An Agent-Based Simulation of Urban Passenger Mobility and Related Policies. The Case Study of an Italian Small City

In this paper we present an agent-based model which reproduces transport choices of a sample of 5,000 citizens of the city of Varese (Northern Italy) and the corresponding PM emissions of their daily commutes. The aim of the model is testing the impact of public policies willing to foster commuting choices with lower PM emissions. Our model, taking inspiration from other existing works, considers the commuters‘ decisions on the transport mode to be used. A set of preferences, one for each transport mode - private car, bicycle, public transport - is assigned to every agent. Throughout the process, agents decide about the means for commuting on the basis of the relative price of the different means of transport, of the social influence and of the intensity of the policies applied. The initial distribution of preferences for each transport mode are inspired to empirical data on Varese commuters. Results suggest that preference-based policies are more effective if compared to price-based ones. However, the application of a mix of different policies seems to give the best outputs: the same amount of resources in terms of policy intensity produce much better results if they are allocated at the same time to two policies, then to one only.