Impact of Automated Vehicles on Optimal Demand-Responsive Feeder Transit Network Design

Literature Review

Cost is an important factor in transit decision-making since many decisions are cost-related or cost-oriented. Reliable and accurate cost models and estimates lead to better operational and strategic decisions. Operational costs of a transit system are key factors in critical decisions such as implementation, development, and extension of a system. The user costs of public transportation including passengers’ waiting time and the costs of scheduling disruption also (Asgharzadeh & & Shafahi, 2017; Rahimi et al., 2020) can be important factors in designing a public transit network; however, these factors have received less attention in the literature than operational costs. Some cost models/estimates are simple while others are sophisticated, complex and consist of several different variables, but usually the outputs are expressed as dollars (or other currencies) per some units (e.g., per distance units, per time units, and per operator). However, regardless of the complexity and sophistication of the models, they should be based on valid and complete sources and cost components, and they should be validated (On Target Performance Group, 2011). There are usually some fixed costs, which are unaffected by the amount of service, and some variable costs, which increase by vehicle mileage (Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 2016).