Designing Limited-Stop Transit Service with Fixed Fleet Size in Peak Hours by Exploiting Transit Data

Abstract

Efficiently designed limited-stop transit service is an attractive way to respond to high commuter travel demand in which trips concentrate on a few origin–destination pairs during peak hours. Such service is redesigned in many metropolises in China. Some research has dealt with this situation; bus fleet size was assumed to be unlimited, and the research was concerned with the average daily passenger flow rather than the specific average peak hour travel demand. In contrast to previous work, this paper presents an approach to design limited-stop transit service with the existing available fleet size from current normal service and focuses only on peak hour travel demand extracted through exploitation of transit data. First, a model for limited-stop service was proposed to minimize user costs through existing fixed fleet size. A heuristic algorithm was developed to search the transit line structure for limited-stop service instead of selecting lines from the predefined set. Next, a case in Chengdu, China, was tested. The results indicate that up to 9.32% of total travel time can be saved with the fixed fleet size when limited-stop transit service is applied. Finally, different proportions of commuter flow and different travel behaviors are discussed to illustrate the performance of limited-stop service for different scenarios.