A Novel Index for Level-of-Service Evaluation in a Multimodal Transport Network

To mitigate the negative consequences of transport, such as congestion, pollution, and climate change, travellers are encouraged to shift from private cars to a combination of different sustainable transport modes. To facilitate such transition, various infrastructure projects aiming at improving multimodal transport services for attracting travellers are ongoing or under planning in many parts of the world. In order to quantitatively assess these projects, the study develops a novel level-of-service index for evaluating the performance of a multimodal transport network containing roadway, bus transit, and urban rail transit subnetworks. The proposed index not only integrates the level-of-service for the subnetwork associated with each transport mode but also captures the coordination between different transport modes. Case studies are carried out using real data to assess different scenarios of developing transfer structures in Nanjing, China. The evaluation results under different assumed origin-destination (OD) demands reveal the levelof-service in the study area and could assist the transport planners to design optimal multimodal transport services.