A method of schedule and route planning in urban mass transit: Alex Efrem Friedlander Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1968 Richard L. DeNeufville and John T. Howard 438

Abstract

Continued arbitrary reductions in service are not a panacea for the financially stricken urban public transpo More attention must be paid to making urban mass transit service more attractive in such a way that the cost of doing so will be equal to or less than the additional revenue encouraged. To do this, new methods of data collection and analysis, and new approaches to service decisions, based on a better understanding of the costs of such decisions and of why the urban traveller chooses to make (or not make) his trips as he does, must be developed. This thesis develops such new methods and approaches. The proposed method of schedule and route planning is: 1. 1. Market oriented, focusing on the sensitivity of demand as well as cost to changes in service, and on the potentially profitable demand for new or improved transit services. Relationships are found to exist between level of service and transit usage. These relationships can be measured, and applied to decisions on level of service in a manner that will enable the determination of an “optimum,” or at least better, level of service for the desired objectives (maximum profit, maximum number of passengers, etc.). 2. 2. Based on incremental analysis, making use of marginal cost analysis. The marginal (added) cost of a service increment is found to vary from route to route and change to change, depending on a number of factors; it is always less than the average accounted cost. 3. 3. Systematic drawing on the discipline of systems analysis to make what is now an essentially disorganized, inconsistent art into a systematic, consistent science capable of being programmed for the computer.