Project Description

The increase in population and rapid urbanization has resulted in greater levels of demand and need for transport services for mobility and led to high car ownership, congestion, overburdened transport infrastructure, and insufficient alternative transport services. These trends have led to many social disparities among societies and people while accessing services and opportunities, especially the disadvantaged groups of society across the region. Thus, efforts are required to plan and design public transport networks that are more efficient, equitable, and sustainable so that they emerge as a preferred mode of transport and serve the needs of all groups of society. This research project aims to calculate the current levels of access to rail services by active and passive modes and evaluate the different dimensions of equity in accessing rail services based on the measures of demand and needs derived from the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the population groups. Using the current inequity distribution, we intend to redesign the existing public transport network using optimization models. The main objective is to maximize the accessibility to the services by locating new rail and bus stations or lines based on the area’s level of inequity, using horizontal and vertical equity constraints. The model also considers the modal share for the public transportation (demand effect) that serves as an indicator of sustainability, along with efficiency and equity.

These network design models are applied and validated to the case study of the Metropolitan Area of Porto (AMP) that will lead to an optimal network design with equity and greater modal share, and maximized accessibility.

Research Team

• Mudassar Shafiq
• António Couto (Supervisor)

Financial Support

• Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)

State of Progress

• In progress