It’s now the time that my research project starts to become more focused in. As such I need to formulate a concise plan with a concrete goal of finding some sort of knowledge gap that I can help fill for society as a whole. To accomplish this, I need a research question (or at least a preliminary one).
I am proposing to research metro systems operations because I wasn’t to find out why systems with similar features have different operating hours in order to help my reader understand the factors that affect a local government’s decision making process. Also, to give some background on how I would complete this research question, I’ll talk a little about my latest discussion with Professor Esser. To start, this project would need a large statistical analysis to find if there truly is significant variation in operational hours between metro systems after the samples are controlled for multiple variables. Both of us are fairly confident that there should be significant variation to continue on to the next step, which would be selecting certain cases that share similar external control variables, but differ on operational hours, and then interview people within the operational departments of these systems.
Going back to the question itself, some may ask: Why look at the hours of operation when there are so many other things to look at? Well, just looking at a few cases around the United States makes this much more complex than it initial starts out. In Washington D.C., the Metro runs from 5:00am-11:30pm from Mondays to Thursdays, on Fridays it runs from 5:00am-1:00am, Saturdays are 7:00am-1:00am, and Sundays are 8:00am-11:00pm. [1] Across the country in the San Francisco Bay Area, BART runs from 4:00am-Midnight on weekdays, from 6:00am-Midnight on Saturdays, and from 8:00am-Midnight on Sundays. [2] Then going on back to the east coast, New York City’s Subway is essentially a 24-hour service (with a few exceptions depending on the line). [3] Now granted, there are some fairly distinct and apparent differences between these cases, but if you’ll excuse the assumption, what explains the fact that BART has longer hours than the Metro when D.C. is seemingly more reliant on their public transit than the Bay Area? Why did these regions’ local governments decide to make these the hours that they were going to use as opposed to a different schedule?
In terms of the existing scholarship, there does not seem to be a focus on the hours of operation, but rather on other facets of public transit performance. For example, Peng Liu concludes that after operation coordination between regional rail transit, metro, and urban main bus lines, the passenger travel cost, operator operation cost, and total cost are all reduced. [4] While this study is important, it encompasses a different scope of research than what I am proposing by analyzing operation hours, as Liu’s work attempts to explain the interconnection between different systems in the same area. [5] Xin Yang, Anthony Chen, Bin Nang, and Tao Tang produce knowledge in a more confined scope, as they look at optimizing the amount of trips within a metro system’s given hours. [6] Yet this also does not get back to the question that I am asking–it focuses more on the execution of transit rather than the policy that informs how transit will be executed. [7]
This question that I am currently proposing seeks to satisfy the variation in operation hours that I mentioned previously. However, this would speak to the larger phenomenon of the decision-making process in local governments (which from now on I will refer to as a polis). There can be many factors that affect the process in the polis, ranging from lobbying by various citizens which would have economic implications to established relationships with other people in the polis that bargain away various policies that they want to get the one policy that would be the cornerstone of their service in the polis. This is an extremely important phenomenon that can have a new explanation added to the academic discourse that is currently in place. This new explanation is what I aim to achieve by finding the reasons for variation within operation hours of different metro systems.
Now throughout this post, I’ve essentially formatted my question in a general and specific format. However, for the purposes of juxtaposing them to look at the differences between a general and specific research question, I will be restating them in these next couple sentences. For a general research question, I would format my question as such: What explains the variation of operational hours between different metro systems? On the flip side, a specific research question would look like this for my project: Why did the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority decide to decrease their hours of service on the Metro in 2017?
Until next time,
Nathan
- Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Timetables, July 1, 2017, https://www.wmata.com/schedules/timetables/ (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
- San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. Overview, January 1, 2017, https://www.bart.gov/guide (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
- Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Schedules, January 1, 2017, http://www.mta.info/schedules (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
- Peng, Liu. “A Modal for Operation Coordination among Regional Rail Transit, Urban Metro and Bus,” Applied Mechanics and Materials 178-181 (May 2012): 1973.
- Ibid., 1970.
- Yang, Xin, Anthony Chen, Bin Ning, and Tao Tang. “A stochastic model for the integrated optimization on metro timetable and speed profile with uncertain train mass,” Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 91, no. Supplement C (September 2016): 424.
- Ibid.
Bibliography
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Schedules, January 1, 2017, http://www.mta.info/schedules (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
Peng, Liu. “A Modal for Operation Coordination among Regional Rail Transit, Urban Metro and Bus,” Applied Mechanics and Materials 178-181 (May 2012): 1970-1973.
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. Overview, January 1, 2017, https://www.bart.gov/guide (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Timetables, July 1, 2017, https://www.wmata.com/schedules/timetables/ (Accessed: September 30, 2017).
Yang, Xin, Anthony Chen, Bin Ning, and Tao Tang. “A stochastic model for the integrated optimization on metro timetable and speed profile with uncertain train mass,” Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 91, no. Supplement C (September 2016): 424-445.
Nathan — you have a fine overall topic area and a good initial formulation of the research proposal. I am a bit curious about the deeper puzzle behind understanding variation in the operating hours of metro systems — if we understand that variation, what deeper social scientific puzzle do we start to understand? Put another way, what would it mean if we understand the variation in operating hours? This discrete factor — your dependent variable — is well-defined, and measurable, but it would be good to clarify what it actually means or stands for in terms of substantive understanding of metro systems.
The literature you have started to find and discuss seems appropriate. Remember that you will not likely find literature on any of your specific research questions (and, more importantly, you are not at all after a research *question* just yet, contrary to your initial statement, but rather after a research *puzzle* from which many questions might flow). That is why finding literature on the different conceptual angles and theoretical perspectives that will help you research your puzzle should be the main goal. You’re off to a good start, and we will discuss a few more details when we meet!