Passenger-centric optimization of public transport operations under disruptions
Optimum for passengers
Project description
Public transport operations are often disrupted by unavoidable perturbations such that operating as planned becomes impossible, resulting in delays and even cancellations. These delays and cancellations become the largest annoyances experienced by passengers and the main sources of passenger dissatisfaction, and they cause huge societal costs.
Public transport is practically controlled from a viewpoint of operations, i.e., minimizing total delays of the planned schedule; some scientific studies of traffic control simply consider the number of passengers or allow passenger rerouting based on strategies such as the shortest path and the lowest travel time, in order to minimize total passenger delays.
This project integrates the three aspects of public transport operations: infrastructure, management, and information about passengers and their choices under disruptions. This latter information is used for supporting public transport operators to control traffic in a passenger-friendly way, using at best the limited infrastructure capacity available during the disruptions. The attributes that influence passenger travel behavior during disruptions are first investigated, and discrete choice models are adopted to capture passenger travel behavior and to reflect passenger reaction to disruptions. Integrated optimization approaches are further developed to simultaneously change schedules and reroute passengers, achieving the optimum from a passenger perspective.