Approach Methodology for Comprehensive Assessing the Public Passenger Transport Timetable Performances at a Regional Scale
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
As all the concerns have been addressed properly acceptance is recommended.
Author Response
Thank you.
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors are appreciated for considering my comments in their replies and the various revisions, which improved the quality of the manuscript. However, the paper needs some work before I can recommend for publication.
Line 19: What is a ‘selected transport network’. Selected for what? For the type of mode: bus, train, range of distance?
Line 27: Integrating what to what?
Line 35: In general, if you refer to 3 to 4 studies at the same time (13 in this case), it makes more sense to me to conclude in one line what the outcome was of these studies. Now they seem to be included to increase the list of references. Summaries the findings here or leave these references out. English-written references are preferred.
Line 150: Is reference cited for “Analogically”?
Line 167: Is reference cited for “For these reasons”?
Line 210: Is reference cited for “For a comprehensive assessment”?
Check all the manuscript. Get this straightened up, please
Figure 1: Remove the box “Asses the quality of transport network connectivity”. It is final aim of the procedure, not a step.
Figure 2: Improve resolution
Remove empty table, it is awkward for a scientific paper: Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3. Table 4 is enough to understand.
Lines 461-466: These values must be commented here. This is the core-result of the study and authors should discuss and compare it with previous findings from literature. Briefly, do these values define a good service?
In the conclusion section the author should indicate the limitations of their study and suggestions for future research.
Author Response
Revisions and responses to the reviewer 2 remarks:
– in the abstract, previous term “selected transport network” has been replaced by the concept “specific transport network”;
– the sentence in the abstract regarding integrated public passenger transport systems has been revised. The concept integrated transport system represents an integration of different modes of transport in order to increase the efficiency of these modes by complementing one another with the aim of increasing the economic and social benefits;
– in the literature review, one sentence has been added to describe the cited manuscripts´ topics. Furthermore, previous number of references for the given
statement has been reduced. Indeed, to a certain extent, all the indicated publications (up to 11) deal with a partial evaluation of the quality of individual transport sections;
– in regard to improper reference indications, the whole manuscript has been checked and this issue has been straightened up;
– first step in the figure 1 has been removed;
– tables 1-3 have been removed;
– resolution of the figure 2 has been significantly improved;
– to specify the obtained results in more detail within the discussion chapter, final evaluation of the results has been added;
– limitations of our study consists in a fact, that proposed methodology can be applied just to selected public passenger transport modes at a regional scale – as indicated in the manuscript;
– possibilities for further research development have been proposed in the conclusion chapter.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Improve directions for future research and limitations (poorly written):
The limitation of this study is not only the scale; in your analysis you did not considered any indicators about the average delay occurred over a time-period.
This could be an additional factor to evaluate the reliability of a time table.
The last paragraph of the conclusion does not make any sense to me.
Author Response
Limitations of the manuscript as well as future research recommendations as follows: “The methodology presented is primarily based on an ideal situation, i.e. times in timetables are adhered and there are no significant delays in individual transport connections. However, for future investigations, the criteria related to the transport connection delays may be taken into account, thereby to compare current (existing) timetables with real (including delays) timetables. Such comparisons could subsequently serve as an evaluation of compliance (ideal) or non-compliance (including delays) with timetables. In that case, the resulting monitored indicators would be changed which could lead to optimization of timetables, and thus minimization of transport connection delays for future time-periods. This could be considered another factor to assess the timetable reliability, and thus help to improve the quality of public passenger transport.”
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Title: Approach Methodology for Assessing the Transport Connectivity in the context of the Passenger Transport Sustainable Development.
This paper presents a methodology for assessing connectivity and timetable quality on transport network.
Unfortunately, the concept is one thing, but what is actually presented is completely different, in significant ways that considerably diminish the paper’s contribution. The article does not deliver its main claim: to proposes a universal methodology for all modes of passenger transportation.
Firstly, I found a lack of clarity in terminology in the first part of the paper (abstract and introduction); in the abstract the authors referred to “all mode of passenger transport”, what do they mean? Then, in line 21 the referred to “transport network”, do they mean transit network?
Again, in lines 43-45, the authors referred to “EU transport network”, are they referring to multimodal networks in general? Transport network is too generic. In Line 75 the author referred to “transport network as a whole”, do they mean all kind all modes such as: private car, public transport (bus, underground, train), car sharing, car pooling, etc. I think they should clearly state they are referring only to transit (public transport services). In lines 85-86 the authors introduced transfer and driving times, are they considering also park & ride? It is very unclear.
The title of this paper should be: “Methodology for Assessing the Train Timetable performances at regional scale”. The proposed procedure cannot be applied at the urban mobility system level, not even for urban public transport (buses and underground). In that case the number of possible connections would much greater (hyperpath approach), and the ‘search engine’ proposed by the author would fail.
As to the railway transport system, the proposed methodology to evaluate the quality of railway services is based on standard well known indicators.
In the conclusion section the author claim that the proposed procedure can be applied to ‘various transport modes’, but they do not mention which transportation modes and why the method should work.
“Transport network as a whole” is a lofty claim, but the authors only provided a simple application to evaluate the rail network performances. Moreover, I can’t grasp why the author referred to the context of Transport Sustainable Development in the title. If the author meant that a more connected public transport could encourage less car-dependent habits, and thus a more sustainable attitude, they should elaborate on that concept.
In light of the above, the overall contribution of the paper is quite poor and the paper is not suitable for publication in its current form.
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic is not new, but relevant and useful.
Title: Long; “sustainable development” context is not clear in the paper.
Abstract: Long. What is the research gap? What is the novelty? What is the practical applicability? Who can use it and what purposes for? What are the research questions?
Structure and content: the paper is informative; it properly follows the conventional study structure. The methodology is quite simple, but adequate. Did you investigate similar methods? What is the difference/novelty in your approach? Try to write concise paragraphs with only the relevant content.
Define the main terms: e.g. tariff points; destination arrival time, destination arrival speed, quality of something, connections. Some expressions seem to be not appropriate (e.g. destination arrival time, destination arrival speed, driving times, transfer line, tariffed starting point). A native speaker may give useful instructions. Use numbers to indicate the certain steps on Fig. 1. The last 2 steps are clear, but the names in the boxes are confusing. Heading in Table 3 is not appropriate. Derived data can de erased from the table 4 (e.g. destination arrival time is the sum of average waiting time and travel time). Use same unit [h] everywhere.
Literature review: The quality and quantity of the cited papers is good.
Language: Medium level.
Conclusions: try to follow the structure: main contribution, key findings, lessons learned, future work.
Questions:
What kind of spatial and temporal limitations are recommended during application of the proposed method?
Is it possible to draw general, ‘time-proven’ conclusions?
What simplifications were introduced during method development?
Please describe the network model behind the method.
How do the delays influence the connectivity and quality of service? For this issue, the consideration and citation of the following paper is recommended: DOI: 10.3311/PPtr.7539.
