Urban transportation: innovations in infrastructure planning and development

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-08-2015-0135
Date13 February 2017
Published date13 February 2017
Pages150-171
AuthorSundaravalli Narayanaswami
Subject MatterManagement science & operations,Logistics
Urban transportation: innovations
in infrastructure planning
and development
Sundaravalli Narayanaswami
Public Systems Group, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad,
Ahmedabad, India
Abstract
Purpose New services design and development are difficult to plan, execute, measure and evaluate.
Particularly, new services that are capital-intensive and involve a long gestation and development time are
considered extremely risky. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a list of innovative practices in various
managerial aspects in designing, planning and development of a large scale infrastructure intensive public
transportation service. A contemporary new public transportation service development is discussed as
evidence of proven and benchmarked criteria.
Design/methodology/approach This is a technical paper, where theoretical foundations of best practices
in new service development project are discussed and supported by practice-based evidences from a real-life
urban transportation project. A case study approach is adopted with secondary data.
Findings Worldwide during and after economic recession of 2008, several projects were stalled or
abandoned. The inference through this work is that through efficient management practices, a large capital-
intensive new service development project can be made successful even during a turbulent economy in a
region marred by more challenges than elsewhere.
Practical implications Several issues in large scale services development, such as urban transportation
are domain specific. Some of the issues faced in urban transportation are common to several Gulf countries;
therefore the policy guidelines, managerial practices and development strategies reportedin this paper can be
replicated in many of them. The commercial impact of the service project is a significant drive towards fuel
conservation and to save huge amounts of productive time.
Social implications Public transportation with a high qualityof networked service improvesthe quality of
life to a largeextent. Unless certainmeasurable demands are not met,an affluent society is lesslikely to endorse
public transportation. In addition,endorsement of publictransportation is been promotedin several parts of the
world as a drive towards a green,energy efficient, low-carbon emissionand sustainable environment.
Originality/value To the best of the authorsknowledge, new services planning and development is a key
operations management topic, on which very little is written about. Particularly no other paper has presented
a real-world large scale infrastructure intensive project development to this detail, and along with a
theoretical background to benchmark performance and development practices.
Keywords Urban planning, Fares and pricing, Infrastructural development, Light rail transit,
Multi-mode integration, Traffic congestion
Paper type Technical paper
1. Introduction
Large scale infrastructural projects for public service are extremely difficult to undertake
and they involve a very long conception and development time. The need for a large scale
development has to be identified by the state. If the need analysis is ratified, initial feasibility
studies are undertaken and a detailed project report (DPR) is developed either by the state
itself or by experienced domain specialists. Technical feasibility and economic viability of
the project are examined later, in addition to evaluation and analysis of available
alternatives. Various issues, such as conceptualization, detailed scope of development, time
planning, human resources man agement, cost management, risk s prevention and
The International Journal of
Logistics Management
Vol. 28 No. 1, 2017
pp. 150-171
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-4093
DOI 10.1108/IJLM-08-2015-0135
Received 5 January 2015
Revised 11 October 2015
Accepted 27 December 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-4093.htm
Discussions with Dr N. Ravichandran, Professor at IIM Ahmedabad, were very useful. The author
would like to sincerely acknowledge his comments, the anonymous reviewers and the Editor
Dr A. Gunasekaran for their time and inputs.
150
IJLM
28,1
management, change requirements planning as version control and quality control have to
be functionally managed by the project managers. In this paper, the focus is also domain
specific on challenges in urban transportation, in addition to the functional challenges of
large scale infrastructure planning and development.
The need ratification of any urban transportation infrastructure project is evaluated
based on two criteria: comprehensive urban mobility plan by integration of land use and
transport planning, and cost-effectiveness based on analysis of alternate projects.
This paper analyses metro projects, specifically. This paper was felt timely, as there are
large scale metro project developments world over, both in developed countries and
developing countries, with huge funding from the World Bank. Urban transportation is an
important component of urban supply chain management; therefore it is important to study
and understand some of the innovative approaches and practices for benchmarking in
urban transportation projects. The necessity of an urban transportation project is identified
only when existing infrastructure and urban transport systems are unable to cope with
increasing traffic demands.
Major challenges for the urban planners are two-fold: one is functional with respect to
project planning, management and completion and second is domain centric with respect to
metro transportation management. Briefly, the new transportation development is expected
to complement existing transportation systems and also to reduce the overall traffic
density. Hence performance measures and benchmarking metrics of newer metro
developments are quite complex; they cannot be evaluated only in terms of their own
ridership, but on their ability to reduce the overall congestion in urban traffic. In terms of
construction and development, existing transport infrastructures are physical barriers to
newer metro construction, as existing structures cannot be disregarded. Ironically,
operational inefficiencies of existing transportation modes in providing quality services to
growing demands are the motivating drivers for new developments, such as metros.
The restof the paper is organisedas follows. A broadset of recent and relevantliteratureon
infrastructure projectmanagement, publictransport systemand its impact factorsis discussed
in Section 2. Best known practices in large scale infrastructural projects are discussed in
Section 3. Innovation theory that leverages project planning and development is discussed in
Section 4. A case study of the urban transportation project (Dubai Metro) that incorporates
innovation theory in the practice of project planning, implementation and evaluation is
presented in Section 5. Concluding remarks and managerial insights are presented in Section 6.
2. Literature review
In this section, a broad coverage of literature on various factors that impact and influence
urban transportation and project management is discussed. Many factors influence urban
transportation, including urban land usage planning and agglomeration. Available
literature covers issues, challenges and solution approaches in modelling, evaluation and
policy studies on transportation quite extensively. But we find a gap in literature that
discusses the inter-linkage between infrastructure project management, urban
transportation and established best practices in the two fields. We present brief
discussions of available literature in a classified manner.
2.1 Public transportation: demands, expectations and endorsements
Demand for public transport is influenced by a combination of factors, such as fares, quality
of service and income and car ownership. Such impacts, particularly on urban surface
transport in the UK are presented in Paulley et al. (2006). A qualitative study of public
transport users and car users has been performed by Beirao and Sarsfiled (2007) to obtain a
deeper understanding of travellersattitudes towards transport and to explore perceptions
of public transport service quality. Using an experimental survey-based primary data set
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Urban
transportation

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