Multi-scale responsive public transport planning for bi-modal demand
Sub project B
Description
This subproject aims at creating a deeper understanding of the strong demand variations resulting in unexpected loads and surplus capacity situations and provide tools to adjust the public transport system in advance. For example, depending on bad weather, many e-bike users might switch to public transport, for an effective bi-modal system, in which the modal split depends on an exogenous uncontrollable factor.
It is necessary to plan ahead of time to be able to cope with those variations using minimal, and easy to deploy actions, by incorporating two or three operating modes (which responsively depend on the actual demand level) in the planning of line headways, and resources. The planning has to bridge multiple scales to understand the planned resources required ahead of time (say, one year ahead) and precise (shortly before operations, say one week in advance, the day before, and one hour in advance).
New and robust planning algorithms for an uncertain level of demand seek to determine a few key parameters, between which the system can switch with few operational problems; and depending on reactively acquired information (for instance weather; or unexpected loads in the morning to plan the afternoon). Current approaches plan for an average scenario, but in our case, the system might be oscillating between few cases, which are notably skewed from each other (either little demand; or too much; but not a “nice to have” average performance). The information on which of the two will occur can only be communicated at a certain moment, and users will have react to that. The prediction of the total resources needed and how they will be operated, will be the key output of this subproject.
Publications
Principal investigator
Head of Inst. Transport Planning and Systems
Professur für Transportsysteme
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
8093
Zürich
Switzerland
Researcher
Professur für Transportsysteme
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
8093
Zürich
Switzerland
