Team: Sean Qian (PI, CMU), Katherine Flanigan (CMU), Lindsay Graff (CMU)

Funding source: US DOT

Start/End time: 2022-2023

 

As cities aim to improve their holistic transportation networks, emerging mobility options are being integrated at a rapid pace. These modes provide commuters with greater flexibility to construct more convenient trips and reach a larger set of essential service destinations. However, a way to quantify their respective impacts on accessibility across time and space has not yet been introduced in a large-scale network that allows for multimodal trips. Moreover, most classical metrics of accessibility in single-mode networks have considered the single trip cost of travel time while also assuming a homogeneous population. To address this challenge of measuring time-dependent accessibility in a multi-modal transportation network associated with a diverse set of travel costs, this research develops a multimodal network modeling framework that accounts for five major factors across all travel modes: day-to-day average travel time, price, reliability represented by day-to-day travel time variability, safety risks, and discomfort. The generalized travel cost of the least-cost path in the multimodal network serves as a metric of accessibility, where the full set of travel modes includes personal vehicle, transportation network companies, car share, public transit, personal bike, bike share, scooter, and walking.