Public Transport Network Design and Reliability

Design of public transport networks is usually based on a deterministic point of view: it is assumed that all components of the system perform as planned. In reality, however, there are a large number of regular and irregular variations influencing public transport services such as variation in demand, service operation, and infrastructure availability. The question thus is how these phenomena affect the network design problem. As a first step in answering this question, the main design dilemmas of public transport network design will be briefly described. Next, the impact of reliability on network performance will be discussed, thereby introducing new design dilemmas.