14-10 Innovative Park-and-Ride Management for Livable Communities

Park-and-ride (P&R) has been recognized as an effective way to tackle the challenge of the last-mile problem in public transportation, i.e., connecting transit stations to final destinations. Although the design and operations of P&R facilities have been extensively investigated, there is a pressing need for a theoretically sound methodology for planning and managing P&R facilities. It is critically important to investigate where P&R facilities should be strategically located and how often transit service should be provided such that the net social benefit can be maximized. This project proposes an integrated planning methodology for locating P&R facilities and designing transit services simultaneously to promote public transportation and reduce traffic externalities in urban areas. The optimal P&R facility and transit service design problem is formulated as a mathematical program with complementarity constraints, and a solution algorithm based on the active-set approach is used to solve the optimal design problem effectively. A numerical example is employed to demonstrate that the optimal design shifts commuters from the automobile mode to transit and P&R modes and, hence, improves the net social benefit dramatically. The study provides a heretofore missing theoretical framework for integrated planning of P&R facilities and transit services