Transit Frequency Optimization in Bi-modal Networks Using Differential Evolution Algorithm

Abstract

This study proposes a bi-level optimization model for the transit frequency setting problem in bi-modal networks. The objective of the upper-level problem is to obtain a solution set of bus line frequencies that provide the minimum total travel cost of the car and bus users. Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is employed in the upper-level model to determine the optimal headways for a given route structure. The lower-level model is a congested multi-modal user equilibrium assignment model, which considers the interactions of car and bus flows, for determining joint mode/route preferences of the network users, which considers the interactions of car and bus flows. The developed model is tested on Mandl's benchmark network to evaluate its performance and applicability. The comparative experiments demonstrate that the proposed model leads to reductions in transportation costs. Also, the results of numerous optimization runs show that DE performs well in finding similar frequency sets in independent optimizations.