nlmpa Ra., Vol. 10. pp. 347-W. Pcrpmon Press 1576. Flinted in &at Britain

BIBLIOGRAPHIC SECTION

The Bibliographic Section is a regular feature of publishing notices of such work. Persons who have Transportation Research, carrying full-length and shorter completed their degrees can have their dissertation reviews, brief notices of recent publications, abstracts of reviewed by submitting necessary information with an doctoral dissertations, and special features on particular abstract. A copy of the dissertation is not required unless publication series. In accord with the international and the author wants it considered for a longer review. research orientation of the journal, the editor will devote All material for the Bibliographic Section should be particular attention to the dissemination of information sent to: about research monographs, and to the review of European and other work that is often unnoticed in North America.

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substantial length and not of an advertising nature. Persons wishing to review books are invited to submit As information about new doctoral dissertations is their names and describe their area of interest. Reviewers

generally unavailable, we make a special point of are entitled to keep review copies of books.

Metropolitan Transportation Planning John W. Dickey (senior author), Scripta Book Company, Washington, D.C., and McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1975, 562 pages, $19.50.

Urban Transportation Modeling and Planning Peter R. Stopher and Amim H. Meyburg Lexington Books, D. C. Heath & Company, Lexington, MA, 1975.

Reviewed by Bruce Hutchinson, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Both of these books are written by academics at American universities and represent extensions of mater- ial prepared for senior undergraduate and postgraduate courses in urban transport. The objective set by Dickey and his six co-authors was to present an interdisciplinary approach to urban transport planning organized within the modular framework offered by the systems approach. In contrast, Stopher and Meyburg set out to describe and evaluate travel demand estimation models in the context of the urban transport planning process. These diierent objectives have resulted in two books with distinctly difllerent structures and contents.

The twelve chapters of the Dickey book may be grouped into three broad parts. The 6rst four chapters describe the phases of urban transport planning and develop a comprehensive statement of the dimensions of current urban transport problems. Chapters 5 to 8 describe some of the formal techniques which are available for analyzing and evaluating the behavior of transport systems. Finally, Chapters 9 to 12 describe some of the issues and techniques involved in generating alternative transport systems, implementing and operating these systems.

The iirst four chapters of the book provide perhaps the

best description of the urban transport problem of any of the available books on urban transport planning. The discipline offered by the systems approach to planning is exploited fully in structuring the material contained in the !irst four chapters. The authors point out that during the past two decades urban transport planning changed from a process geared almost exclusively to improving the road transport service to users to one directed towards a range of objectives and urban interest groups. Some of the current transport-related issues identified and described by the authors include the traditional user-related issues, noise and air pollution problems, as well as the impacts of transport on land development. Chapter 4 provides an interesting discussion on the formulation of goals and objectives for urban transport studies. The broad goals of urban transport are identified and the authors describe how more detailed goals and objectives might be derived from these broader goals. They conclude with a descrip tion of the problems involved in developing weightings for goals as well as the differential weightings for different interest groups.

Chapters 5 and 6 present examples of some of the models used by transport planners to estimate both the direct and indirect impacts of alternative transport

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systems. Chapter 5 contains a rather curious sequence of models in that it describes first models of road traffic flow, then the operating and capital cost characteristics of alternative transport modes followed by a detailed description of the Empiric land use model, and ends with a brief outline of population and employment forecasting models. While the individual models are described very competently, the particular set of models selected for description in this chapter and their sequence of presentation tend to conflict with the planning activity sequences advanced in earlier chapters.

system plans. Urban transport legislation, responsibilities of various levels of government and financing transport are all discussed in this chapter.

The first part of Chapter 6 provides a sound basic description of each of the phases of the traditional four stage transport demand estimation process. The mechanics of each phase are described and illustrated with information drawn from a variety of transport studies. The latter part of Chapter 6 describes a mixture of transport impact problems including impacts on land values, visual impacts and transport-generated noise levels. The material presented is adequate to demonstrate that transport planners must be concerned with both the direct and indirect impacts of urban transport systems.

Chapter 7 describes the processes involved in collecting land use and transport data and of storing this information in computer-based systems. Geocoding techniques are well described as are procedures for inventorying land use, transport facilities, Bnd travel information. Standard benefit-cost analysis procedures are described in Chapter 8 along with some elementary concepts of demand and supply. One of the deficiencies of Chapter 8 is that the authors have failed to relate these evaluation techniques to the very comprehensive description of goals and objectives presented in Chapter 4. The goals and objectives established for transport systems must surely form the basis of any benefit-cost analysis. The book fails to address_ the rather knotty problems of the valuation of non-user impacts and inter-group trade-offs involved in most studies.

Transport system operation and maintenance are discussed in Chapter 12. Some very general examples are provided from the areas of parking garage operation, traffic signal systems, and so on. Finally, the operations and costs of maintaining various types of transport systems are discussed very briefly.

The principal contribution of this book is the systems planning framework for urban transport developed in the earlier chapters. The subsequent chapters must be regarded as offering material which illustrates each planning phase in turn and reinforces the logic of the basic planning framework. Much of the material presented in these subsequent chapters is out of date and reflects the state-of-the-art of the late 1960s. However, the authors do point out that their objective was to introduce a comprehensive framework that did not depend on a particular set of analytical models. As new information and analytical techniques become available they have suggested that it could be incorporated into the basic framework.

The book should be very useful for an introductory course in urban transport planning at the undergraduate level in a variety of disciplines. Dickey is to be congratulated for the continuity that he has obtained in this book from his six fellow authors. While there are some lapses the overall continuity in technical material and writing style is good.

Chapter 9 begins by offering a taxonomy of transport technology in terms of networks, vehicles, terminals and control systems. A variety of technologies are then described principally in terms of the vehicle components of these systems. The authors then use a technology study of people movers in London to illustrate the way in which new technologies might be assessed. An interesting contribution of this chapter is a brief description of the potential non-transport solutions to transport problems. Of particular interest is the brief description of an optimization land use model called TOPAZ which allows land use arrangements to be identified which minimize the sum of the establishment plus transport costs. The fist part of the chapter provides some interesting comments on the use of transport to ameliorate social and economic problems.

Stopher and Meyburg have divided their book into sixteen chapters and ten of these chapters deal with various aspects of travel demand estimation. Chapter 1 presents a general introduction to urban transport problems and emphasizes that transport problems must be recognized as having a multidimensional character. This initial chapter is disappointing when viewed in the context of the remainder of the book. In several chapters of the book the authors suggest that certain types of urban transport models are unresponsive to certain classes of potential transport policy responses. The authors never really identify these policy responses nor the issues to which these policy responses might be directed. This is surely a very important point in a book devoted principally to transport models.

Chapters 2 to 6 describe a variety of background information to urban transport planning processes. The systems analysis framework and the principles of model building are described in Chapter 2. A useful contribution of this chapter is a discussion of errors and error propagation in mathematical models. Chapter 3 interprets transport demand and supply in terms of the traditional economic concepts and relies heavily on the material published originally by Wohl and Martin in 1967.

Chapter 10 describes techniques for developing more The phases of the traditional urban transport planning detailed urban transport system proposals. Computer- process are described briefly in Chapter 4 while Chapter 5 based trallic signal simulation, the development of train provides a comprehensive description of the land use and dispatching programs, the geometric design of guideways, travel surveys conducted in the traditional study. A pavement design, ecological considerations and landscape valuable contribution of Chapter 5 is the material on design are all discussed briefly. Chapter 11 outlines some sampling principles. Three land use models which may be of the problems involved in implementing transport used to prepare land use inputs to the travel demand

Bibliographic section 349

estimation process are discussed very superficially in systematically into any overall framework. The authors Chapter 6. Unfortunately, this chapter does not address would have produced a much better book if hey had the very important issue of the joint nature of transport concentrated on demand modeling and the responses that supply and land use development although the issue is raised in Chapter 1. The authors also have failed to include any reference to the large amount of work on land use models that has been conducted outside of the United States since the middle l!%Os.

Chapters 7 to 10 discuss in turn each of the phases of the traditional four stage procedure for estimating urban travel demand. The material on trip generation, modal split and traffic assignment presented by the authors is fairly standard and reflects the state-of-the-art of about five years ago. Trip distribution models are discussed in Chapter 8. The mathematical structure of the commonly used trip distribution models are discussed in detail and the potential prediction errors of the gravity model discussed. The material presented in this chapter could have been supplemented by Schneider’s work on direct trafhc estimation which is discussed in Chapter 13, and Wilson’s maximum entropy based derivations of spatial interaction models, which are described in Chapter 14. This integration would have allowed trip distribution models to be treated more comprehensively and economi-

cally.

might be required from demand models in order to address contemporary transport planning issues.

During the past two or three years a number of books on urban transport planning have been published and it is pertinent at this time to explore the currently unfilled needs in this area. Four broad groups of readers might be identified for books in urban transport planning and these are:

Chapter 11 provides a very superficial discussion of economic evaluation methods. The material does not reflect in any way the significant developments in economic evaluation that have occurred during the last fifteen years. This is Unfortunate. since the authors described demand and supply concepts in Chapter 3. The authors apparently view the concepts presented in Chapter 3 as relating only to travel demand estimations and not as well to the evaluation of alternative systems.

A critical review of the traditional urban transport planning process is presented in Chapter 12. The authors advanced many valid criticisms of the process but many of these are of the process as it was applied during the 1960s. The original process has been mod&d drastically and many of the criticisms advanced by the authors really do not apply to much of the current professional practice.

Chapter 15 describes econometric-based travel demand estimation procedures while Chapter 16 summarizes much of the current work on behaviorally-based models. The theoretical structures of a variety of models are discussed and some practical applications are described. Unfortunately, the types of urban transport planning issues that might be better addressed by these models than by the traditional models are not identified.

This book by Stopher and Meyburg is a very uneven manuscript. The chapters dealing with data collection, trip distribution and the more recent developments in travel demand modeling contain some very good material. However, many of the chapters provide a superficial treatment of the topics discussed and do not reflect the current state-of-the-art. In many cases the authors have presented material drawn from the .pubhcations of the original researchers without integrating the material

1. specialists engaged in the analysis of urban transport systems,

2. consumers of urban transport planning studies such as urban administrators and policy advisors,

3. members of the professions who are engaged in a variety of urban planning and design activities such as planners, civil engineers, economists and architects but who are not urban transport specialists, and

4. undergraduate and postgraduate students in a variety of disciplines who correspond roughly to the three groups

identified previously.

None of the books that are currently available really address the first group of readers identified above.

A book is required which builds a comprehensive view of spatial interaction models from the large amount of theoretical and empirical work that has been conducted during the past decade. The book should provide a comprehensive treatment which ranges from transport models through land use-transport models to recent developments in urban systems models. Data require-

ments for both model calibration and forecasting should be treated thoroughly and recent developments in calibration techniques for the various classes of model should be described. A book such as this should be developed within the context of current issues in urban policy analysis. A book of this type is required by postgraduate students specializing in transport as well as professional specialists.

Another book is required which addresses the second group of readers. Contemporary urban transport-related issues need to be. identified and illustrated by material from a range of cities. The potential public policy responses to these issues should be isolated and the role of analytical models in helping to explore alternative responses should be described. The book should be directed specifically to urban administrators who are not transport specialists.

The books that are available currently are directed principally to the third and fourth groups identified previously. They attempt to introduce the reader to the nature of urban transport planning and to some of the analytical techniques used to support the planning process. The principal differences between the available books result from the different emphases placed on the various phases of the planning process.