Impact of the density of line service stations on overall performance in Bi-modal public transport settings

Abstract

Human mobility is mostly dominated by the use of private cars, leading to disproportionate carbon emissions, resource consumption, traffic jams, and pollution. Public transport, with buses, trains, etc., can mitigate these issues via its higher pooling potential. However, often times, public transport is considered less convenient and is therefore avoided. Here, we study a bi-modal public transport system consisting of a rail bound line service and a fleet of on-demand shuttles providing connections to the line service stops, aiming at fast transit at low energy and resource consumption. By means of agent-based simulations and analytical theory, we demonstrate that bi-modal transit indeed has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption of human mobility at reasonable service quality. We further investigate the influence of the stop density along the rails upon the performance of the bi-modal system. We find that within a range of realistic technical parameters, additional stops tend to impede train speed without significantly enhancing the overall performance of bi-modal transit in terms of service quality and energy consumption. Hence, it can be beneficial to reduce the number of stops within an existing railway system and to implement bi-modal transit as a complement.