A New Route Choice Model for Urban Public Transit with Headway-based Service

Abstract

A new approach to create the model of individual behavior in urban public transit systems with headway-based service that is built on the same principles of rational decision making as discrete choice models is presented. To describe a passenger's decision-making, the attractiveness function which reflects the difference between trip results and costs was used. The attractiveness of the transit route was determined by solving the system of Fredholm's integral equations based on observed frequencies of choosing the alternative routes by each individual. The frequencies were determined based on multi-day survey results and range between 0 and 1 but equal neither 0 nor 1. To estimate the significance level of the attractiveness function, the regression analysis was used and the accuracy of the choice probability forecast was evaluated. Computation of model coefficients was carried out based on the parameters of home-based work trips obtained via the travel survey that was conducted in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.