An activity-based model for transit network design and activity location planning in a three-party game framework

Over the past few decades, the activity-based approach has received extensive attention in travel behaviour modelling in order to understand the underlying motivation of trip making. In this study, we optimize the transit network and activity location plan with explicit consideration of the correlations between passengers’ activity choices and travel choices by using the activity-based approach. Considering the conflicting interests of three stakeholders (i.e., the government, the transit company and the passengers) involved in transit network design and activity location planning, a bi-level programming model is formulated to depict the three-party game, and multi-objective optimization is proposed. A Pareto genetic algorithm is adopted to solve the model, and a numerical example is provided to illustrate the application of the proposed model and solution algorithm. The results show that under different transit network designs and activity location plans, passengers’ activity and travel choices, as well as the system-wide indicators including space-time accessibility of activity locations, social welfare and subsidy expenses vary significantly.