Sustainable and convenient: bi-modal public transit systems outperforming the private car

TL;DR

This paper proposes a bi-modal public transit system combining line services and ride-pooling shuttles, offering on-demand door-to-door travel that surpasses private cars in efficiency and comfort, while significantly reducing energy use.

Contribution

It introduces a novel bi-modal transit system design and evaluates its performance through simulation and theory, demonstrating superior efficiency and comfort compared to private cars.

Findings

Energy consumption as low as 20% of private cars.

System performs well in both urban and rural areas.

Offers on-demand door-to-door service with high comfort.

Abstract

Mobility is an indispensable part of modern human societies, but the dominance of motorized individual traffic (MIV, i.e., the private car) leads to a prohibitive waste of energy as well as other resources. Here we show that by combining a line service (e.g., railway) system with a fleet of ride-pooling shuttles connecting line stops to desired pick-up and drop-off points, a bi-modal public transport system may result which provides on-demand door-to-door service at a service level (in terms of transit times) superior to current public transport, and with an overall comfort level comparable to MIV. We identify the conflicting objectives for optimization, i.e., user convenience and energy consumption, and evaluate the system performance in terms of Pareto fronts. By means of simulation and analytical theory, we find that energy consumption can be as low as 20% of MIV, at line service densities typically found in real settings. Surprisingly, we find favorable performance not only in urban, but also in rural settings.