A bilevel model for public transport demand estimation

BHOURI, NEILA; LEBACQUE, JEAN-PATRICK; LOTITO, PABLO A.; ORLANDO, VICTORIA M.

Transportation Research Procedia

Elsevier B.V.

Lugar: Viena; Año: 2021 vol. 52 p. 669 - 676

2352-1457

For the case of public transport, we consider the problem of demand estimation. Given an origin-destination matrix representing the public transport demand, the distribution of flow among different lines can be obtained assuming that it corresponds to a certain equilibrium characterized by an optimization problem. In particular we will focus on the assignment model proposed by Cepeda et al. (2006). However the knowledge of origin-destination matrix is expensive and sometimes unaffordable in practice. Traditionally, it is estimated using statistical or econometrical considerations. In this work, we explore the estimation through the numerical solution of a bilevel optimization problem. One disadvantage of this formulation is the difficulty of obtaining descent directions, hence, for the resolution of the optimization problem we use a derivative-free method. This method was applied for small networks getting good results.