The reliability-based stochastic transit assignment problem with elastic demand

Abstract

This paper examines the reliability-based stochastic transit assignment problem with elastic demand. A Variational Inequality (VI) model for this problem is developed. The VI model considers capacity, waiting time and in-vehicle travel time as stochastic variables, and includes Spiess and Florian’s (1989) and de Cea and Fernández’s (1993) models as special cases. A reliability-based stochastic user equilibrium condition is defined to capture the route choice behavior of passengers. To illustrate the properties of the VI model, numerical studies were conducted on de Cea and Fernández’s (1993) network. The studies also show that Spiess and Florian’s and de Cea and Fernández’s models can overestimate the system performance substantially.