Abstract
In recent years, an innovative public transportation (PT) mode known as the customized bus (CB) has been proposed and implemented in many cities in China to efficiently and effectively shift private car users to PT to alleviate traffic congestion and traffic-related environmental pollution. The route network design activity plays an important role in the CB operation planning process because it serves as the basis for other operation planning activities, for example, timetable development, vehicle scheduling, and crew scheduling. In this paper, according to the demand characteristics and operational purpose, a methodological framework that includes the elements of large-scale travel demand data processing and analysis, hierarchical clustering-based route origin-destination (OD) region division, route OD region pairing, and a route selection model is proposed for CB network design. Considering the operating cost and social benefits, a route selection model is proposed and a branch-and-bound-based solution method is developed. In addition, a computer-aided program is developed to analyze a real-world Beijing CB route network design problem. The results of the case study demonstrate that the current CB network of Beijing can be significantly improved, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.
Highlights
With the rapid increase in urbanization, many Chinese cities are facing problems associated with urban environments, such as increased traffic congestion, serious environmental pollution, and extreme energy deficiencies
This paper proposes an area clustering algorithm based on the travel demands of passengers because customized bus (CB) currently lack network planning and the CB resource allocation efficiencies are not high
CB network planning differs from conventional bus network planning in that it is a bottom-up activity based on travel demand
Summary
With the rapid increase in urbanization, many Chinese cities are facing problems associated with urban environments, such as increased traffic congestion, serious environmental pollution, and extreme energy deficiencies. Scientific and reasonable network planning can maximize the use of CB resources, satisfy the travel demands of most passengers, and improve the service quality of CBs while reducing operating costs for CB operators and improving the attractiveness of CBs. the study reported in this paper has great significance for effectively encouraging private car owners to change travel modes, ease traffic congestion, and mitigate the problems of air pollution. Jerby and Ceder [20] proposed that the reasonable planning of a subway PT network could attract passengers to PT Their method was based on a situation in which a large number of passengers used private cars to travel to a subway transfer station, which caused traffic congestion and a subway station parking space overload.
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