Abstract
Methodologies and approaches for assessing the vulnerability of a public transport network are generally based on quantifying the average delay generated for passengers by some type of disruption. In this work, a novel methodology is proposed, which combines the traditional approach, based on the quantitative evaluation of averaged disruption effects, with the analysis of the asymmetry of effects among users, by means of Lorenz curves and Gini index. This allows evaluating whether the negative consequences of disruptions are equally spread among passengers or if differences exist. The results obtained show the potential of the proposed method to provide better knowledge about the effects of a disruption on a public transport network. Particularly, it emerged that disrupted scenarios that appear similar in terms of average impacts are actually very different in terms of the asymmetry of effects among users.
Highlights
Efficient and reliable public transport systems provide a good alternative to private cars, which are a major source of atmospheric pollution [1,2,3]
This paper presents a new approach to analyze the vulnerability of public transport systems that is based on the combination of network indicators and impact (a) symmetry evaluation
The methodological framework proposed in this work relies on classical approaches by using the Lorenz curve and Gini index to analyze delay symmetry on travelers and identify delay imbalances among passengers
Summary
Efficient and reliable public transport systems provide a good alternative to private cars, which are a major source of atmospheric pollution [1,2,3]. From the perspective of service operators, they may incur additional costs because of increased fuel consumption, potential fare reimbursement, and overtime payments to personnel [10,17] In this context, system vulnerability to unexpected events is usually computed at the network level by using indicators that measure the impacts on the overall network, such as the total decrease in network efficiency [18,19] or average increase in travel times or generalized costs [9,17,20]. Impacts may either significantly affect a small fraction of travelers—while the rest of them experience lower or zero impacts—or may be distributed among all travelers These aspects have not been addressed before in the transport vulnerability literature.
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