A method for the route-choice problem in public transport systems

Passengers in an urban transport system may often be in a position to choose among a set of parallel routes in order to reach their destinations. Their decisions depend in general on many variables, e.g., the in-vehicle travel times, walk time, transfer time, number of transfers, fares, the headways and the irregularity of the routes. Traditional methods used in urban transport planning do not solve the route-choice problem satisfactorily when passengers may choose between modes with differences in speed or fare structures, e.g., tram and bus. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for calculating the passenger waiting times and distribution for the route-choice problem more realistically than existing methods. An implementation of the new method can be found in the new VIPS II urban transport planning system. Large scale testing carried out by the Stockholm Transport Development Department has produced better results than with methods used previously.