Managing the multimodal transportation system with roadway space distribution and responsive bus services

Abstract

This paper studies the system-wide effect of the roadway space distribution to different travel modes (private and public ones) and how transit service provider responds to the space changes. A mode choice model and dynamic user equilibrium are integrated with the MFD dynamics, reflecting both vehicle and passenger dynamics of an urban area. To understand the interaction between the central planner (system benefit-maximization) and the bus operator (profit-maximization), we examine the effect of roadway space allocation on the bus operator's benefit and explore how the total system benefit changes with the allocation. With the responsive bus service, the condition under which expanding bus lane capacity is beneficial to the system as a whole has been analytically established. Then the model is applied to the dynamic framework where the space distribution changes with the varying demand and the bus service is responsive to the space distribution. Numerical analysis is conducted to evaluate the performances of a multimodal network.