01591790

Component

Conventional fixed-route bus services are generally preferred to flexible-route services at high demand densities, and vice versa. This paper formulates the problem of integrating conventional and flexible services that connect a main terminal to multiple local regions over multiple time periods. The system’s vehicle size, route spacing (for Conventional Service), service area (for Flexible Service), headways and fleet sizes are jointly optimized to minimize the sum of supplier costs and user costs. The route spacing for conventional bus and service area for flexible bus are also optimized for each region. The proposed solution method, which combines a genetic algorithm and analytic optimization, finds very good solutions quickly. Numerical examples and sensitivity analyses confirm that Variable-type Bus Service (VS) may outperform either Conventional Bus Service (CS) or Flexible Bus Service (FS) when demand densities vary substantially among regions and time periods.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems. Alternate title: Service Type Variation for Multiregion Bus Systems

01584066

16-6238

English

20p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Bus routes; Costs; Optimization; Routing

Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-6238

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 6:46PM