Institute of Transportation, MOTC

Chiu Chi-Jen, 2001.06
Institute of Traffic and Transportation, National Chiao Tung University

　　The reason that the light rail transit system has become a new tendency of the urban public transportation is because of its extensive range of adoption. It is very applicable and flexible from aspects of system such as the section dimension of vehicles, the fleet composition, the type of structure, the right-of-way, and the system control. The system can be properly designed in accordance with its local substantial environment and the characteristic of transportation demand. It is a very cost-effective public transportation system.

　　The content of this research is to study the relationship between network scale of light rail transit system and characteristic of city. By selecting sixty two metropolitan areas that are currently adopting the light rail transit system as samples and collect the related data of the city characteristics, the relationship between network scale of light rail transit system and the characteristics of city is established. Besides, this study also focus on those sample cities having light rail rapid transit system to construct the relationship model between network scale of light rail rapid transit and characteristics of city. Through a series of multiple regression analysis, the major findings are :

1. The length of the network of the light rail transit system is increase with the increase in population of the center city, the population density of the central city and the number of vehicles, but decrease with the increase in the number of city buses.
2. The length of the network of the light rail rapid transit system is increase with the increase in population density of the center city, the population of the metropolitan area, but decrease with the increase in the length of the urban public transportation route.

　　By utilizing the developed models, the suitable network scale of the light rail transit and the light rail rapid transit system of these metropolitan areas such as Taoyuarn, ShinChu, Taichung and Tainan, are estimated. Although because of the simplification of the models, the result could be overestimated, but comparing with the characteristic of the above 62 cities, from the aspect of demand and supply. It appears that the above four metropolitan areas have met all the requirements to adopt the light rail transit system or even the light rail rapid transit system.