Efficient and Exact Public Transport Routing via a Transfer Connection Database

Abstract

We explore the earliest arrival time problem in public transport journey planning. A journey typically consists of multiple scheduled public transport legs. The actual time required to transfer between these legs can substantially influence route planning. Therefore, we properly model transfers by incorporating their exact costs. We then introduce a novel oracle-based routing algorithm that constructs an efficient transfer database, considering the proposed transfer model. The database is leveraged online to quickly reconstruct the optimal journey in response to an earliest arrival time query. Our experimental results show that neglecting exact transfer costs often lead to either infeasible or suboptimal route plans. Furthermore, the findings highlight the efficiency of our algorithm in handling queries, demonstrated by response times within mere microseconds.