Amidst the daily chaos, commuters give priority to seamless transport, less travel time and improved connectivity. Lack of efficient public transport coordination compels commuters to shift their means of patronage to private transport, causing increased congestion and pollution. There is a growing need to maximise the utility of public transportation by designing multimodal timetables that are as coordinated and reliable as possible. But with over 2,000 trains, trams and buses operating at any given time in Melbourne, the logistics are complex.
This project seeks to optimise timetable coordination by developing smarter models than are available in existing tools. It explores measures to mitigate unnecessary variation in travel times and minimise the delay caused by transfer within multiple transit services. The study targets improvements that will encourage the use of public transportation modes over private trips. This project broadly explores:
- Can a smarter, adaptive algorithm be developed to deliver improved scheduling opportunities than the existing synchronisation tools (including HASTUS or manual efforts) for local and network level operations?
- What data sets exist or could be generated that describe existing and potential future travel needs?
- How can the utility of public transportation be maximised by making the multimodal connections more convenient and reliable?
- How can a robust measure be established to quantify the benefits of achieving high levels of bus-train coordination?
- How well can we optimise timetable coordination and cost efficiency simultaneously?
This project is part of the Sustainable and Effective Public Transport – Graduate Research Industry Partnership (SEPT-GRIP) and was supervised by Professor Mark Wallace and Professor Graham Currie. The project was being undertaken by Rejitha Nath sponsored by Transport for Victoria and Monash University.
The thesis is now available online here.
