Influence of Vilnius urban structure to energy consumption in public transport

Abstract

Every city is a framework directed by local inhabitant's needs and is filled with the ideas of local planners, global and local economical conditions and consequently it is crucial to find reasonable solutions to satisfy these needs. Public transport is a substantial part of the urban transport system. The quality and supply of public services are very closely related to environmental aspects and represent some of the main indicators showing the quality of life in cities. A further analysis of the Vilnius public transport system has concentrated on an analysis of its performance, its relations between urban structure factors and its energy consumption. The main objective of this paper is to find the most important elements of an urban structure that influences the energy consumption of public urban transport and to evaluate the importance of these elements. The experiment presented in this paper was based on Vilnius as an example. An empirical study was built on the data collected during research completed in 2002 of the Vilnius public transport system. Data also was collected from interviews with passengers and on site research. The analysis of the data was performed with Statgraph and Excel statistical software. The influences of urban structure factors on energy consumption were defined from the collected data. These factors were ranked according to their importance and linear regression models were constructed. Changes in the urban structure and a comprehensive plan are part of the long-term actions and therefore proposals have been grouped according to the estimated duration of such measures.