Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization

Bus bunching can lead to unreliable bus services if not controlled properly. Passengers will suffer from the uncertainty of travel time and the excessive waiting time. Existing dynamic holding strategies to address bus bunching have two major limitations. First, existing models often rely on large s...

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Main Authors: Shuozhi Liu, Xia Luo, Peter J. Jin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2018-01-01
Series:Journal of Advanced Transportation
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2018/9714046
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author Shuozhi Liu
Xia Luo
Peter J. Jin
author_facet Shuozhi Liu
Xia Luo
Peter J. Jin
author_sort Shuozhi Liu
collection DOAJ
description Bus bunching can lead to unreliable bus services if not controlled properly. Passengers will suffer from the uncertainty of travel time and the excessive waiting time. Existing dynamic holding strategies to address bus bunching have two major limitations. First, existing models often rely on large slack time to ensure the validity of the underlying model. Such large slack time can significantly reduce the bus operation efficiency by increasing the overall route travel times. Second, the existing holding strategies rarely consider the impact on the schedule planning. Undesirable results such as bus overloading issues arise when the bus fleet size is limited. This paper explores analytically the relationship between the slack time and the effect of holding control. The optimal slack time determined based on the derived relationship is found to be ten times smaller than in previous models based on numerical simulation results. An optimization model is developed with passenger-orient objective function in terms of travel cost and constraints such as fleet size limit, layover time at terminals, and other schedule planning factors. The optimal choice of control stops, control parameters, and slack time can be achieved by solving the optimization. The proposed model is validated with a case study established based on field data collected from Chengdu, China. The numerical simulation uses the field passenger demand, bus average travel time, travel time variance of road segments, and signal timings. Results show that the proposed model significantly reduce passengers average travel time compared with existing methods.
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spelling doaj-art-0fe6928210ef4b54966bb3396090393e2025-08-20T02:02:32ZengWileyJournal of Advanced Transportation0197-67292042-31952018-01-01201810.1155/2018/97140469714046Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule OptimizationShuozhi Liu0Xia Luo1Peter J. Jin2School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, 111 Second Ring Road Beiyiduan, Chengdu 610031, ChinaSchool of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, 111 Second Ring Road Beiyiduan, Chengdu 610031, ChinaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, CoRE 613, 96 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8018, USABus bunching can lead to unreliable bus services if not controlled properly. Passengers will suffer from the uncertainty of travel time and the excessive waiting time. Existing dynamic holding strategies to address bus bunching have two major limitations. First, existing models often rely on large slack time to ensure the validity of the underlying model. Such large slack time can significantly reduce the bus operation efficiency by increasing the overall route travel times. Second, the existing holding strategies rarely consider the impact on the schedule planning. Undesirable results such as bus overloading issues arise when the bus fleet size is limited. This paper explores analytically the relationship between the slack time and the effect of holding control. The optimal slack time determined based on the derived relationship is found to be ten times smaller than in previous models based on numerical simulation results. An optimization model is developed with passenger-orient objective function in terms of travel cost and constraints such as fleet size limit, layover time at terminals, and other schedule planning factors. The optimal choice of control stops, control parameters, and slack time can be achieved by solving the optimization. The proposed model is validated with a case study established based on field data collected from Chengdu, China. The numerical simulation uses the field passenger demand, bus average travel time, travel time variance of road segments, and signal timings. Results show that the proposed model significantly reduce passengers average travel time compared with existing methods.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2018/9714046
spellingShingle Shuozhi Liu
Xia Luo
Peter J. Jin
Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
Journal of Advanced Transportation
title Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
title_full Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
title_fullStr Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
title_full_unstemmed Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
title_short Improving Bus Operations through Integrated Dynamic Holding Control and Schedule Optimization
title_sort improving bus operations through integrated dynamic holding control and schedule optimization
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2018/9714046
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AT peterjjin improvingbusoperationsthroughintegrateddynamicholdingcontrolandscheduleoptimization