Abstract for: A System Dynamics approach to public transportation strikes and travelers’ behavior in the city of Rome

Public transit strikes are disrupting normal passenger behavior and force a change in travel patterns. Despite their significance, their study in the literature is limited. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate what are the effects of public transit strikes on passengers’ behavior in an urban environment. The model was developed in the context of the ATTACS project and is a “spin off” the main research objective of the project. The city of Rome, Italy was used as reference case. Different scenarios of public transit strikes were simulated. The results showed an – expected- increase in the demand for private transportation. However, the traffic does not increase much for the city center because it is already high enough in the reference case. The effects of the strike seem more visible in the peripheral zones of the city, where the traffic can increase as high as 50% above the reference case