Assessing the performance of public transportation services has long been an important yet challenging issue for transportation agencies and researchers. However, the performance evaluation of transportation services is complicated by an array of quantitative measures available to assess the goals and the diversity in the goals themselves, which usually include improving operational efficiency and providing equitable access. While much previous work has examined public transportation services for achieving optimal operational efficiency and/or access equity separately, the interplay of the two has rarely been investigated to date.

In this talk, I will introduce a spatial analytical framework and an open-source toolbox for evaluating and enhancing the overall performance of public transportation systems by using a combination of mathematical programming methods, GIS-based analysis and multi-objective spatial optimization techniques. This framework enabled operational efficiency and access equity of transportation systems to be assessed in an integrated manner. The Python open-source toolbox operationalized the framework and make it accessible to transportation planners, decision-makers and the public.

Prof. Ran Wei