Network survivability and recoverability in urban rail transit systems under disruption

Abstract

It is important for an urban rail transit system network to be resilient in the event of a disruption, and to be capable to recover in the shortest possible time. This study presents a holistic approach to analyse the survivability and recoverability of an urban rail–bus transit network during and after a disruption. A maximum survivability-minimum recovery time approach was formulated in this study to determine the number of affected passengers in the rail network during a disruption, the number of passengers who need to be transferred to alternate transport modes, and the recovery duration. A case study based on the Singapore urban mass rapid transit and bus networks is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the authors’ proposed framework. It was found from their analyses that the proposed framework could provide information on the state of rail network resilience given different disruption scenarios and estimate the recovery time after disruption occurrence.