The Role of the Objective Function in Solving the Transit Route Network Design Problem

Transit is considered fundamental for a sustainable urban transportation system. The design of a transit network receives considerable attention by the research community. In this domain, the authors focus on the transit route network design problem (TRNDP) and more specifically on the influence of the objective function definition to the final result, when solving the problem using a metaheuristic methodology. To investigate the influence of the various objective functions, the authors develop a population based metaheuristic that aims at being very general. This allows the authors to isolate the contribution of the objective to the final result. The metaheuristic has three unbiased search operators that explore the solution space using few simple rules. From the results the authors were able to conclude that different formulations of the objective function, commonly used in the research literature, exhibit different behaviour, and lead to the different sets of solutions. Under the same conditions, some of the formulations produce low quality solutions, while others perform significantly better. The disparity in the solutions’ quality raises questions regarding the validity of many benchmark comparisons made in the literature so far. Namely, unless the problem is defined using the same objective, one cannot infer the dominance of a certain metaheuristic over the other. In conclusion, when developing a metaheuristic to solve TRNDP, a great attention should be payed to the formulation of the objective function. This is because the objective function guides the metaheuristic optimization in its search and can therefore heavily affect the obtained solutions.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB30 Standing Committee on Transportation Network Modeling.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Trifunović, Aleksandar
  • Haas, Inbal
  • Friedrich, Bernhard
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 5p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Network analysis (Planning); Networks; Optimization; Public transit; Routes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Metaheuristics; Network design
• Subject Areas: Design; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01698261
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-04531
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM