Vertical Equity in a Transit Network Design Problem Model

Well planned and designed transit service not only resolves various problems in urbanized areas such as congestion, emission, and accidents, but also provides the mobility and accessibility required for urban activity. Imbalanced transportation infrastructures and services (e.g., centralization of services on certain areas and/or groups) may take away mobility rights from certain social groups, which can aggravate undesirable social gaps. Equitable transportation services for different income, racial and ethnic groups can reduce such gaps. This study mainly focuses on vertical equity because it is the most important perspective in the planning of transportation infrastructure and services. The goal of this study is to quantify vertical equity and then combine it with efficiency and apply these concepts to a transit network design problem. A bi-level network design problem is formulated with an upper level consisting of efficiency and vertical equity and a lower level that finds the traffic flow pattern with mode share satisfying user equilibrium (UE). NSGA-II algorithm finds Pareto optimal solutions for bi-level multi-objective network design problems. Three different scenarios show meaningful differences, and the trade-off between efficiency and vertical equity is discussed. When efficiency and equity are the joint objectives in transit network planning, the network configuration is entirely different than when there is only a single objective.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE60 Accessible Transportation and Mobility.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Bae, Yun Kyung
  • Chung, Jin-Hyuk
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Equity; Mobility; Modal split; Traffic flow; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Network design problem; User equilibrium
• Subject Areas: Design; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01519244
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-3680
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 24 2014 12:02PM