Yogi Vidyattama | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Urban transit network design using spanning tree: A case study of Canberra transit network

Transit network design plays an important role in public transport. With the simplicity of spanning tree, this paper adopts the concept of spanning tree to help (re-)design a public transit network that addresses passenger utility by minimizing the total passenger-kilometers, which can be formulated as a mixed-integer optimization model. However, searching for an optimal minimum passenger-kilometer spanning tree is intractable for a large network. This paper proposes a tabu search based heuristic to quickly output a promising spanning tree. The efficacy of the proposed tabu search based heuristic is verified using the Canberra bus network data. With the flexibility of the proposed tabu search heuristic and the efficiency of the transit system, this paper proposes a greedy algorithm to relax the number of links constraint to add more links that can further minimize the total passenger-kilometers. With the case study of Canberra transit network, this paper provides implications to policy makers to further improve the design of a public transit network.

math.OC↗

arXiv2020

The Impact of COVID-19 and Policy Responses on Australian Income Distribution and Poverty

This paper undertakes a near real-time analysis of the income distribution effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Australia to understand the ongoing changes in the income distribution as well as the impact of policy responses. By semi-parametrically combining incomplete observed data from three different sources, namely, the Monthly Longitudinal Labour Force Survey, the Survey of Income and Housing and the administrative payroll data, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 and the associated policy responses on the Australian income distribution between February and June 2020, covering the immediate periods before and after the initial outbreak. Our results suggest that despite the growth in unemployment, the Gini of the equalised disposable income inequality dropped by nearly 0.03 point since February. The reduction is because of the additional wage subsidies and welfare supports offered as part of the policy response, offsetting a potential surge in income inequality. Additionally, the poverty rate, which could have been doubled in the absence of the government response, also reduced by 3 to 4 percentage points. The result shows the effectiveness of temporary policy measures in maintaining both the living standards and the level of income inequality. However, the heavy reliance on the support measures raises the possibility that the changes in the income distribution may be reversed and even substantially worsened off should the measures be withdrawn.

econ.GN↗