A Theoretical Model of Rapid Transit System Planning Within a Metropolitan Area

Abstract

The increasing process of the total population in a metropolitan area is based on economic and sociologic problems. But the variation of the population distribution within each zone of the metropolitan area is, much more effected by the transportation system. The zonal population is the occurrence source of the commuter transportation demand, so the interaction between the commuter transportation system and the zonal population distribution should be analyzed first, in order to establish the transportation system planning. In this theses we have analyzed the interaction by applying the information theory. Consequently, it could be said that the variation of the zonal population distribution maximizes entropy per unit characteristic value. Then we showed that distributed and diverted transportation volume of commutation can be presumed in making the transportation system the endogenous variable and making the employee population and the transit fares policy the exogenous variable. And then we investigated how to evaluate the transportation system planning with measurement. Evidently economic and sociologic research is needed for this problem, but at first we tried to approach it in a physical respect. At the end, utilizing these analyses, we proposed a practical means for transportation system planning in a metropolis. The effect of any projected transportation system, total population in the future, and transit fares policy in the metropolitan area will be measured by computing through this means. We showed the applying process in the flow diagram.