Exploring Park and Ride: A Spatial Analysis of Transit Catchment in Outer Melbourne
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsJournal: Computers (ISSN 2073-431X)
Manuscript ID: computers-3226479
Type: Article
Title: Exploring Park and Ride: A Spatial Analysis of Transit Catchment in Outer
Melbourne
Authors: Yanlin Chen, Kiki Adhinugraha, Shiyang Lyu, David Taniar *
Special Issue: Computational Science and Its Applications 2024 (ICCSA 2024)
REVIEWER'S GENERAL COMMENTS:
Overall the work is considered adequate, although there are some areas for improvement
that need to be pursued.
1) The degree of resolution of all the figures in the document should be reviewed in
depth. Many of them are not sufficiently clear, particularly Figure 5 (it is
impossible to read and understand).
2) The term “ABS structure” appears for the first time in line 53, which is not defined
until line 147. It should be mentioned earlier.
3) It would be highly interesting and very appropriate to increase the number of
bibliographical references in Section 2, alluding to similar studies (or of interest
for this article) in other locations worldwide in cities of comparable dimensions.
4) There is a typing error on Line 161.
5) In line 210 delete ‘we’ and reword it, for example ‘the author's’...
6) In the discussion section, I believe there is a need for a more extensive comparison
with other research, explaining in more detail how the work presented here differs
from that of the other authors, highlighting the most significant findings and
whether they could be extrapolated to other contexts and why.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript and for your valuable feedback. I appreciate your insights and suggestions, which have greatly contributed to improving the quality of my work. Below are the responses to your comments one by one:
Comments 1: The degree of resolution of all the figures in the document should be reviewed in depth. Many of them are not sufficiently clear, particularly Figure 5 (it is impossible to read and understand). Response 1: Thanks for bringing this to us. We’ve confirmed that all figures used in this paper are in at least 300 dpi and of high quality. This problem might be a compiling issue. We recompile this paper and provide an additional Figure folder in the submission. Please check the updated PDF.
Comments 2: The term “ABS structure” appears for the first time in line 53, which is not defined until line 147, it should be mentioned earlier.
Response 2: The abbreviation is updated accordingly (in Line 53). We also checked all the abbreviations we used in this paper and made sure they were defined in the first place.
Comments 3: It would be highly interesting and very appropriate to increase the number of bibliographical references in Section 2, alluding to similar studies (or of interest for this article) in other locations worldwide in cities of comparable dimensions. Response 3: Thanks for your suggestions. More prior research is added to this section. The structure is also improved to be clearer. The updated content can be found in Section 2: Lines 92 to 94, Paragraph 5, Lines 152 to 156, Paragraph 9, and Paragraph 10. Please refer to the Highlighted version of the PDF to see complete changes.
Comments 4: There is a typing error on Line 161.
Response 4: Thank you for noticing this. It’s now fixed. Please refer to Line 218 in the Highlighted version of the PDF.
Comments 5: In line 210 delete ‘we’ and reword it, for example ‘the author's’...
Response 5: Thanks, and it’s now fixed. We also checked all other similar problems and changed the form to the third person, such as in Line 267.
Comments 6: In the discussion section, I believe there is a need for a more extensive comparison with other research, explaining in more detail how the work presented here differs from that of the other authors, highlighting the most significant findings and whether they could be extrapolated to other contexts and why.
Response 6: Thanks for your comment. We have now expanded the discussion section to include further comparisons with related research where possible. Please refer to the Highlighted Version of the PDF to see the updates. We also improved the structure of this section to be clear. However, given the specific focus of our study, closely comparable studies were limited. We acknowledge that a broader comparative analysis could enrich the context, and we plan to explore this in future research by expanding the study scope to include comparative analysis with different geographic regions or varied transit contexts.
Thank you once again for your thoughtful review.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsA number of acronyms are used in this article. The current given list of acronyms has to be extended since some of the used ones are not listed.
The article is written in a very descriptive way and it is not clear if there are some conclusions suggestions of improvement on parking capacity needs or on the increase of the services of public transportation, etc.
The novelty of this research concerning the state of the art in the field should be emphasized.
The provided algorithms need some extra close explanations to follow them more in detail.
It is not clear if there are some relation between the number of vehicles in transit and the parking capacity needs since a significant number of vehicles would be simply circulating in the respective areas of the town and also, if this concern is related to different days of the week/month and/or to different periods of the day.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript and for your valuable feedback. I appreciate your insights and suggestions, which have greatly contributed to improving the quality of my work. Below are the responses to your comments one by one:
Comments 1: A number of acronyms are used in this article. The current given list of acronyms has to be extended since some of the used ones are not listed.
Response 1: Thanks for your comment. The acronyms were double-checked, and the list was updated. Please refer to Line 658 to Line 659 in the Highlighted Version of PDF for the changes.
Comments 2: The article is written in a very descriptive way and it is not clear if there are some conclusions or suggestions for improvement on parking capacity needs or on the increase of the services of public transportation, etc.
Response 2: Thanks for your suggestions. We’ve updated the conclusion and rearranged the entire Conclusion section to focus more on this paper’s findings and contribution. Please see Section Conclusion in the Highlighted Version for the changes.
Comments 3: The novelty of this research concerning the state of the art in the field should be emphasized.
Response 3: Thanks for your comments. The novelty of this research is updated and emphasized in the Abstract (Lines 5 to 9), Introduction (Lines 65 to 79), and Conclusion (the first paragraph) accordingly.
Comments 4: The provided algorithms need some extra close explanations to follow them more in detail.
Response 4: Thanks for your comments. We’ve checked the description of the algorithms and updated them to be discussed step by step. Algorithm 1 is first explained by each step and then followed by the actual example to demonstrate the implementation. Algorithm 2 starts with an example of the problem and is then discussed in each step.
Comments 5: It is not clear if there is some relation between the number of vehicles in transit and the parking capacity needs since a significant number of vehicles would be simply circulating in the respective areas of the town and also, if this concern is related to different days of the week/month and/or to different periods of the day.
Response 5: Thanks for your comments. In this paper, we decided not to consider temporal aspects of the parking capacity needs and the number of vehicles as we focused on the general commuters’ potential needs in the park-and-ride mode. In our scenario, the vehicles registered in the drive catchments (5 to 7 km from the train station in this paper) have an equal possibility to reach the train stations as the owners are the possible users. As the common outer residents’ habits, they would drive from the origins to the parking catchments (800 m in this paper) then walk to the train station and take trains to the destination or transfer. So the parking needs are assessed based on the overall parking catchments and the drive catchments. To make it clearer, we updated the limitations in this paper to the last paragraph of Section Discussion. Please refer to Section Discussion in the Highlighted Version for the changes.
Thank you once again for your thoughtful review.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis study addresses this gap by examining the spatial accessibility of metro train catchments in outer Melbourne, focusing on the park-and-ride scenario. It proposes a methodology to assess population coverage, parking capacity, and accessibility of residential mesh blocks to transit using several datasets. It aims to comprehensively analyse current trends and challenges through spatial and statistical facts. Based on the following comments, the reviewer suggests it requires a major revision.
(1) The novelty of this manuscript is not very clear. It would be better if the novelty of the research purpose or methodology could be clearly presented in the "Abstract" and "1. Introduction".
(2) The image clarity and resolution of most figures need to be improved. Higher-quality images with enhanced resolution are required. The authors should ensure that all figures are in high resolution (preferably 300 dpi or higher) and properly formatted to maintain clarity when resized or zoomed in.
(3) The words in Figures 5, 11 and 12 are very tough to read due to their size and resolution. The readability of this text is crucial for conveying the necessary information. The reviewer recommends enlarging the text and ensuring sufficient contrast between the text and the background.
(4) The "6. Conclusions should be modestly condensed to focus on this research's core and novel findings and contributions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper has been improved following the suggestions.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have addressed the suggestions made by the reviewers and improved the manuscript. The reviewer recommends the manuscript for publication.
