Improving Bus Transit Services for Disabled Individuals: Demand Clustering, Bus Assignment, and Route Optimization

Jianbang Du,Lei Yu,Fengxiang Qiao

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3007322

Jianbang Du, Lei Yu + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.3007322

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Abstract

Bus transit provides shorter-distance public transportation services, which are subject to various disability discrimination acts with various dedicated features. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that disabled individuals shall have equal rights to receive fare bus transit services, including fixed-route and door-to-door bus services. Most previous studies were mainly focused on policy aspects as part of the efforts of disability rights. The proper planning of demand requests from disabled individuals has been a critical issue but has gained insufficient attention. The existing methodologies in planning route for special transit buses for disabled individuals normally do not consider passengers' waiting time, lack sufficient flexibility, and have strict restrictions on the total number of served destinations. This paper proposes a four-module based methodology for the planning of bus transit, including demand information collection, demand clustering, transit bus assignment, and a linear programming-based route planning with different objective functions. Houston MetroLift bus transit service was employed as an example to illustrate the proposed method. Three scenarios during the route planning module were designed in this case study: (1) planning for pre-timed shortest distance, (2) planning for the pre-timed shortest waiting time of passengers, and (3) flexible planning. Results showed that scenario 1 obtained the shortest total travel time and the highest benefit for bus providers, scenario 2 is with the shortest average waiting time, while scenario 3 is real-time based with longer total travel time and longer waiting time. Scenarios 2 and 3 consider the special needs of disabled passengers.

Highlights

Bus transit is one of the typical public transportation systems that include airline, rail train, ferry, etc. [1]
In 1990, the U.S federal government published The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which ensures that disabled people are with equal opportunity for jobs and access to private and government-funded facilities [5]
Title II Transportation of ADA requires that public transportation should be customized so that people with disabilities may have easy access to the public transit system, which means dedicated services shall be designed for people with disabilities who cannot use the fixed-route transit services [6], [7]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Bus transit is one of the typical public transportation systems that include airline, rail train, ferry, etc. [1]. Title II Transportation of ADA requires that public transportation should be customized so that people with disabilities may have easy access to the public transit system, which means dedicated services shall be designed for people with disabilities who cannot use the fixed-route transit services [6], [7] This includes the specially designed transit system for people who are unable to get from one destination. Du et al.: Improving Bus Transit Services for Disabled Individuals: Demand Clustering, Bus Assignment, and Route Optimization to another due to mental or physical disabilities of potential passengers [8] In this case, public transportation planning for people with disabilities should consider the design of flexible routes where fixed bus transit routes are not directly accessible. A case study based on the Houston MetroLift program, which is serving the disabled people as a supplement of Houston fix route transit, is conducted to illustrate the proposed methodology for better solutions

LITERATURE REVIEW

CASE STUDY

Findings

CONCLUSIONS