A Graph Theoretic Approach for Public Transit Connectivity in Multi-Modal Transportation Networks

摘要

Connectivity plays a crucial role as agencies at the federal and state level focus on expanding the publictransit system to meet the demands of a multimodal transportation system. Transit agencies have a need toexplore mechanisms to improve connectivity by improving transit service. This requires a systemicapproach to develop measures that can prioritize the allocation of funding to locations that provide greaterconnectivity, or in some cases direct funding towards underperforming areas. In this paper, we proposemeasures to determine connectivity from a graph theoretic approach for all levels of transit servicecoverage integrating routes, schedules, socio-economic, demographic, and spatial activity patterns. Theobjective of using connectivity as an indicator is to quantify and evaluate transit service in terms ofprioritizing transit locations for funding; providing service delivery strategies, especially for areas withlarge multi-jurisdictional, multi-modal transit networks; providing an indicator of multi-level transitcapacity for planning purposes; assessing the effectiveness and efficiency for node/stop prioritization; andmaking a user-friendly tool to determine locations with highest connectivity while choosing transit as amode of travel. An example problem shows how the graph theoretic approach can be used as a tool toincorporate transit specific variables in the indicator formulations and compares the advantage of theproposed approach compared to its previous counterparts. Then the proposed framework is applied to thecomprehensive transit network in the Washington-Baltimore region. The proposed analysis offers reliableindicators that can be used as tools for determining the transit connectivity of a multimodal transportationnetwork.