Equitable Transit Network Design Under Uncertainty

This paper proposes a bi-level transit network design problem considering supply-side uncertainty. The upper-level problem determines frequency settings to simultaneously maximise the efficiency and equity measures, which are defined by the reduction in the total effective travel cost and the minimum reduction in the effective travel cost of all OD pairs, respectively. The lower level problem is the reliability-based transit assignment problem that captures the effects of supply-side uncertainty on passengers’ route choice behaviour. Numerical studies demonstrate that 1) the Pareto frontier may not be convex; 2) it is possible to improve the efficiency and equity objectives simultaneously; 3) increasing the frequency could worsen the equity measure; 4) passengers’ risk attitude affects the rate of substitution between the two objectives.