Vulnerability analysis of public transit systems from the perspective of the traffic situation

Abstract

The critical to sustainable urban development that a robust bus transit system is constructed to alleviate urban congestion problems. Unfortunately, disruptions in bus transit systems can lead to dysfunction and threaten sustainable development. This paper proposed a vulnerability analysis model for constructing complementary urban bus networks (UBNs), which considers the actual capacity of the bus network at the speed of transport roads. In addition, the UBNs aimed analysis method is presented from three specific aspects: (a) utilizing the stochastic user equilibrium model and different traffic situations to measure the UBNs of passenger flow distribution according to multi-source data; (b) introducing the node capacity and structural, functional vulnerability analysis model by combining real traffic flows and the complex network theory; (c) analysing the vulnerability characteristics of UBNs cascading failures from different passenger flow distributions and increasing capacity parameters, and comparing with those under different attack methods. Then, the new vulnerability analysis model is applied to the Harbin trunk bus. Considering different attack scenarios, the UBNs show strong vulnerability in the case of high congestion. Compared with other deliberate attacks, the bus network based on the attack mode of the maximum intensity site is more vulnerable at different times. These insights could be used to inform a vulnerability-based spatiotemporal design of bus transit networks.