A general rapid network design, line planning and fleet investment integrated model

Traditionally, network design and line planning have been studied as two different phases in the planning process of public transportation. At the strategic level approaches dealing with the network design problem minimize travel time or maximize trip coverage, whereas at the tactical level, in the case of line planning, most models minimize cost or the number of transfers. The main novelty of this paper is the integration of the strategic and tactical phases of the rapid transit planning process. Specifically, a mathematical programming model that simultaneously determines the infrastructure network, line planning, train capacity of each line, fleet investment and personnel planning is defined. Moreover, the demand is assumed to be elastic and, therefore it is split into the rapid transit network and a competing mode according to a generalized cost. A rigorous analysis for the calibration of the different concepts that appear as consequence of the integration of phases is presented. Our approach maximizes the total profit of the network by achieving a balance between the maximum trip coverage and the minimum total cost associated to the network. Numerical results taking into account data based on real‐world instances are presented.