Transportation is one essential part of societies since it connects regions, activities, and humans themselves and creates beneficial relationships. The transportation system has three main components: Nodes, Network, and Demands.
Transportation Nodes represent locations to where people are able to or from where they could leave (e.g., airports, bus stops, train stations, etc.). Networks represent the medium or infrastructure between Nodes, such as railways, roads, or flight paths.
Lastly, Transportations Demands describe the importance and effects of the transportation’s services in society. Therefore, modeling the current demands is crucial to design an efficient public transportation system since it becomes the basis of the design.
Generally, three main phases are necessary for creating public transportations system. The first phase is Strategic phase which consist of network design and line planning. This step uses demands data and model and applies interdisciplinary concepts such as graph theory, optimization, market analysis, cost/benefit analysis, cartography, and policymaking to produce the initial Network, Line Plan, and the Tariff zone models.
The tactical phase is the second part of the design. During this stage, the engineers create frequency planning and Timetabling for the system. The timetable provides information on when one vehicle arrives and/or leaves based on Line Plan and the Network.
The timetable should be adjustable according to demands since demands change over time. The last phase is the Operational Phase. To implement the timetable, Vehicles and Crews deployment must be planned and scheduled based on Fleets of Vehicle and Crews’ availability.
The result of this phase is the operational vehicle and crew schedule. These schedules are constantly adjusted in the short-term (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc.) because, in the operational stage, many uncontrollable variables such as maintenances, accidents, personal issues, or city/nationwide events regularly affects these schedules
Comments