Planning Major Activity Center Distributor Systems

Automobile and transit trips destined to a major activity center terminate at peripheral locations, and each tripmaker completes the journey either by transferring to a distributor system or by walking. The mode by which each traveler completes his journey is specified as that which requires least travel time. The major activity center is represented by a two-dimensional, rectangular coordinate grid system and trip end data are assigned to each node. Optimum station locations are tested in relation to the grid reference. Since exhaustive search of all possible station location combinations for a generalized system consisting of k stations is computationally infeasible, a random search method is described for a major metropolitan CBD. The results of the study indicate that for this type of transportation system a relatively small amount of input data can be efficiently utilized to render a comprehensive systems analysis.