A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in the .Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand.

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1974

It is increasingly becoming difficult tor an urbanite to get about an urban area quickly, conveniently, safely and at a relatively low cost. After 'briefly outlining some of the major problems that are causing the urban transportation crisis, the research brings out that the hitherto adopted conventional planning approaches are more directed toward the symptoms rather than toward the disease, mainly as a result of the lack of understanding of the cause-and-effect feedback characteristics of this socio-technological system. It has been shown that the systems dynamics approach is better suited for this purpose, and a general urban public transit model has been developed using this approach. Bangkok has been taken as a case study to test the validity of the model and computer simulation runs using Bangkok data have been presented in the research. The research then proceeds to test the various policies in order to achieve the objective of developing a balanced transportation system for Bangkok. Sensitivity analysis done indicate that many of the parametric values .assumed are insensitive to policy changes and the redundancy of superfluous data being collected by the present day modelling techniques of planning methodologies. It is hoped that using a model of the type presented in the research, future transit planners will be able to tackle better the problems of urban transportation.