A tactical planning framework to integrate paratransit with formal public transport systems

Despite the crucial role of informal paratransit services in mobility systems, their planning and integration with formal public transport systems have received limited attention. We present a novel framework to integrate public transport and paratransit at the tactical planning level. We formulate this integration as a two-step Transit Network Frequency Setting Problem (TNFSP). The first step of TNFSP involves a headway-based network-wide multi-modal transit assignment, followed by an integrated frequency optimisation in the second step. The proposed approach is applied to the network of Visakhapatnam, a medium-sized Indian city with 9 % and 18 % share of paratransit and formal transit. After validating the base model using real-world data, we perform scenario-based analysis to derive the optimal fleet size, network configuration, and frequency of both systems to minimise externalities. Integrated planning and frequency optimization can lead to 50–60 % reduction in travel time and emissions compared to current approach of separately planned systems.