Accessibility of Pooled Demand Responsive Transport

Abstract

This paper introduces a methodology for calculating accessibility for demand responsive transport (DRT) within the agent-based simulation framework “MATSim”. A difficulty that arises in DRT accessibility calculations involves the mode’s sensitivity to supply and demand: explicitly simulating DRT trips for accessibility distorts demand patterns, on which accessibility calculations depend. Our solution involves estimating DRT travel and wait times based on the outputs of MATSim simulations of DRT trips; this is combined with the access and egress walks to the relevant DRT stops. To our knowledge, this is the first instance of a DRT accessibility methodology for a stop-based and pooled service within an agent-based model. To demonstrate this methodology, we calculate DRT accessibility for the city of Kelheim. Future work should adapt the DRT trip estimation to be more sensitive to origin location and departure time.