Designing a Dynamic Model of Public Bus Transportation to Increase its Share of Urban Travel with a System Dynamics Approach (Case Study: Mashhad City)

The bus transportation system is one of the most important urban public transportation systems and plays a major role in intracity travel and daily travel in all cities. Due to the increase in personal car travel, it’s important to determine the policy for the use of buses on intra-city trips but to achieve this goal, one must know which one of the proposed plans can increase the use of buses. The innovation of the current research is the use of the systems dynamics approach in bus transportation systems in order to achieve this goal. Factors affecting the use of buses have been identified using the content analysis method, and variables such as culture-building, intelligence, and physical-technical quality of the bus have been included in the model, which has not been considered in other studies. The model was implemented in city of Mashhad. After validating the model, two scenarios and seven types of budget policies were implemented on the model according to the experts' opinion. The results of the bus fare scenario showed that if the bus fare rate is not changed, the attractiveness of the bus will increase slightly. The scenario of increasing the budget for improving the bus organization also showed that there is not much change in the use of buses. The results of the policy review also show that the best policy is to reduce the budget for purchasing the bus fleet and increase the funding for culture and intelligence, which will increase the use of buses in the long run.