This paper proposes a network-based model for investigating the service competition among multiple transit operators in a transit market. The competitive equilibrium is established so as to assess the impacts of transit operators' fleet size in congested network with uncertainty. Three types of market structure are considered including monopoly, free competition, and oligopoly. The competition at the operator level interacts with the responses from travelers to the changes in the transit services. It is assumed that each passenger chooses the transit service so as to minimize his/her perceived disutility of travel. The passenger disutility of using each transit route is comprised of in-vehicle travel time, waiting time, in-vehicle crowding measure and access/egress time (i.e. walking time). In order to consider the uncertainty effects on transit network, the proposed model incorporates the unreliability component of transit services into the disutility function, which is mainly due to variations of the in-vehicle travel time and the dwelling time of transit vehicles at stops. A numerical example is employed to illustrate the application of the proposed model. Numerical results show that the transit service unreliability could significantly influence the transit system performance and the transit passengers' travel choice behavior. The proposed model provides a useful tool for studying the competition between transit operators and for evaluating the transit policies at the strategic level.
Samenvatting