Identifying Different Sources of the Benefit: Simulation of DRT Operation in the Heartland and Hinterland Regions

DRT service, designed to be flexible in time and space, follows the contemporary trend of on-demand transit provision. However, this type of service often suffers from low profitability due to small demand and/or high operation costs. DRT service is a local business in nature. The existing research primarily focuses on DRT service for regions with low transit demand, but it does not take into account service operation for other types of regions. This study aims to fill in this gap and identify the sources of benefit from DRT operations in varied types of regions. To this end, the analysis compares the DRT operation performance between overpopulated heartland and underpopulated hinterland regions; in each region, the benefit is identified through the difference in key performance indices between the simulated DRT and actual bus operation. The data on the road network and bus operation in Daegu, Korea, in 2021 are used for the DRT simulation. The results show that the heartland DRT benefits more from the reduced vehicle kilometers, while the hinterland DRT gains mostly from the reduced waiting time. Given that both DRT types outperform existing bus services, it is revealed that the heartland DRT is more reliable than the hinterland DRT due to the nature of regional characteristics.