Optimization of public bus transport in Istanbul

Abstract

This paper will discuss how Istanbul’s public transport is very complex with many interactions between different modes of transportation, carriers and new projects. All of them had to be considered in this project, with the knowledge that the optimization had to be focused on the public bus transport provided by the IETT Company. Due to the lack of available basic demand data for private busses, only scheduled services can be considered and not passenger requested services. For public bus transport (mainly company busses), the demand data was gathered from counting data and the Intelligent Ticketing System (Akbil) data. This is the central basic data of the project. Additionally the data for bus, railway, light railway and seaway transportation were handed over and adapted to build up the digital public transport model. After the detailed analysis of the network model and its visualization and reporting features, the weak points of the existing network were found (e.g. parts with low capacity usage of vehicles). Beside the very time intense development of the public transport model, the finding of adequate solutions and proposals for the amelioration of the actual situation was a main task of this project. Different general modes of optimization were found, described and defined in close adjustment with the IETT Company. The study shows the positive effects that can be achieved by different kinds of optimization. Further on, it gives practical examples for the different kinds of optimization and shows the results from the IETT Company – and passenger – point of view. Some improvements are suggested for a more efficient public bus system. Finally, the numbers of the maximum possible savings for the complete region of Istanbul without cutting down the quality of transportation for passengers are given. With the realization of the suggested improvements for the IETT Company bus traffic, the IETT Company can save a lot of money. The passengers will find faster bus lines and reduced travel times; however, the number of transfers between lines will increase. With the supposed acceleration of bus transportation on the future backbone network, there will be a flexible, high quality and reliable bus transportation system for Istanbul to face the challenges of the future.