Planning Public Transport Networks for the 2004 Summer Olympics with Decision Support Systems

Abstract

During the 2004 Summer Olympics, in Athens, Greece, transit passengers will be mainly accommodated by public transportation modes. The large number of passengers expected to be carried, combined with the congested road network and limited parking spaces, will make it difficult for private vehicles to be used during the games; as such, use of mass transportation will be necessary. An extended public transportation network is being planned that consists of three lines of the Athens Metro, a suburban rail line, two tram lines, and 30 dedicated Olympic bus lines in addition to regular bus lines. Planning of the network is a complicated process with more than 30 Olympic bus lines connecting Olympic venues with Athens downtown, other venues, Metro stations, and park-and-ride areas. Metro lines will be operating 24 h/day, many hours near capacity. To assist in this effort, a decision support system was developed to help plan the Olympic public transportation network operations. The user-friendly system is supported by a graphical user interface and based on widely available software packages. Its capabilities include data storage, management, graphical analysis, analysis with the use of specialized algorithms, and extraction of proposed courses of action.

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