Coordinated Headway-Based Control Method to Improve Public Transit Reliability considering Control Points Layout

Abstract

The headway-based control method is usually used to regulate the bus headways and improve reliability of public transit. In general, the holding control strategy is applied at the control point, because enough space for dwell longer at the control point is required, while the stop-skipping control strategy can be used at any bus stop. However, in the headway-based control method, too much stop-skipping will bring longer waiting time and make the passengers impatient. The number and distribution of control points for stop-skipping are not considered in previous self-equalizing bus headway control works. Therefore, in this paper, the control points selection rules for stop-skipping involving their number and distribution on the bus route are discussed. A second by second discrete system is formulated to describe the bus operation. In the proposed control method, the threshold value for activating stop-skipping strategy is raised, avoiding provoking much additional waiting time because of boarding rejected. In the numerical analysis, a set of cases are conducted to evaluate the performance of control method under different number and distribution of control points for stop-skipping. The numerical results show that distribution of control points for stop-skipping has a greater influence on the public transit than the number.

Document type: Article