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The Design of Rapid Transit Networks

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Location Science

Abstract

Metro and other rapid transit systems increase the mobility of urban populations while decreasing congestion and pollution. There are now 191 cities with a metro system in the world, 49 of which were inaugurated in the twenty-first century. The design of a rapid transit system is a hard problem involving several players, multiple objectives, sizeable costs and a high level of uncertainty. Operational research techniques cannot fully solve the problem, but they can generate alternative solutions among which the decision makers can choose, and be employed to solve some specific subproblems. The scientific literature on rapid transit location planning has grown at a fast rate over the past 20 years. In this chapter an account of some of the most important results are provided. First the main objectives and indices used in the assessment of rapid transit systems are described. Then the main models and algorithms used to design such systems are reviewed. The case of a single alignment and of a full network are treated separately. Then follows a section on the location of stations on an already existing network.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under grant 39682-10, by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain)/FEDER under projects MTM2009-14243 and MTM2012-37040, and by Junta de Andalucía (Spain)/FEDER under excellence projects P09-TEP-5022 and FQM-5849.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. HEC Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Gilbert Laporte

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics II, University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain

    Juan A. Mesa

Authors
  1. Gilbert Laporte
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  2. Juan A. Mesa
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Correspondence to Gilbert Laporte .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. HEC Montréal, Montréal, Canada

    Gilbert Laporte

  2. Institute of Operations Research (IOR), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Stefan Nickel

  3. DEIO-FCUL, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Francisco Saldanha da Gama

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Laporte, G., Mesa, J.A. (2015). The Design of Rapid Transit Networks. In: Laporte, G., Nickel, S., Saldanha da Gama, F. (eds) Location Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13111-5_22

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