On the Distribution of Urban Road Space for Multimodal Congested Networks

Transport systems in rea l c ities a re co mp le x with many modes of transport sharing and competing fo r limited road space. This work intends to understand how space distributions for modes and interactions among modes affect network traffic perfo rmance. While the connection between performance of transport systems and general land allocation is the subject of e xtensive research, space allocation for interacting modes of t ransport is an open research question. Quantifying the impact of road space distribution on the performance of a congested mu ltimoda l transport system with a dynamic aggregated model re ma ins a challenge. In this paper, a mult imodal mac roscopic fundamental diagra m (MFD) is developed to rep resent the traffic dynamics of a mult imodal transport system. Optimization is perfo rmed with the objective of min imizing the total passenger hours travelled (PHT) to serve the total demand by red istributing road space among modes. Pricing strategies are also investigated to provide a higher demand shift to more efficient modes. We find by an application to a bi-modal two-region c ity that (i) the proposed model captures the operational characteristics of each mode, and (ii) optima l dynamic space distribution strategies can be developed. In practice, the approach can serve as a physical dynamic model to inform space distribution strategies for policy makers with different goals of mobility.