Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

There is an increasing interest in multimodal transportation to support urban mobility. The Government of Canada invested over $5 billion in federal public transit-related infrastructure since 2000-2001, and has identified public transit as one of five national priorities under the Building Canada Fund. Yet, many public transport agencies continue to plan and operate using the most conventional systems and alternatives, despite the growth in mobile technologies and alternative multimodal transport business models (e.g. startups like Zipcar, SF Park). This is because computer models cannot answer, for example, ""How would the flow of cars, transit, and bikes shift if parking facility fees or Zipcar rates in downtown were subsidized by 10%?"" To better understand multimodal systems, new designs need consideration. Multiple transport operators (e.g. public agencies like Metrolinx and Toronto Transit Commission, or private companies like BIXI bike sharing in Toronto) will interact more as urban regions become denser. Transport systems (both public and private, large and small) do not exist in a vacuum, but many operators of these systems continue to assume so when planning new designs. Conflicts and missed cooperative opportunities may arise. The few that consider competition between operators focus only on conventional fixed route transit service (e.g. bus and train service), but not on the wider range of modern multimodal systems that can include parking, car sharing, or demand responsive transit. This research addresses these problems to enable the design of modern multimodal solutions for mega-region development. First, new models will be developed to analyze household travel demand for most multimodal alternatives in a unified, activity-based manner. Second, these models will be used to study different multimodal interactions in design strategies between transport system operators using game theory and multiobjective optimization. The outcome may reduce potential conflicts between agencies and encourage cooperative or mutualistic strategies to improve social welfare and urban sustainability.