Urban Infrastructure Construction Planning: Urban Public Transport Line Formulation

Abstract

Urban public transport line formulation has its appeal in promoting public convenience and developing environmentally friendly cities. During the bus line planning stage, the line frequency and stop location determination is a key issue for decision makers. Our study focuses on the integrated formulation problem between line frequency and stop planning featuring multi-type vehicles. The multi-type vehicles are able to accommodate the various passenger demands at either peak hours or off-peak hours. The a priori magnitudes of user demands are investigated by drone-based technique methods in the tactical-level plan. The collected geospatial data can assist the public transport user forecast. A mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed. The objective is to minimize the walking cost of passengers, the building cost of stops, and the operation cost of service frequency. The effectiveness of the model is validated by a real case in Nantong, China. CPLEX is used to resolve the MILP model. Yielding to the budget constraint, in high-price, medium-price, and low-price scenarios, the optimal high-quantity stop scheme can save 3.04%, 3.11%, and 3.38% in overall cost compared with the medium-quantity stop scheme, respectively; their cost savings are 8.53%, 8.70%, and 9.09% more than the costs of the low-quantity stop scheme.

Keywords

• public transport
• line formulation
• construction planning
• multi-type vehicle
• stop plan