Hybrid Smart Demand Responsive Public Transport System for Conventional Public Transport in City Metropolitan Area

초록

Providing quality public transportation is extremely expensive and unpredictable. Passenger demand across a metropolitan area can vary greatly with changes in population density and time of the day. Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is an intermediate form of public transport that lies between a regular bus service and a personalized taxi service. DTR provides “on demand” transport to commuters with a fleet of vehicles operating in a shared-ride mode between pick-up and drop-off locations. However, DRT has been introduced as an alternative transport service, rather than as a substitute for conventional public transport. In this study, a hybrid smart DRT public-transport system has been proposed for integration into the conventional public-transport system. The proposed system is an intermediate stage to a fully driven DRT service. It combines the flexibility and reliability of DRT services with the fixed routes and time tables of a conventional public transport service, and has been implemented using cutting-edge technologies. Moreover, a simulation demonstrated that the system performed almost as effectively as the conventional public-transport system while passenger demand was at its highest. It outperformed the conventional public-transport system in case of low to moderate passenger demand.

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