While the demand for transportation is growing rapidly, many problems
are facing planners and traffic operators in urban areas; such as; low
performance and efficiency levels of passengers transport system. The
strategy for tackling these problems has been for years to consider
adding more capacity to the transport supply system, through huge
investments in transport infrastructure. Best utilization of available
transport services and facilities is an urgent necessity. Methods
developed in the theory of optimization, through making use of advanced
computation technology, would allow one to make experimental analysis
and evaluation of different policies and strategies for better
understanding of the transportation problem and to select a solution for
efficient utilization of resources.
This paper presents a methodology for transport modes operation
analysis for different policies and strategies to be simulated in order to
reach optimal goals. The performance and efficiency of transport modes
operation are formulated in a framework as an output maximization
process of an objective function, subject to state variables, decision
variables, constraints and variable bounds. Four main traffic operation
strategies which would have great impacts on urban transportation
performance and efficiency were analyzed, each strategy contains
heuristics of many trial values of decision variables. The overall
methodology is seeking global optimality.
The research output revealed two important indicators for alternative
transport systems evaluation; Mode Efficiency Factor and transport
system passenger supply Efficiency Index. The efficient transport system
supply that satisfies a certain demand is attained. Moreover, an
identification and clarification of most compatible transport modes,
suitable for passenger demand sharing, that would give optimal
performance indicators are documented.