Abstract
This paper envisions and assesses the performance of an autonomous bus-on-demand (ABoD) system. We take Fuyang, Zhejiang, China, as the study area to investigate the spatiotemporal distribution of bus travel demand during workdays, and we propose replacing inefficient bus routes with the ABoD system. Agent-based models with various bus dispatching and operation control strategies are constructed to evaluate the performance of the ABoD system. The behaviors and interactions of the agents, passengers, autonomous buses, and a control center are designed. After the verification of the simulated bus travel demand with real-world demand, a series of scenarios with various ABoD operation strategies are simulated. The simulation results show that, in comparison with both current fixed-schedule bus services and the optimized bus dispatching strategies, the ABoD system occupies fewer road resources and utilizes bus vehicles more efficiently. Besides, the system is adaptive to the sudden surge in bus travel demand and is economically sustainable.
Highlights
After the verification of the consistency of the random bus travel origin-destination (OD) matrix with real-world data to ensure the reliability of the simulation results, we simulate the scenarios with various autonomous bus-on-demand (ABoD) operation strategies and compare this with the current conventional bus services to evaluate whether the ABoD is competent in improving the quality of bus services in Fuyang
We examine the impacts of the ABoD system from the following perspectives: (1) Road resources: the concept of passenger car unit kilometers (PCU-km) is employed as the approximation for studying the occupation of road resources by autonomous or conventional buses [24]. e PCU-km is derived as the product of the vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and the passenger car equivalent (PCE) factor
Under a series of scenarios, with various bus dispatching rules and travel demands, we have compared the impacts of the ABoD system with those of both conventional fixed-schedule bus services and the optimized bus dispatching strategies. e simulation results show that the ABoD system performs better at levels below triple current demand
Summary
Navidi et al [17] demonstrate that replacing traditional public transport with demand-responsive transport can decrease passengers’ perceived travel times without any extra costs, under certain circumstances. These studies mainly focus on demand-responsive transit services between two locations, whereas strategies for on-demand operation between multiple stops are seldom discussed. We conduct a descriptive analysis to investigate current bus travel demand in our study area, Fuyang, Zhejiang China, based on mobile payment records.
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