Abstract
Bus services naturally tend to be unstable and are not always capable of adhering to schedules without control strategies. Therefore, bus users and bus service providers face travel time variation and irregularity. After a comprehensive review of the literature, a significant gap was recognized in the field of public transportation reliability. According to literature, there is no consistency in reliability definition and indicators. Companies have their own definition of bus service reliability, and they mostly neglect the passengers' perspective of reliability. Therefore, four reliability indicators were selected in this study to fill the gap in the literature and cover both passengers' and operators' perceptions of reliability: waiting time and on-board crowding level from passengers' perspective, and headway regularity index at stops (HRIS) and bus bunching/big gap percentage from operators' perspective. The primary objective of this research is to improve the reliability of high frequency of bus service and simulation tools currently being used by the public transportation companies. Therefore, a simulation model of bus service was developed to study the strategies to alleviate it. Four different types of strategies were selected and implemented according to Route U32 (Kuala Lumpur) specifications. Model out-put showed that control strategies such as headway-based dispatching could significantly improve headway regularity by almost 62% and the waiting time by 51% on average. Both holding strategies at key stops (previous and Prefol holding) have shown an almost similar impact on reliability indicators. Waiting time was reduced by 44% and 43% after the previous and Prefol Headway strategies were adopted, respectively. However, the implementation of the component of headway-based strategies at the terminal and key stops showed the best impact on reliability, in terms of passenger waiting time. Waiting time and excess waiting time were both significantly reduced by 52.86% and 81.44%, respectively. Nevertheless, the strategies did not show any significant positive effect on the level of crowding during morning peak hours.
Highlights
Urban public transport is an essential transportation mode because of the congestion on urban streets that results from the growing numbers of cars in cities
2) The findings of this review demonstrate that agencies and researchers need to pay particular attention to passengers’ perceptions before and after the implementation of the improvement strategies to increase bus service reliability
Waiting time is reduced by 44% and 43% after the previous, and Prefol Headway strategies are adopted, respectively
Summary
Urban public transport is an essential transportation mode because of the congestion on urban streets that results from the growing numbers of cars in cities. The demands for public transport in urban areas are growing, and technological efforts are being made to improve the services offered by urban transport networks. Some studies indicate that technological methods are not capable of offering a reliable system since passengers’ behavior can considerably affect service regularity [1,2]. It is confirmed that security and reliability are fundamental definition of satisfaction for passengers, must be provided [4,5,6]. The Transport Focus reported in March 2016 that bus industry in England is facing severe challenges. Transport focus conducted a survey to evaluate passengers’ perspective of bus service reliability. The report confirmed the significance of providing a frequent, punctual and reliable service that provides value for money
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