Simulation of Congestion Phenomena and Strategic Passenger Behaviour on Transit Networks

This article focuses on the simulation of transit networks, including passengers’ congestion phenomena and strategic behaviour, as a tool for planning and operation. Specifically, it describes a model of user equilibrium on large-scale transit networks considering on-board overcrowding, queuing at stops and dwelling delay, and representing in addition the effects of random events, such as the availability of seats and the waiting of vehicles, through hyperarcs. The assignment algorithm computes a strategy-based user equilibrium with implicit hyperpath enumeration by solving a fixed-point formulation, through a gradient projection method, which highly improves convergence performance. The model was implemented in .net as a dll that uses the software PTV Visum as I/O source. This article will focus on the model formulation and its capability of reproducing the target phenomena, while the results of model validation and testing will be described in a following paper.