T2 – TerminalTrängsel (Terminal Congestion)
Many bus terminals suffer from insufficient capacity, but their central location in the city makes expansion difficult. As public transport travel increases, capacity problems worsen. There is a need for a methodology for cost-efficient evaluation of measures for improved traffic efficiency. This is challenging since the congestion is not only a result of the number of vehicles, number of passengers, and the design of the infrastructure, but also the timetable and the platform allocation. Microscopic simulation can be used for such evaluations but is resource intensive due to the high level of detail.
T2 aims at developing a method that from freely accessible data constructs network models suitable for microscopic simulation of bus traffic within terminals and quantify congestion effects. In a succeeding project this method can be further developed towards automatic construction, calibration and validation of simulation models. The purpose is to enable cost-effective creation of simple simulation models of terminals and evaluation of capacity improving measures or effects of traffic demand changes.
In recent years, GPS data on bus movements has been made freely available by public transport authorities, and data from the last several years are available in the KoDa database, accessible via trafiklab.se. This data provides an excellent foundation for modeling of bus terminals, since it includes all moving vehicles in the modeled area. The large volume of accessible data makes microscopic simulation adapted to the level of detail and accuracy of the data a very promising modeling approach with a potential to catch the most significant congestion effects. The planned traffic is also available in the same database, which enables calculation of delays, and scaling of traffic to future scenarios.
By applying this type of model system for a large number of terminals, general relationships between demand and delay for bus traffic within terminals can be estimated. The methods developed within the project can be applied directly for in-depth analyses of specific bus terminals to, for example, investigate the effects of applied measures for increased capacity and accessibility. The research project will be organized around a doctoral student, equally sharing their time between VTI and LiU, with one supervisor in each research environment.
Project partners:
VTI, LiU
Project members:
Fredrik Johansson (project lead, assistant supervisor), fredrik.johansson@vti.se
Anders Peterson (main supervisor), anders.peterson@liu.se
PhD candidate ( to be recruited )