Passenger social rerouting strategies in capacitated public transport systems

Services of many public transportation systems are regulated by static timetables. Tactical decisions to improve operations are usually limited to supply-side measures that fail to quickly react to short-term changes in passenger demand and disturbances. Where the realized level of service (LoS) might be substantially different from what was expected, demand management measures, such as advising travelers to use specific routes in the interest of congestion and travel time of the entire population (social rerouting), can be implemented alongside supply-side measures to improve the LoS over different timescales. In this study, we introduce multi-modal social rerouting strategies, considering trains, buses, and trams running with predefined timetables, to improve the LoS of capacitated public transport networks by asking a portion of the passenger demand to change departure time, line, or service. In fact, we aim to balance network load by rerouting passengers using a centrally-coordinated information strategy. The strategy anticipates feedback effects due to failed boardings and discomfort because of overcrowding by incorporating behavioral responses to advice over different timescales. We explore theoretical and practical challenges by evaluating the effectiveness and performance of strategies using real-world data from the Zürich and Twente public transport networks. Numerical experiments reveal that (1) system efficiency can already be improved with the compliance of a small portion of passengers to the social rerouting advice; (2) with 20%–50% steerable passengers, the improvement gradient of system efficiency is at a maximum; (3) targeting a certain level of system efficiency, a smaller detour tolerance requires the compliance of more travelers, and a larger detour tolerance allows fewer travelers to comply with the detour.