Departure Time Planner for Multimodal Public Transport Network Using Dynamic Programming

Abstract

AbstractIn developing countries like India, number of people using public transport for everyday commute is large. Trip planner is a tool which helps commuters to plan their travel beforehand. In case of public transportation systems, trip with the minimum travel time is often of interest. A trip planner solves the time dependent shortest path problem (TDSPP) in a multimodal transport network to optimize one or more criteria like travel time, the number of transfers, etc. One subclass of this is the departure time planner. It suggests the optimal departure time from origin such that travel time to reach the destination will be minimum. This paper presents development of multimodal departure time planner using General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. A citywide public transportation network is constructed with bus, metro and walking as modes of transport. Nodes represent transit stops and edges represent transportation services available in between nodes. The schedule corresponding to every mode is incorporated in the network. Origin, destination, and the latest arrival time at the destination for the trip are inputs from the user. A schedule-based algorithm is implemented which runs backward in time to calculate optimal labels at every node of the network. The results produced by the trip planner are found to be promising in terms of accuracy and feasibility.KeywordsDeparture plannerMultimodal integrationPublic transportationDynamic programmingTime dependent shortest path problem