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Implementation of an iterative headway-based bus holding strategy with real-time information

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Abstract

In high frequency bus service lines buses often come irregularly at the stops, often in bunches, due to the uncertainty of the passenger demand and behavior and unexpected conditions on the roads. Vehicle holding is a commonly used strategy among a variety of control strategies in transit operation in order to reduce bus bunching and regulate bus headways. This paper investigates a control strategy of holding a group of buses at a single or multiple control point(s). By incorporating any passenger boarding activities during holding, a single control point problem is developed and extended to multiple control points to reduce the variance of headways for the downstream stops. The problem is a non-convex optimization problem with linear constraints that minimizes the total passenger waiting time both on-board and at stops. A heuristic is then developed that is easy and fast to implement, which makes it suitable for real-time implementation. The model is evaluated with a simulation case study by using the real-time bus operation data (i.e., Automatic Vehicle Location and Automatic Passenger Count Data) from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). The simulation results show that considering the boarding activities in the total waiting time, our model mitigates the error propagation and maintains steady performance, compared to the common models in the literature, which do not consider boarding while holding.

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Notes

  1. It is interesting to note that in 2009, the CTA had a slight drop in bus bunching down to 2.5 % due to budget cuts which resulted in less frequent service.

  2. The parameters were derived from real time bus route operation data provided by the CTA.

  3. Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, 2nd Ed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Materials Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, 842 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA

    Qin Chen

  2. Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California at Riverside, 225 Anderson Hall, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Elodie Adida

  3. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 842 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA

    Jane Lin

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  1. Qin Chen
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  2. Elodie Adida
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  3. Jane Lin
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Correspondence to Jane Lin.

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Chen, Q., Adida, E. & Lin, J. Implementation of an iterative headway-based bus holding strategy with real-time information. Public Transp 4, 165–186 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-012-0057-1

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