Simulation-based evaluation of advanced public transportation information systems (APTIS)

Despite the great success and the broad diffusion of Advanced Public Transportation Information System (APTIS), there is a lack of studies, in the literature, investigating “systematically” how and to what extend such systems can affect network performances and travelers’ path choices. In this paper, with respect to the realistic case study of the city of Naples (South-Italy), we investigate the impacts of information offer in a Public Transportation (PT) network under different network condition, i.e. irregular vs. regular services, congested vs. un-congested lines. The focus is on APTIS deploying shared en-route descriptive information. The presented results are based on the simulation of the three main components of the PT system, namely the network performances, the information provider (i.e. the Operation Control Center) and the travelers. The simulation of these components and their interaction is achieved using different modeling approach: the schedule-based approach for the network representation and the traffic assignment, a statistical model based on the Kalman filter for the prediction of the link travel times within the simulation period, and behavioral discrete choice models, following the Random Utility Theory, for simulating travelers’ behavior.