Efficient commuter craft for urban waterborne public transportation
There has been a recent surge in interest in waterborne public transportation (WPT). Publictransport providers (PTP) are seeing its potential in complementing the existing transportnetwork and alleviating urban traffic congestion and pollution. But the adoption of WPTtoday is challenging due to a series of technical and implementation challenges. Thesechallenges include ferry procurement practices, local legislation and policies andenvironmental factors like winter ice. Several of these challenges can be alleviated if efficientferries can be made accessible off-the-shelf with a low manufacturing time and cost. Thethesis focuses on developing such a ferry concept based on modular design whose overalldimensions are standardized and internal arrangement is customizable towards operationalrequirements, with a focus towards sustainable and safe operations in ice.Starting with the characterization of WPT, ferry routes are broadly classified into three types.These routes are described with an operational requirements framework considering allrelevant stakeholder expectations. Then, overall dimensions of vessels representative ofWPT are deduced. Using these dimensions to standardize the overall dimensions, a modularferry concept is developed as an assembly of modules and submodules. The modules arepresented as standardized units having fixed dimensions and interfaces whose internalarrangements can be tailored to meet operational requirements. Design standardizationlowers costs and manufacturing time while internal customization favours tailoring the ferryconcept. One challenge associated with this for the PTP is the difficulty in choosingappropriate modules among multiple alternatives. This is overcome through thedevelopment of a ranking and selection method which benchmarks competing designs andhelps in decision making.In terms of technical challenges for the developed ferry concept, cities like Stockholmexperience freezing of water bodies during winter months. For reliable year-roundoperations that are safe and ...