Applying the Hyperpath Concept to Public Transit Accessibility Evaluation

Abstract

Accessibility is an important outcome of public transport (PT) planning. Many existing studies have assessed PT accessibility based on the time impedance between stop pairs; however, few have addressed the variety of choice preference. To bridge this gap, this study applied the concept of choice complexity and network science by topological graph to compute the expected travel time from a set of attractive lines as a new type of weighted graph to evaluate accessibility. Here we introduce hyperpath-based time impedance consisting of in-vehicle time, expected wait time, and transfer time penalty costs. To confirm our study approach, we conducted a general comparison of the resulting accessibility using two methods: our proposed approach and a method presented in an earlier report. The results revealed that the proposed approach minimises the expected travel time to more realistic time frames for passengers waiting at PT stops, resulting in more accurate accessibility evaluations.