Marco Petrelli

A bus network design procedure with elastic demand for large urban areas

The paper deals with a procedure for solving the bus network design problem with elastic demand in a large urban area and its application in a real context (city of Rome). The solution procedure consists of a set of heuristics, which includes a first routine for route generation based on the flow concentration process and a genetic algorithm for finding a sub-optimal set of routes with the associated frequencies. The design criteria are addressed to develop an intensive rather than extensive bus network in order to improve efficiency, integration among direct routes and effective transfer points that strongly affect service quality and ridership. The performances of the transportation system are estimated on a multimodal network taking into account the elasticity of the demand. The final goal of the research is to develop a design framework aiming at shifting the modal split towards the public transport.

Heuristic methods for the optimal location of road traffic monitoring

The paper deals with two different heuristic approaches for solving the problem of optimal location of traffic count sections (OLTCS), which is a crucial issue of the design of area wide ITS traffic monitoring centers. The first method applies deterministic rules on O/D flows and O/D pairs coverage. The second is based on a genetic algorithm (GA). Both are applied on a real size extra-urban road network and compared to a state-of-the art rule widely used in practical applications

Walkability Indicators for Pedestrian-Friendly Design

This paper presents an analysis of walking indicators related to the structure of the road network, differentiated by measures of the quality, connectivity, and proximity of the road network. These measures were computed for various zones of the city of Rome and for the historical center of Lucca and Venice in Italy. The aims of the study were (a) to understand whether some measures were more suitable than others for describing the walkability (i.e., accessibility to walking) of an area, (b) to define the best single measure or the optimal combination of measures to describe the walkability of an area, (c) to define some benchmark values for the analyzed walkability measures, and (d) to obtain valuable guidelines to define a pedestrian-oriented road network. The results showed the importance of variables such as the number of nodes and the size of the blocks. Moreover, the results demonstrated that although single measures of connectivity were not self-explanatory for describing walkability, the combination of various measures could be more effective. Finally, the study derived the benchmark values of 3 to 6 nodes per hectare for the density of nodes, 0.5 to 0.9 hectare per block for the size of blocks, and 800 m for the maximum walking distance for a pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development.

A new method to recover the correct land use and public transport interaction

In the last years the increasing use of private vehicles in urban areas creates negative impacts on the society particularly for the congestion, implying an increase of travel times, of air and noise pollution, of accidents, and the excessive production of greenhouse gases and land consumption. Public transport could represent a more efficient mode of travel with respect to the car, playing an important role to provide a more sustainable transport system. However, infrastructural actions operated on the public transport system are usually of long term, with respect to actions operated on land use, thus creating a considerable temporal gap between the land use and the transport system development. Starting from these remarks, the present study proposes a new method to overcome this temporal discrepancy, using the residual capacity of the mass transit system (existing or its short term development) as a variable to indicate the location and the magnitude of new residential and activities developments. The method has been applied to the city of Rome (Italy), suggesting how the Local Authority could guide the development of the urban area in a sustainable way for the next years.

Real time ridesharing: Understanding user behavior and policies impact: Carpooling service case study in Lazio Region, Italy

Among several ridesharing models, real-time carpooling is a significant innovation in the sector of sharing mobility. Indeed, it overcomes the traditional carpooling model thanks to a technology which enables customers to significantly decrease matching times and furthermore, it is fully integrated with public transport. None the less, it gives the opportunity to users to previously check the rating of possible passengers and drivers. First of all, the study sets the real time carpooling service within the broad ridesharing category highlighting peculiarities in light of international experiences and recent normative developments. In addition, results, obtained by a survey in collaboration with Moovit Inc. within Lazio (Italian region) about the new service Moovit Carpool activated in September 2016, have been discussed. Data have shown different aspects which characterize the potential demand of the service. Particularly, it has been displayed that, the familiarity of users with the service is crucial for choice dynamics in other words, to consider the service a valiant alternative for systematic transfers. The proposed behavioral discrete choice model shows in detail this correlation. Furthermore, the model gives values about important behavioral parameters such as, the usefulness of the service and the interaction comfort. Finally, in order to promote a modern regulation and valorization of the sector, directions of intervention have been suggested.

Genetic algorithm based approach for the optimal location of traffic counts sections

This paper proposes a genetic algorithm approach for solving the problem of optimal location of traffic count sections. This approach aims at assessing the efficacy of a transportation based rule proposed by others in previous studies. These approaches are tested on a real size extra-urban road network and are compated to a state-of-the-art rule that is widely used in practical applications.