EVALUATING PUBLIC TRANSIT CONGESTION MITIGATION MEASURES USING A PASSENGER ASSIGNMENT MODEL

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for evaluating the effect of transit fare systems on passengers' behaviour using a fore-constructed, capacity-constrained, transit assignment model. The optimum fare setting model is formulated as a mathematical programming with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) problem in which passengers are assumed to choose the minimum cost paths where a user equilibrium condition is achieved. Both total cost and connectivity reliability, which is defined here as the probability of arriving at the destination without failing to board at any station, are adopted as the evaluation index of the problem. The equality of the congestion mitigation effect for each OD pair is considered explicitly utilising the idea of the Gini coefficient, which is the economic indicator. The proposed model is solved using NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting GA), which is one method for solving a multi-objective optimisation problem. Finally, a numerical example for a simple network is shown.