Services provided

Simulation of alternative scenarios for the provincial public transport system expected to be in operation from September 2021 according to Covid-19 emergency regulations.

Description

The Local Public Transport Agency of Modena (aMo) asked NET Engineering to evaluate different hypotheses for the organisation of the provincial LPT in different conditions due to the COVID-19 emergency.

In fact, from September 2021 schools would pursue the objective of 100% in person attendance. At the same time, in order to reduce crowding on board of public transportation, it was assumed that the capacity limitations (number of passengers on board) could be extended.

The Study evaluated different scenarios of provincial and urban public transport reorganisation, in order to identify and detail the following outline elements for each scenario:

• Constraints and Criticalities
  e.g. unavailability of vehicles in the available fleet and the need to resort to rentals (e.g. with already authorised tourist coaches), risk of not satisfying the demand, etc.
• Opportunities
  e.g. possibility of further distribution of entries, changes in entry/exit times for each school.
• Prerequisites
  Additional resources (mileage, vehicles*Km) needed to ensure an adequate capacity, additional fleet quota needed for the service guarantee, etc.

The following activities were performed:

1. Implementation of the GTFS supply model in PTV VISUM simulation software, with “1:1” representation of: Lines, Routes, Timetables, Valid days, Vehicles and Capacities
2. Implementation of expected demand O/D matrices 2021/2022 AM/NOON: 3 hourly matrices for AM (with school entry time constrained to 8.00 a.m.), 3 hourly matrices for NOON (with exits constrained to 12, 1 and 2 p.m.)
3. Calibration of the simulation model for the current state, based on recorded validations per line and hour
4. Simulation of 4 complete future scenarios in VISUM:
   – Vehicle capacity 80%
   – Vehicle capacities 50
   – Staggered entry and exit from school (50% at 8 am, 50% at 9 am), Vehicle capacity 80%
   – Staggered entry and exit from school (50% at 8 am, 50% at 9 am), Vehicle capacity 50%.
5. Calculation and analysis of detailed indicators for each Line and Route: Number of overloaded trips, users left stranded, users arriving at destination with a different travel solution than desired, number of supplementary trips needed (and how many of these trips can be replaced with tourist coaches).
6. Scenarios summaries

NET Engineering provided continuous support for aMo during the summer of 2021 (the new service went into operation on 10/9/2021), benefiting in particular from the new “Agile” approach applied at company level: given that not all the input data was available and the detailed objectives were not clearly defined since the kickoff meeting, a continuous and constant communication allowed the Client and consultants to maximise the results in progress, focusing their efforts on consolidating and getting themost  added value in any of the intermediate steps.