Analytical Modeling of Urban Public Transit Systems

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ANALYTICAL MODELING OF URBAN PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMSUrban public transit is essential to develop a sustainable transportation system that can provide increased mobility. The long term goal of the research program is to find ways to plan, design and operate urban public transit to optimize the total cost of the system including passenger time costs and system costs; essentially balancing the level of service with the costs of providing that service. We model and optimize such systems using an analytical approach, and where appropriate, include stochastic components. The approach allows the methodology developed to be applied to any city. The research program will include investigation of the following themes related to public transit: Transit Network Analysis bus bunching; and real time transit travel time prediction. (a) We investigate the optimal number of `time-points' for a route and the associated schedule that will minimize the costs to the customers (e.g. delays) and operator (e.g. operating costs), for a typical route. Bus bunching will be studied to develop strategies to minimize the phenomenon. (b) Novel location (e.g. GPS) and communications (Smart phones) technologies can be exploited to provide travellers with real time estimates of bus departure times from any bus stop, including late and early buses. We will investigate the methods for estimating and publicly predicting bus travel time, from any point on the route to any bus stop, in real time. Para-transit: The use of variable route & schedule (para-) transit in off peak periods is a strategy for providing a sustainable transit system in Canada. We will investigate the conditions under which communities become suitable for para-transit service. We will determine the parameters of such services including the routing & scheduling algorithms, vehicle mix, fleet size, and garage locations. The time & other costs to users of communicating with the transit agency will be included in the analyses.