Microsimulation of a Public Transport Line: Analysis of Impacts on Private Vehicles

In Italy, the distribution between the various modes of road transport is strongly unbalanced in favour of car use. There is more than one car per every two inhabitants and each citizen spends on average over an hour a day and two weeks a year in the car. Catania is no exception: it is the city with the third greatest number of cars in Italy. Moreover, the points of origin and destination of journeys made are dispersed all over the city and the traditional collective transport systems...
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In Italy, the distribution between the various modes of road transport is strongly unbalanced in favour of car use. There is more than one car per every two inhabitants and each citizen spends on average over an hour a day and two weeks a year in the car. Catania is no exception: it is the city with the third greatest number of cars in Italy. Moreover, the points of origin and destination of journeys made are dispersed all over the city and the traditional collective transport systems are becoming ever less adequate for satisfying a demand that continues to grow and is increasingly widespread. This study looks deep into this problem, with the aim of showing that the best strategy for dealing with it is not that of prohibiting the use of private vehicles, but that of reducing the need for them, by providing numerous public transport options for all users and concentrating not so much on improving mobility, but on improving the accessibility of urban areas. From the analysis of the classifications of the public transport systems, it is clear how urban areas require systems that combine the quality of rail systems with the flexibility of the bus. This transport system is the 'Bus Rapid Transit'. It does not rely on advanced levels of technology to work and can therefore be realized at a relatively low cost and with great flexibility.The analysis of this new mode of transport shows that it has many advantageous characteristics and that it can be adapted to many different contexts, as exemplified by various international and national examples. In Catania the first BRT is already up and running and is part of the city's larger General Urban Transport Plan.In order to study the potential effects of public transport on private traffic, the use of a microsimulation software such as VISSIM is fundamental. This software enables the user not to recreate and simulate the part of the road network and a new BRT line in Catania, but also to design different scenarios, which are useful for creating series of data on the interaction between public and private transports.The study has a dual purpose: first, to simulate a transport network; and second, to provide a method for all urban transport network studies and their public transport lines, in order to predict the impact of public transport systems on private traffic.