2-3.2: Optimizing Service Areas to Reduce Congestion and Enhance Equity in Access to Transportation Systems

Abstract

As new transportation alternatives emerge and existing services are redesigned, communities and theirplanningagencies are often required to identifytransportation service areas within which theservices can operate. The selection of which neighborhoods are includedin or excludedfrom a service area can havesignificant implications on the level of accessibility, economic sustainability, and congestion reduction potential ofatransportation system. In this project,spatial optimization methods areproposed to explicitly consider theserviceareaselection problem in the design of transportation systems. The main contribution of this project is twofold. First, optimization models are presentedfor service area design problems that simultaneously account for thegoals of system operators and users, with particular emphasis on the objectives of reducing congestion and enhancing equity in access to transportation services.The models will account for spatial coverageconstraints that are specified inreal-world situations to ensure equitable access to transportation services.The second contribution of the project will be heuristics to solve the proposed design problems. The heuristics will combine surrogate-based and shape optimization techniques with evolutionary algorithm strategies to discover optimal service area designs.The optimization models will be formulatedfor two design applications. In the first application, the problem of designing transit routes and the accompanying paratransit service area will be examined. This problem is of practical interest to US transit agencies given federal regulations that set minimum spatial coverage of paratransit services based on fixed transit route alignments. In the second application, the problem of defining the servicearea for dockless micromobility serviceswill be considered. The dockless e-scooter system operating in Mayagüez, Puerto Ricoand the travel demand models that will be developed for this system willserve as the test case for the second application.v