Modelling public transport passenger flows in the era of Intelligent Transport Systems: COST Action TU1004 (TransITS)

This book is the main output of the COST Action TU1004: Modelling Public Transport Passenger Flows in the Era of Intelligent Transport Systems, which was called TransITS for short. Cost Actions are projects funded by the EU to support a network of researchers. The focus is in this case on transit assignment and ITS technologies. In very productive four years of cooperation more than 70 researchers from all continents have been involved in TransITS with various roles. The specific purpose of this book is to provide to a wide community of possible readers, ranging from policy makers to practitioners, from master and PhD students to researchers, a comprehensive source to understand how transit assignment can support the appraisal of investments in ITS technologies for operators and passengers. This is a unique contribution that is really missing in the literature. The book is not a simple collection of papers. It is really a joint work of multiple hands with a very precise structure, where about 40 different authors (see the List of contributors for more details) accepted to give a specific contribution with a uniform style and notation (which is not trivial). Of course, a huge coordination and sometimes rewriting effort by the Editorial Board (Guido Gentile, Fabien Leurent, Klaus Noekel, Francesco Viti) was necessary to achieve the desired result. Each chapter and section of the book then went through the careful reading of cross reviewers. This ambitious project was concluded successfully and we are all very proud of this book. The result is a relevant piece of work, with around 700 dense pages articulated in 4 Parts and 10 Chapters (see the Table of contents for more details). Part 1 introduces the use of ITS in public transport. The motivations for improving public transport in the context of sustainable cities and regions together with the importance of ITS technologies are first discussed. (Chapter 1). The forms of public transport are then illustrated not only presenting the different types of systems and vehicles but also including organization and product issues. (Chapter 2). Finally, the state-of-the-art of ITS solutions for public transport is presented with several examples and applications, together with the conceptual link to the variables of the transit assignment models that are used for the appraisal of such innovative systems. (Chapter3). Part 2 introduces the idea of planning and modelling public transport. Modelling is presented not as a means in itself, but as a tool for rational decision-making about investment into transport. Passenger route choice models, the core of this book, form just a part of a hierarchy of travel demand models. An overview of this hierarchy is given and the common mathematical framework explained. Particular emphasis is given to Random Utility Models. (Chapter 4). The stage is set for Part 3 by defining a standard terminology for the input and output data of such models. The final section describes how ITS produces a large part of these data and how they can be used to build and validate models. (Chapter 5). Part 3 presents the theory of transit assignment and discusses the basic modelling frameworks: schedule-based, frequency-based, simulation-based. Particular emphasis is given to the representation of strategic behaviour through hyperpaths and to the dynamic aspects of transit simulation including within-day and day-to-day assignment models. (Chapter 6). The focus is more on the demand and supply requirements rather than on equilibrium algorithms. The proposed models contain several advancements and original contributions which are designed to capture in the models the effects of real-world phenomena like passenger information, vehicle capacity and operational stability. (Chapter 7). Part 4 examines how transit modes interact with other modes in reality, both competing and complementing, and how these effects can be reflected in multimodal networks. (Chapter 8). A review of which models presented in the book have found their way from theory into practice, in the form of both commercially available software and of prototypical academic implementations is presented; their use is also illustrated with the help of two case studies. (Chapter 9). Finally, open challenges are described and directions for future research are proposed. (Chapter 10).