Multimodal transit network design in a hub-and-spoke network framework

Abstract

This study focuses on the reconfiguration of bus services in an urban area with a newly constructed rail system. A hub-and-spoke network framework is introduced for the multimodal transit system. The rail services are taken as the backbone, and the bus services (main bus lines and feeder bus lines) are reconfigured to better integrate with rail services forming the core of a Mobility as a Service (MaaS). A cluster-based approach is used for selecting hubs from rail stations. Bus stops are taken as non-hub nodes. Main bus lines are designed based on a heuristic line generation approach and feeder bus lines are developed by solving a travelling salesman problem. A bi-level programming model is proposed to determine frequencies of each mode and addressed by the artificial bee colony algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is illustrated by numerical examples and applied to the Mandl's benchmark compared with existing studies.