urban smart public transport from four aspects: intelligent recognition and prediction of passenger flow characteristics, urban smart public transport operations in complex scenarios, urban smart public transport network design and optimization, and urban smart public transport service evaluation. The primary research questions associated with each aspect are proposed. Particularly, this paper identifies the following four urgent research topics, including (i) mining passengers' complete travel chain information and providing integrated urban smart public transport travel services; (ii) integrating and optimizing public transport infrastructure layout and operational efficiency from the perspective of land use and transportation integration; (iii) building a three-dimensional bus operation and evaluation system from the perspectives of the government, enterprises, and users, based on their multi-level development needs; and (iv) building an integrated urban smart public transport travel service platform. Furthermore, in viewing the current development of urban smart public transport, this paper summarizes its current status and points out the shortcomings of existing research and critical scientific issues. It is revealed that integrated applications of emerging and disruptive technologies, such as big data, cloud computing, autonomous driving, intelligent, connected, and new energy vehicles, offered new opportunities and challenges in providing multimodal urban smart transport services and promoting sustainable urban development. However, new technologies will not spontaneously improve public transport services and accelerate sustainable urban development. Finally, this study emphasizes that future research needs to strengthen the multi-disciplinary intersection, highlight the combination of industry, university, and research, and provide strong scientific support for the high-quality development of urban smart urban public transport in China. Copyright © 2022 by Science Press.