Mixed Scheduling Strategy for High Frequency Bus Routes With Common Stops

Yiming Bie,Dongfang Ma,Ruru Tang,Zhiyuan Liu

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2974740

Abstract

Bus routes overlapping would lead to more than one bus entering the stop simultaneously, which may trigger bus bunching. Focusing on high frequency routes with common stops, this paper proposes a mixed scheduling method combining the all-stop service and the stop-skipping service. The method optimizes scheduling strategies for multiple routes by minimizing total passenger travel time. The optimization variables are binary variables reflecting whether the stops in the overlapping area are skipped. Three exciting bus routes are employed for case study. Results show that the proposed method reduces total passenger travel time by 21.4% compared with the current scheduling strategy.

Highlights

This study proposes a scheduling strategy optimization method for the high frequency overlapping bus routes based on the mixed scheduling strategy
The contributions of this study include: (1) a mixed scheduling strategy that combines the all-stop service and stop-skipping service is proposed for the overlapping bus routes, which can avoid the simultaneous arrivals of multiple buses at the stops; (2) the calculation methods for passenger waiting time, in-vehicle travel time and the increased walking time due to stop skipping are developed
This paper proposes the mixed scheduling strategy that combines the all-stop service used outside the overlapping area and the stop-skipping service used inside the overlapping area to address the problems induced by route overlapping

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Appropriate combination of different methods in static bus scheduling can help reduce overall bus travel time, save carrying capacity and increase the operational efficiency of transit network. For high-frequency overlapping bus routes, the simultaneous arrivals of multiple buses would result in non-uniform bus headways, unstable passenger waiting time and crowded carriages. This study proposes a mixed scheduling model that minimizes overall passenger travel time with the considerations of bus route overlapping, to optimize static scheduling strategies for the routes. The contributions of this study include: (1) a mixed scheduling strategy that combines the all-stop service and stop-skipping service is proposed for the overlapping bus routes, which can avoid the simultaneous arrivals of multiple buses at the stops; (2) the calculation methods for passenger waiting time, in-vehicle travel time and the increased walking time due to stop skipping are developed.

METHODOLOGY

BUS OPERATION ANALYSIS UNDER MIXED SCHEDULING STRATEGY

Findings

CONCLUSION