Publicação

Simulation approach for an integrated decision support system for demand responsive transport planning and operation

Ver documento

Detalhes bibliográficos
Resumo:Rural areas are becoming more desert from day to day, leading to complex dispersed and scarce demand patterns for public transport. As a consequence, conventional transport services are becoming less frequent, reducing levels of service (e.g., low occupancy rates, usage of old vehicles). With rigid predefined routes and schedules, they are inappropriate to operate in such environments. Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) systems have been seen as an interesting alternative solution, providing flexible transport services to meet trip requests. This solution has already been adopted in several countries as a way to increase user’s mobility and mitigate social exclusion. There are however some issues concerning DRT scheme design and evaluation requiring further developments. Namely, there is still a lack of adequate tools to support some of the strategic and tactic level decisions that must be made at the design phase. In this research, we propose an Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) and general action methodology that will allow achieving better planning decisions and allowing the evaluation of alternative scheme designs prior to its implementation. The IDSS and methodology are based on an event-driven simulation framework which emulates real-world customers’ behavior and vehicles movements. The paper will concentrate its analysis on this framework. An illustrative numerical experiment is presented and briefly discussed.
Autores principais:Dias, Ana
Outros Autores:Telhada, José; Carvalho, Maria Sameiro
Assunto:Demand responsive transport Integrated decision support system Simulation approach Performance evaluation Demand responsive transport (DRT) integrated decision support system (IDSS)
Ano:2012
País:Portugal
Tipo de documento:comunicação em conferência
Tipo de acesso:acesso aberto
Instituição associada:Universidade do Minho
Idioma:inglês
Origem:RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
Descrição
Resumo:Rural areas are becoming more desert from day to day, leading to complex dispersed and scarce demand patterns for public transport. As a consequence, conventional transport services are becoming less frequent, reducing levels of service (e.g., low occupancy rates, usage of old vehicles). With rigid predefined routes and schedules, they are inappropriate to operate in such environments. Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) systems have been seen as an interesting alternative solution, providing flexible transport services to meet trip requests. This solution has already been adopted in several countries as a way to increase user’s mobility and mitigate social exclusion. There are however some issues concerning DRT scheme design and evaluation requiring further developments. Namely, there is still a lack of adequate tools to support some of the strategic and tactic level decisions that must be made at the design phase. In this research, we propose an Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) and general action methodology that will allow achieving better planning decisions and allowing the evaluation of alternative scheme designs prior to its implementation. The IDSS and methodology are based on an event-driven simulation framework which emulates real-world customers’ behavior and vehicles movements. The paper will concentrate its analysis on this framework. An illustrative numerical experiment is presented and briefly discussed.