Background Nerd Reading: Transport Modelling for Beginners

This post is the introduction to a series of posts on transport modelling (he’s using the Queen’s English, note the use of “bus pairing” over the American “bus bunching”). It is well worth a look, especially for the acknowledgements of the trade-offs in modelling and planning service.

The goal of this post: To introduce you to the world of theoretical transit modelling, validate the field, and motivate you to listen to what models are able to tell us.

To appreciate this post: In order to follow some of the conclusions presented in this post, an understanding of fairly basic high school math is needed.

TL;DR: I make the case that mathematical models are a misunderstood but valid way of gaining valuable insights about transit with a relatively small amount of investment. I introduce the real-world concept of bus pairing, and go through a 1964 derivation that leads to an equation that describes this phenomenon. I conclude with