Confronting the challenges in this information age: Towards a new transit modeling approach

Abstract

Information is affecting our life in significant ways. Transit planners have a dream that one day they can fully utilise all available information as the model input, and the planning tool is also able to provide valuable information for policy making. Transit operators also want to realise their dream such that in one day they can quickly decide the incident management strategy by providing passengers with the time-dependent route guidance Information. Passengers also imagine that one day they are able to plot their route and print their itinerary with detailed in-vehicle/waiting/walking/ transferring time before they leave their home or office. All is dream in the past in view of the lack of information (such as the detailed time-dependent origin-destination (O-D) demand information), as well as the limitation of computation power. As such, the conventional transit models often simplify the real situation or ignore some of the system/passenger behavior. With the advent of the information age, the introduction of a new transit modeling approach will make the dream comes true. This paper discusses the limitations of the conventional frequency-based static models and describes a new schedule-based dynamic model that was investigated by the authors. The challenges in developing the new model, as well as its limitations are also discussed. The new model is a user-friendly and powerful tool that can be operated satisfactorily on a personal computer and is capable of precisely and accurately modeling both system and passenger behaviors. As the output from the proposed model shows many detailed and accurate information, the model can be applied in many different areas.