Evolution of public transport network design due to the arrival of autonomous buses

There is rapid development in the transportation field. Soon, along with the rapid population growth, there will be a change in the mobility pattern. To prepare the different travel demand, there are several new advanced technologies that are on the development process such as the electrification of the vehicle, the micro-mobility service, and the automation of the vehicle. The latter subject is the main focus of this research. The main objective of this research is to observe and analyze the development of a new model to provide a tool for the analysis of the public transport system and the analysis of different scenarios related to the degree of development of automated vehicles and the characteristics of the area of service and demand. The network design in this research is a hybrid concept developed by Carlos Daganzo in 2010 that combines the grid network on the central area and radial network on the peripheral area. In the central area, there is two intersecting public transit (bus and metro). In contrast, on the peripheral area, a feeder bus will provide the service for the passengers and also there will be two feeder alternatives, namely fixed route and door to door. The objective function of the optimization is to minimize the total cost regarding the available decision variables. The total cost is consist of agency cost (infrastructure length, total vehicle distance travelled, total vehicle hours travelled) and user cost (waiting time, access time, in-vehicle time) and the minimization process need to follow the constraint of headway, spacing, and vehicles capacity. Based on the base optimization, the most optimum value for alpha, bus spacing, metro spacing, and inner area length regarding to the total cost is 0.23, 0.2 km, 4 km, and 0.3 km respectively. while the Fixed Route Feeder Service with Full Automation is the most beneficial type of service. It generates the lowest total cost per passenger regarding to any decision variables except feeder spacing due to the different formulation between fixed route and door to door service. On contrary, Door to Door Feeder Service with No Automation has the highest total cost per passenger. The total cost in figure, based on the optimum value for each decision variables. Therefore there is no optimum value for headway considering the trend of the total cost is linea