Smart Urban Transit Systems: From Integrated Framework to Interdisciplinary Perspective

Urban transit system is an important part of city transportation, which is an interdisciplinary industry, including traffic engineering, operation research, and computer science. To provide smart services for passengers while applying the new technologies, it is necessary to build an optimal transit network and transit service. A smart transit system is processed from strategic planning, tactical planning, operational planning, transit evaluation to marketing and policy. For each stage, large quantities of related literature have been introduced from different perspectives. The aim of this research is to document the main smart urban transit models, topics and implementations for future references and research in each stage. For the planning part, this paper first summarized the objectives, constraints, algorithms, and implications of the models currently in use and classified the objectives and constraints with classic category and new category. The prominent topics and potential research were captured clearly when comparing the two categories. The methodologies for solving those models were proposed and the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing have been mostly used, which will be helpful for filling the gaps for further research. Despite of the model updates, this study also summarized the application trends such as integrated network design in strategic planning, synchronization and timetable recovery from disruption in tactical and operational planning. To improve the transit system and service, evaluation models on service reliability, service accessibility, timetable robustness, and energy consuming are proposed, which highlight the gap between the idealized service and the real service. Some flexible fare scheme, investments, and commercial strategies are discussed in the financial part. The conclusion highlighted the future scope of the smart urban transit in passenger demand management, travel information service, facility and service optimization and shared mobility, in order to make it more convenient for the passengers and more friendly to the environment.