Evaluating public transport performance using System Efficiency Measure. The case of minibus taxi transport in Mekelle city

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Engineering - General, Mekelle University (EiT-M), language: English, abstract: An effective evaluation of transport system efficiency is essential in establishing a sustainable development of the transport system. Even though Mekelle is a rapidly growing city of northern Ethiopia, due to the limited extent of taxi transport, the inefficiency of taxi routes and the deficiency of taxi service, people are spending more time and money on travel. Therefore, this thesis has investigated the current performance of taxi transport with regard to the efficiency parameters, identified deficiency of existing route network and suggested improvements to the route network, as well as service deficiency.

To do so, direct field data collection and questioner for primary data collection were used. ArcGIS was used to analyse the area coverage of the existing and proposed taxi routes under acceptable walking distance. AutoCAD was used to draw the old and proposed taxi routes and taxi stations. Sigma plot and MS-Excel were used to draw the graphs.

The analysis shows the problem with the existing taxi transport systems is, that there is less infrastructure availability, such as taxi route and minibus taxis. The available number of minibus taxi serving is only at 13.18%. Mode share of walking is 54.52%, unmodified proximity or less area coverage of the taxi system within acceptable walking distance which is only 35%, long walking distance between taxi stations, which is beyond the acceptable range.

Based on those findings this thesis has calculated the number of minibus taxi or buss required for different percentages of service increment and recommended buses with a capacity of 80 passengers to be added. Even though buses with higher capacity can reduce congestion at times of low trip attraction and production passengers will be forced to lose more time inside the vehicles as the vehicles wait until they reach their capacity. New taxi stations and routes are necessary to improve the area coverage and to reduce the walking distance from one station to another. In addition, the thesis is also proposing the routes to be maintained and added in priority.