Integrating Demand Responsive Services Into Public Transport Disruption Management

Matej Cebecauer,Tatiana Babicheva,Erik Jenelius,Wilco Burghout,David Leffler

doi:10.1109/ojits.2021.3057221

Abstract

High-capacity public transport services such as metro and commuter trains are efficient during normal operations but are vulnerable to disruptions. To manage disruptions, bridging buses are commonly called in to replace the rail-based service along the disrupted lines. These often take significant time to arrive and are costly to keep stand-by. Demand-responsive transport such as taxi can respond to demand almost immediately but is costly and must usually be arranged by the individual travelers. This study examines the integration and potential role of demand-responsive transport in disruption management. The analysis considers the impacts of limiting the serving area, varying the number of available vehicles, pursuing ride-sharing, as well as a system-of-systems approach with collaboration between taxis and bridging buses. Results of computational experiments on the case study of Stockholm, Sweden reveal that integration of demand-responsive transport in the disruption management can bring large positive benefits in terms of average and maximum waiting times for travelers. This is especially the case for strategies including ride-sharing. It is also shown that appropriate trade-offs between desired waiting times and costs can be achieved by collaboration of both bridging buses and demand-responsive transport. Additionally, more robust public transport with increased reliability during disruptions can increase sustainability as more people may choose public transport instead of private cars.

Highlights

F OR MANY cities around the world, public transport represents the backbone for commuters, and the service is crucial for society
Simulation experiments are performed on a case study based on public transport smart card data and taxi probe data in region Stockholm, Sweden
Starting from a baseline scenario where only bridging buses are used, we compared with taxi-based demandresponsive transport (DRT) scenarios starting from typical unrestricted taxi-DRT without ride-sharing, adding ride-sharing, limiting the service area and proposing a cooperative scheme where we tried to take advantage of high-capacity bridging buses as well as the flexibility of DRT

Summary

Introduction

F OR MANY cities around the world, public transport represents the backbone for commuters, and the service is crucial for society. For large cities, these systems transfer millions of people every day, and any disruption during peak hours on high capacity lines such as rail or metro can affect a substantial number of travelers. In Stockholm, Sweden, metro and commuter train disruptions are handled in several ways [1]: Bridging buses are called in to replace the rail-based service along the disrupted lines. Been at least 20 minutes late when taking the best public transport alternative can get reimbursement for their travel expenses in alternative modes such as taxi or private car. The PTA reimburses delayed travelers; in 2014, the administration paid out a total of SEK 9.7 million in reimbursements. In 2018, the sum had more than tripled to SEK 29.1 million [1]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion