Minimizing investment risk of integrated rail and transit-oriented-development projects over years in a linear monocentric city (Q1677731)

Summary: Rail and transit-oriented-development (TOD) projects are simultaneously optimized in this paper, with special consideration given to yearly variation and spatial and temporal correlation of population densities. In the proposed model, the objective is to minimize the investment risk of integrated rail and TOD projects with a given required expected return on investment. The investment risk is optimized based on closed-form solutions of the design variables, including rail line length, the number of TOD projects, and the number of housing units in each TOD project. The closed-form solutions are given explicitly under the assumption of social welfare maximization. It is found that underestimation exists for rail and TOD projects without consideration of the correlation of spatial and temporal population densities. TOD projects can greatly improve the return on investment of the rail operator. A numerical example is also presented.