Simulation of a Demand Responsive Transport feeder system: A case study of Brunswick

Abstract

Public transport systems in rural and peri-urban areas are in many cases characterized by long travel times, low frequencies and irregular services. Because of this, motorized private transport is often the only practicable mode of mobility in these regions. The use of Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) as feeder systems to mass public transport modes presents a great potential for improvement. This paper investigates the potential of such a system applied to a case-study of a peri-urban area of Brunswick, Germany. For that, the current bus line was replaced by a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line with DRT as feeder systems. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed system and provide a benchmark against the current public transport o er, multiple trips to the city center with the different transport modes were simulated. The agent-based microscopic simulation Eclipse SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) was used as a framework. The scenario of the DRT systems was simulated by SUMO coupled to a developed dispatching algorithm. The results show the potential of the proposed system due to the lower travel times, higher frequency and greater service area. Travel times were even comparable with the travel times of private car-based modes, which could lead to a potential increase in demand.