Public transit planning with consideration to equity: A Utility Modelling Approach
Date
2023-04-14
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Abstract
Public transit plays a key role in human life. An efficient and equitable transportation system enables access to services and amenities that are central to the lives of all individuals, such as employment, education, health services, and leisure. Transit frequency is one of the key attributes of public transit that makes an equitable and efficient system a reality, allowing necessary freedom for users. However, from an operator’s perspective, high frequency is expensive. So far, we have mainly explored cost-effective solutions in allocating frequencies.
In contrast, it is extremely difficult to single out a universal approach in defining or measuring transportation inequities because such an exercise highly depends on many interacting factors including background, population, administration policies, epoch, procedures, and perspectives of inequality itself. Ideally, when scheduling, transit planners should consider a) egalitarianism, where individuals and groups are treated equally, b) social inclusion, where distribution of impacts between individuals and groups were determined by income or social class, and c) differences in mobility ability and individual needs. In addition, one should consider many factors such as, demographic factors (age, gender, employment, income-level), geographic factors, mode of transportation, and trip purpose. From a mathematical perspective, distributive equity is extremely complex due to the complexity of the decision parameters, and almost all of the studies that have explored this subject quantify the aftermath of the distribution of impacts rather than define ways to make the distribution equitable in the first place. In this study, we bridge the gap in the equitable transit planning literature by introducing two novel utility-based mathematical approaches: i) proportional fairness and ii) alpha-fairness, which integrate all (a) to (c) aspects of equity (listed in the previous paragraph) and users’ perspectives of frequency. The numerical analysis addresses several variations of the fair allocation problem from vertical and horizontal equity within a unified model, which rectifies the gap in accessibility, comfort, impact of transit fare, and travel time in achieving equity. In this thesis, we show that, with the right set of definitions and optimization tools, one can account for complex granular public transit user parameters, the associated equity issues, and inequalities and disparities in society to create a fair yet efficient public transit system.
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Keywords
Public transit planning, Equity, Proportional fairness, Mathematical modeling, Convex optimization
Citation
Senasinghe, A. P. (2023). Public transit planning with consideration to equity: a utility modelling approach (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.