Department of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
PLoS One. 2022 Sep 13;17(9):e0274632. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274632. eCollection 2022.
An essential consideration in urban transit facility planning is service efficiency and accessibility. Previous research has shown that reducing the number of facilities along a route may increase efficiency but decrease accessibility. Striking a balance between these two is a critical consideration in transit planning. Transit facility consolidation is a cost-effective way to improve the quality of service by strategically determining the desirable allocation of a limited number of facilities. This paper develops an optimization framework that integrates Geographical Information systems (GIS), decision-making analysis, and quantum technologies for addressing the problem of facility consolidation. Our proposed framework includes a novel mathematical model that captures non-linear interactions between facilities and surrounding demand nodes, inter-facility competition, ridership demand and spatial coverage. The developed model can harness the power of quantum effects such as superposition and quantum tunnelling and enables transportation planners to utilize the most recent hardware solutions such as quantum and digital annealers, coherent Ising Machines and gate-based universal quantum computers. This study presents a real-world application of the framework to the public transit facility redundancy problem in the British Columbia Vancouver metropolitan area. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework by reducing the number of facilities by 40% while maintaining the same service accessibility. Additionally, we showcase the ability of the proposed mathematical model to take advantage of quantum annealing and classical optimization techniques.
在城市交通设施规划中，服务效率和可达性是一个基本的考虑因素。先前的研究表明，减少路线上的设施数量可能会提高效率，但会降低可达性。在这两者之间取得平衡是交通规划的一个关键考虑因素。交通设施整合是一种通过战略性地确定有限数量的设施的理想分配来提高服务质量的具有成本效益的方法。本文开发了一个优化框架，该框架结合了地理信息系统（GIS）、决策分析和量子技术，以解决设施整合问题。我们提出的框架包括一个新的数学模型，该模型捕捉了设施和周围需求节点之间的非线性相互作用、设施间竞争、乘客需求和空间覆盖范围。所开发的模型可以利用量子效应的优势，如叠加和量子隧道效应，并使交通规划者能够利用最新的硬件解决方案，如量子和数字退火、相干伊辛机和基于门的通用量子计算机。本研究通过将不列颠哥伦比亚温哥华大都市区的公共交通设施冗余问题应用到该框架中，展示了其实际应用。我们通过将设施数量减少 40%，同时保持相同的服务可达性，证明了我们框架的有效性。此外，我们展示了所提出的数学模型利用量子退火和经典优化技术的能力。
