Sensitivity Analysis of Fleet Size for Dynamic Headway-Based Control Method Performance in terms of Passengers’ Experience

Shidong Liang,Minghui Ma,Hu Zhang,Shengxue He

doi:10.1155/2020/5070347

Abstract

The headway-based control method is usually used to regulate the bus headways to improve the bus operation. However, these control methods only focus on equalizing bus headways, neglecting analysis for STD (standard deviation) of passengers on the buses. Therefore, in order to fix this gap, this paper analyzed performance of the control method in terms of regulating bus headways and number of passengers on the buses under variable number of buses on the route. First, as an enhanced version of headways-based control method, a coordinated control method based on the self-equalizing bus headways concept involving bus holding and stop-skipping is proposed. A discrete system is formulated to describe the bus operation, and the coordinated control method is imbedded into it. In order to reflect the performance in regulating bus headways and the number of passengers, two indexes are formulated, respectively. Finally, a set of numerical analysis was conducted. The test results showed that the regulated bus headways can make the number of passengers on buses equalized. As a by-product, the headway-based control method can make the bus capacity be well utilized by equalizing bus headways on the bus route.

Highlights

If a bus on the bus line is slowed down by some disturbances, it will encounter more passengers than expected in the following bus stop and be further delayed because of longer dwell time at the bus stop
E main work of this paper is to explore the relationship between the number of buses on the bus route and the performance of public transit under the control method
It is widely acknowledged that the self-equalized bus headway control method is to regulate the bus headways and eliminate bus bunching. e standard deviation (STD) of bus headways can reflect this performance of the public transit. erefore, the first index is formulated based on the STD of bus headways

Summary

Introduction

If a bus on the bus line is slowed down by some disturbances, it will encounter more passengers than expected in the following bus stop and be further delayed because of longer dwell time at the bus stop. The following bus will speed up because the headway between it and the preceding bus is smaller than expected, encountering less passengers at the bus stops. Bus bunching results in longer waiting and travel times for the passengers and the increased environment pollution due to the ine cient operation of unevenly loaded buses. The unbalanced load of passengers on successive buses wastes bus capacity, because the leading bus will be quite crowded while the trailing bus will be relatively empty; the experience of passengers on the preceding bus is quite bad. The bunched buses have negative e ects on tra c ow at the signalized intersection causing additional car delays [2]

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Conclusion