Models for line planning in public transport

Abstract

The line planning problem is one of the fundamental problems in strategic planning of public and rail transport. It consists in finding lines and corresponding frequencies in a public transport network such that a given travel demand can be satisfied. There are (at least) two objectives. The transport company wishes to minimize its operating cost; the passengers request short travel times. We propose two new multi-commodity flow models for line planning. Their main features, in comparison to existing models, are that the passenger paths can be freely routed and that the lines are generated dynamically. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.