Multiperiod Location Models for Urban System Planning With Fuzzy Intercity Passenger Transportation Demands.

The quality of transportation between cities depends on the accessibility of intercity passenger transportation (IPT) facilities, which is closely related to regional spatial development plans. Such plans aim to define an urban system (i.e., the level of hierarchy to assign to cities of the region under study) with a class of facilities corresponding to each level of hierarchy. We propose optimization models to help in the decision making in urban system planning (USP) problems. Four types of service networks of USP problems are proposed. Multiperiod, multilevel location models with fuzzy IPT demands are presented to minimize the cost of total demand-weighted travel time and IPT service capacity planning. The IPT demands are denoted by triangular fuzzy numbers. The models are converted to linear programming models using the theory of fuzzy numbers. A case study is provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The comparison results show that the fuzzy method is effective in handling the uncertainty of demand.