Justification of the choice of a theoretical apparatus to describe the transport behavior of city residents (megapolis)

Abstract

Introduction. The article presents an analysis of scientific papers on transport behavior, transport mobility of the population and patterns of behavior of passengers (individuals). The construction of mathematical models of transport behavior based on the theory of macrosystems has scientific novelty and prospects for study and implementation in practice. An urgent task on this path is to study the nature of collective behavior resulting from the interaction of multiple motives when making a decision about a trip. At the same time, in the flows of passengers and vehicles, it is assumed that there are spatio-temporal structures that reflect transport behavior at the macro level.Description of the problem (overview). The transport behavior of the population is studied by both foreign and domestic scientists and specialists of the transport industry, however, the depth and study of the topic does not allow us to say that there are generalized schemes, models and mathematical descriptions of passenger behavior. Very little information is available about how exactly a passenger makes a decision whether he will make a train or not, i.e. behavioral models are practically not investigated. The main directions of research of transport behavior proposed by the authors of this work are as follows: creation of a theoretical apparatus for describing “transport behavior”; development of a mathematical model of the transport system of individual movements; construction of a transport behavior management system.Materials and methods. The article uses a general systematic approach as the main research method. Passenger behavior patterns, as well as their reaction to changes occurring in the transport system, are described using the term “pattern”. Thus, the method of pattern analysis in nonlinear dynamics is additionally applied.Results. The definition of the concept of “pattern” of transport behavior is given. From the standpoint of the theory of transport macrosystems, a pattern can be called a set of specific states that an element (an individual, a vehicle, etc.) “chooses” at various structural levels of a transport macrosystem from a subset of acceptable ones.Discussion and conclusions. This paper proposes a new approach to the description of transport behavior from the standpoint of various scientific disciplines, the theory of macrosystems, which lays the basis for the creation of a theory of transport behavior, which is currently absent. As a result of the research , it was obtained: 1) the formulation of the system that most fully reflects the essence of “transport behavior” is a transport system of individual movements; 2) it is shown that the construction of such a system is best done within the framework of the theory of macrosystems; 3) such a concept as a “space-time diagram” of transport behavior is proposed, its connection with the traditional term of nonlinear dynamics, such as “pattern of behavior of a nonlinear system”, is established, 4) the development of the term “graph of transport behavior” is proposed in the direction of taking into account all phases of the transport process (pre-transport, transport, post-transport), which is reflected in the space-time diagram.