URBAN PASSENGER TRANSPORT ROAD NETWORKS: PROSPECTS OF METHODS’ OPTIMIZATION

Abstract

Introduction.City passenger transport plays an important role in life of the population of the city and in ensuring the efficient, uninterrupted operation of the entire urban system as a whole. However, currently in the field of urban passenger transport in many cities of Russia a number of significant problems have accumulated. In particular, these are problems of the development of the urban route network, the performance indicators of which determine the level of quality of transport services for the population and the economic effect of the operation of urban passenger transport. In this connection, the study of the prospects for the development of methods for optimizing the urban route network becomes relevant.Materials and methods.The article presents a chronological analysis of methods for optimizing route networks of urban passenger transport. It reflects the specifics of their use, shows the advantages and disadvantages. The authors also reflect the trends in the development of modern methods of optimization of route networks of urban passenger transport. The existing numerous methods for optimizing urban route networks could be divided into two types: heuristic, which have become classical today, and qualitatively new ones – metaheuristic, allowing managing tasks that contain nonlinear functions in the process of optimizing urban route networks. As modern science, software and computing facilities in the studied area have been developing very fast, metaheuristic methods are becoming a promising direction.Results.It had been revealed that over time, methods for optimizing the route networks of urban passenger transport had been improved and made it possible to take into account the opposing interests of the participants in the passenger transportation process in the city, as well as to set a large set of initial parameters and constraints for a mathematical model for optimizing the urban route network. The authors revealed the main features of the optimization of the route networks of urban passenger transport in the conditions of the modern development of science and software and computing facilities in the studied area. To date, there were no exact optimization methods for optimizing urban route networks. The task of optimizing the route network appeared to be combinatorial.Discussion and conclusions.The research is useful not only for the further development of science in the area under study, but also for the practical implementation of the process of optimizing the route networks of urban passenger transport.