Sustaining the Public Transport Network by Adaptation from Monocentric to Polycentric Structure

Abstract

Nowadays, more than 58% of the trips between the city’s urban cores are made by passenger cars rather than buses, which is not cost-effective and environmentally friendly. It also does not help in the sustainable development of the city. An attempt has been made to see whether changing the Kabul public transport network from functional monocentric to the polycentric structure can help it to be more functional, attractive, affordable, and accessible to the users. Here, we proposed a new integrated line linking the urban cores to each other using the headway-based assignment procedure of the VISUM macro simulation software. From the supposed variants, each variant was further divided into two subvariants. Furthermore, for each variant different routes were studied. Finally, all the subvariants and variants were compared to each other and reference scenario to find the one which can improve the multicore structure of Kabul effectively. Basis for analysis and comparison of the variants are the main three factors, that is, the total weighted Perceived Journey Times (PJTs) for each zone, which are using the route to be minimal, the maximum number of passengers within a certain time period of time to be increased, and the volume improvement on links using isochrones. Results show the PJT reduction by 327 & 674 h for Variant 2.1, the maximum number of passengers increased from 598 to 1864, and 2958 persons per four hours, improved volume on links as per 2016 and 2025, respectively.