Masivo: Parallel Simulation Model Based on OpenCL for Massive Public Transportation Systems’ Routes

Abstract

There is a large number of tools for the simulation of traffic and routes in public transport systems. These use different simulation models (macroscopic, microscopic, and mesoscopic). Unfortunately, these simulation tools are limited when simulating a complete public transport system, which includes all its buses and routes (up to 270 for the London Underground). The processing times for these type of simulations increase in an unmanageable way since all the relevant variables that are required to simulate consistently and reliably the system behavior must be included. In this paper, we present a new simulation model for public transport routes’ simulation called Masivo. It runs the public transport stops’ operations in OpenCL work items concurrently, using a multi-core high performance platform. The performance results of Masivo show a speed-up factor of 10.2 compared with the simulator model running with one compute unit and a speed-up factor of 278 times faster than the validation simulator. The real-time factor achieved was 3050 times faster than the 10 h simulated duration, for a public transport system of 300 stops, 2400 buses, and 456,997 passengers.