Applications and future developments: Modelling the diversity and integration of transit modes

Abstract

Passenger transit modes typical of the urban setting, including bus, tram, metro, and train, have been described in Chap. 2, along with less conventional modes such as BRT and cable. Then, Chaps. 6 and 7 have provided network assignment models that address primarily the passenger side, dealing with route choice situations and behaviour, the individual exposure to traffic conditions, and the contribution of individual users to local flows. In these models, the transit mode is represented as a set of lines, each of which is abstracted into its topology (nodes and links) and some features of traffic operations: run time, dwell time, and some capacity parameters. In such an abstract setting, no distinction has been made between, for instance, bus and railway services, apart from their respective parameter values.