The effect of crowding on public transit user travel behavior in a large-scale public transportation system through modeling daily variations

Abstract

In this paper, the crowding effect in a transit vehicle is modeled in a time-expanded network that considers the daily variation in passenger flows. The study models the daily variation of in-vehicle crowding in a real large-scale transit system. A transit assignment for this real network is modeled and implemented by constructing a crowding cost function that follows the valuation of crowding and by using the reliable shortest path finding method. The direct application of the crowding model to a real network for the Utah Transit Authority indicates that crowd modeling with multi-user classes could influence public transportation system planning and affect the revenues of transit agencies. Moreover, the addition of the disutility factor, crowding, does not always appear to cause an increase in disutility for transit users.

Keywords:

• Transit vehicles
• crowding effect
• transit assignment
• reliability
• shortest path finding method
• application

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kevin Heaslip http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3393-2627